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> Sometimes you need to look at two–three windows at a time.

You can actually tile two windows in a single full-screen (menu-less) view on macOS, and they can be sized arbitrarily as the two windows allow.

So for example you can do the editor/browser pair, or the file manager/preview pair. macOS doesn't get everything about the window selection process right, mind you, but this pairing approach does work pretty well.[0]

You can then swap (slide) between those full-screen views (and other ordinary desktop views) with a gesture, but because it snaps to full screens, you only need a simple swipe gesture.

Endless _arbitrary_ horizontal scrolling will get tiresome, having the window scroll as soon as the focus changes will be jarring at times, and having half the content of one or more windows off the screen at any one time will become cognitively frustrating.

[0] I find it very rare to need to tile four windows on a screen but surely ordinary window manager tiling mechanics can handle that (or Magnet, on the mac).



I hadn't learned of this, so googling I came across this: Use two Mac apps side by side in Split View https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204948

I am totally dependent on Spectacle. There are modern equivalent replacements, since the original is no longer supported. I can never understand why Apple won't build that functionality in.


> I hadn't learned of this, so googling I came across this: Use two Mac apps side by side in Split View https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204948

Yes. It's sort of slowly converging with the equivalent functionality in iPadOs.

> I am totally dependent on Spectacle. There are modern equivalent replacements, since the original is no longer supported.

Magnet that I mention above is one of them. It's in the App Store. I don't use it all the time but I have been known to.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

I guess Apple either think this kind of functionality is too fiddly or it's at odds with where they want their Split View semi-tiled approach to go.

Lack of MS Windows-style tiling is indeed something of an odd omission in macOS.




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