Hacker News Reader

Comment by Borg3 | Hacker News Reader

Thats interesting. Im using GUI Windows OS, but im very heavy keyboard user, utilizing shortcuts and alt+tab for windows switching. I barely even use start or desktop to start most common apps I use. I wrote myself QuickRun tool that is activated by Win+Q, and I type what I want to run. Usually its just 2-3 first letters of alias name, like bash and autocompletion kicks in. Mouse is used mostly to position windows sometimes. Keyboard is just much faster..

View on HN

Do you use multiple desktops? Windows seems terrible at positioning windows, I can't work out how to tell a window to move to the next desktop, say, or just start on a particular desktop (nevermind start at a particular position). Instead it takes a lot of mouse work just to setup after a boot/reboot.

Do you have a solution?

I'm stuck with native solutions, otherwise I gather this can be fixed with AHK. I'm interested in what you use either way.

I'm currently using this[0] AutoHotkey script library for such purposes.

[0]: https://github.com/FuPeiJiang/VD.ahk

Yeah I am, but im on very old Windows.. Also, I never bother that much about windows positioning. Because most stuff is usually maximized already, hence I often use alt+tab to switch. As for multiple desktops, I use Desktops 2.0 with is great little utility to create 4 virtual desktops. You can switch between them using Win+[1-4] so again, keyboard shortcuts. You cannot move windows between desktops but its not issue for me. I like this feature actually. I treat those desktops like some contexts. Basic, Work, VM.. So, apps cannot escape given desktop.. And apps are nicely segregated this way. Switch is instant.

I've never seen the point of multiple desktops, but I went and found out the answer to the first question anyway. You hold down win+tab, a nice layout appears showing all your windows and all your desktops, and you drag a window to a desktop.

I notice you can also reorder the desktops: right click (while holding win+tab), select "move left". Maybe it will then boot into whichever one's leftmost.

Yes, I already use win+tab, but that is quite a lot of mouse work, what I was hoping for was shortcuts like KDE has 'move app to next desktop', or even better there was some hidden menu or trick to get apps to open on the desktop I want them to live on.

I'm curious what extras you can do with your tool. I use spotlight style search with Microsoft powertoys with good effect. Admitidly stuff like unit conversion doesn't come up often but very helpful for finding files and apps compared to Windows search.

Absolutly no extras. I used to use SlickRun with is much more heavier tool, but I never ever used those extras. And since I started to using Desktops 2.0, I had to write my own tool that was aware of virtual desktops. Everything else I handle from bash (Cygwin).

You can take a look at it here: http://borg.uu3.net/~borg/?quickrun

Be aware tho, it looks ugly in Win10 and onward.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com