Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

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Being able to map any menu item for any app in the Keyboard pref pane, Shortcuts tab by typing the exact label (case sensitive) is crazy.

You don't even have to have a third party app to snap left||right or maximise via the keyboard, as these are available (behind Option either in the menu or when hovering over the traffic lights, but once you bind them they're always there, example is my bindings):

    Ctrl+Option+Return: Zoom
    Ctrl+Option+Left:   Move Window to Left of Screen
    Ctrl+Option+Right:  Move Window to Right of Screen

And for multihead users there's "Move to <display name>".

Again in Keyboard pref pane, Shortcuts tab, under Mission Control there's also Switch to Desktop 1-N keyboard shortcuts but you first have to create as many virtual desktops (a.k.a Spaces) as you want to have all the shortcuts show up. Make sure to disable "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" under Mission Control pref pane to keep them predictable. Since the total count is spread across display heads, I create 5 on my left screen and 5 on my right one. I also disable "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with windows open for that application", otherwise clicking on a Dock icon jumps me to another Space when I just want to have the app activated. As a i3 user on Linux (which of course is in another league) this brings macOS kind of close enough in behaviour to not be too jarring for me when I jump from one to the other.

Another one of my favourites is Paste and Match Style, which is absolute genius.

Okay, I liked your idea of the window moving left and right and I tried to parse what you said and how to set it up as I haven't done shortcuts like this before.

In every app's menu bar (so like Safari or Chrome), there is the Window menu item. If you open that then press and hold the Option key on the keyboard, you'll see some alternative commands - two of them being:

    Move Window to Left Side of Screen
    Move Window to Right Side of Screen

You'll need those exact command names when you open Apple -> System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts tab. Then under App Shortcuts you can add some new shortcuts, where you can assign the Ctrl+Option+Left to the command title "Move Window to Left Side of Screen"

Once added, as you've said - once they are bound they will appear in the Window menu now as well.

MacOS built-in shortcuts are cool I guess, but when it comes to positioning windows, no way should you limit yourself to left and right. My preferred tool is "Divvy", which isn't auto-tiling per se but has really granular and straightfwd "set it and forget it" config. I've got muscle memory for sizing and positioning windows across displays in horizontal and vertical halves and fullscreen. Piece o cake, no brainer.

Appreciate the option to do it without 3rd party tools, but if you do want more power in this space I find Magnet indispensable.

I have shortcuts for left/right-third and two-thirds, as well as left/right half, which I must use dozens of times a day. Oh and I use ASZX to push stuff to the 4 corners too.

A lovely little utility app.

https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/

> Appreciate the option to do it without 3rd party tools, but if you do want more power in this space I find Magnet indispensable.

Used Moom and Spectacle, and now using Magnet as well on personal machines (actually it was the first one I ever used back when it was called Window Magnet), but the work laptop has a policy about vetted apps you can install, and only Spectacle is allowed, which I don't like personally, so I use the macOS native stuff there.

I use Moom for this, totally customizable key combos for any size/location of window, and you can customize the global shortcut to activate it so it don’t conflict with other global key combos like for iTerm or Alfred. I sync the settings by copying around a plist checked into my dotfiles repo.

Haven’t tried magnet before, just wanted to throw another option out there.

I still use https://github.com/jigish/slate on Monterey and it works great!

I second this - totally indispensable. It’s beyond me why this kind of functionality has never been baked into MacOS.

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