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OS X has this ridiculous idea of switching between Applications not windows that is killing usability. I never ever want to "switch to Terminal.app", it's always "switch to certain Terminal.app window".

Are there any good solutions?

I've installed Witch to provide some semi-sensible window switching, but it still has problems. If I have only two windows it's fine - with there it's already rather bad.

And there doesn't even seem to be any way to get a window out of a way - let's say I have long-running Terminal.app window that I want to keep in background until I explicitly recall it. No such luck - I'm pretty much guaranteed to accidentally switch to it sooner or later. And there's no hint which window contains what during switching - it's something useless like Terminal - bash.

Is this fixable at all?

EDIT: No, this isn't a duplicate question, and none of answers to that suggested "duplicate" have anything to do with it.

taw
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    Exact duplicate of http://superuser.com/questions/45310/switch-between-windows-on-mac-os-x ? – Chealion Oct 07 '10 at 05:49
  • No it's not, not even close! Notice the "but it still has problems" part. I already found some way to switch windows, now I want windows switching to behave sensibly. – taw Oct 07 '10 at 12:14
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    Well, for starters you can use the Info pane of each Terminal window (Cmd-i) to set the title to be whatever you want it to be. You can also configure Terminal's preferences to customize what the title of each window contains. – peelman Oct 07 '10 at 14:09
  • the idea of switching between Applications is actually GOOD for usability, you just seem to have a problem with one facet of it. The best / easiest way to solve your dilemma is to minimize the window. Then its out of your workflow until explicitly called for. – peelman Oct 07 '10 at 14:11
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    @taw: If you want answers, I suggest not trolling for hate by the people most knowledgable. Also, you fail to explain what exactly is wrong with Witch, and what other system does it right in your opinion. And that the Terminal windows are indistiguishable is fixable by its preferences, see peelmans comment. Pretty much all other applications have usable window titles by default. – Daniel Beck Oct 07 '10 at 16:04
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    I see no reason to re-open this. This is a rant and not a question. Just because you don't like how it works doesn't mean it's broken, and also doesn't mean we have to try and help you. There are more then enough people using Mac's that are happy with the way it works. – BinaryMisfit Oct 07 '10 at 20:10
  • @peelman Proper usability would be switching between groups of meaningfully related windows. That's what virtual desktops do, and they're impossible to implement properly with Application switching. Applications define window types, not window groups, and it's dreadful usability. What's use of "all Preview windows", or "all Terminal windows", or "all TextMate windows"? For things like dialogs linked to main window most window managers already get enough hints to skip them during switching. Does application switching have even one good use case then? – taw Oct 08 '10 at 08:04

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Have you tried Exposé? By default, F9 shows all windows and F10 shows all windows for the active application. If you have the side buttons on your mouse, you can just squeeze those to activate it as well (not sure if that's the default).

Sasha Chedygov
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  • That requires taking hands off keyboard and clicking on correct window with mouse, right? That's too slow for such a common action. – taw Oct 07 '10 at 12:15
  • @taw: You can use the tab key to switch between them with the keyboard. See [this](http://osxdaily.com/2007/06/13/expose-keyboard-shortcuts/) for more information. But honestly, is it that hard to take your hands off the keyboard? I find it faster to click on the window that I want than having to cycle through the windows manually with the keyboard. – Sasha Chedygov Oct 07 '10 at 21:38
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    Well for constantly switching between 3-4 windows (usually TextMate / Firefox / Terminal / possibly another Terminal) it is rather horrible. Thanks for expose tab hint, but this seems to be application switching, not windows switching, right? Fortunately I found Witch setting to ignore minimized windows when alt-tabbing - it doesn't quite fix the problem, but it's a big improvement already. – taw Oct 08 '10 at 07:48