Looks like I am going to be leaning on y’all ass I move from High Sierra to Sequoia. I think that’s what it called on the Mac side. When I use it now to switch apps, it ONY shows it’s menubar but none of any windows it has open. Huh? I think I have a work around… I have a key on my keyboard that spreads all windows out (I know it has a name, but search me!) and I think I can choose the one I am intending.
Is this REALLY how app switching via the familiar method (cmd-tab) supposed to be? I just can’t see any reason why they are doing this.
Command-tab by itself should just switch to the previous application, including both menu bar and any windows it had open that were not minimized.
It you continue holding down Command after you tap tab, that should give you a band of application icons with the previous application’s icon highlighted. Tapping tab again should move the highlight along the band of icons, and releasing the command key should switch you to the application with the highlight (which could be the same as the original if you tabbed all the way across the band or used shift-tab to reverse the direction of transit).
That’s my understanding of how the application switcher is supposed to work.
That key that spreads your windows is called Mission Control. You can indeed choose the one you want.
There is a setting that allows you to have the windows grouped by application:
System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Mission Control > Groups windows by application
You can also switch to another active application through its icon in the Dock or by switching to a different Space if you have several active. There are no doubt some other methods that are not coming to mind at the moment.
Thanks for trying but I do understand what you are saying (without knowing the names for it!).Normally, it works as expected, but I was playing a game that was set to borderless windowed. Not full screen. There using cmd-tab does pop up the list of actively running apps BUT switching to any of them gives me the menubar of that app, but NOT any of it’s windows. Yes I probably could use Mission Control, it’s just I’ve been doing cmd-tab for eons. AND I was one of the very early users to jump on Switcher back in 84 (might be early 1985, too long ago to remember if accurately). I do remember some of the senior IT guys where I worked freaked out when I showed them it.
I’m just curious why this is happening. I have no issues doing a similar thing on winblowz (alt-tab).
For years I have set hot corners so that the top right shows all windows and spaces (ie Mission Control), and bottom left shows the Desktop. It’s much quicker than taking my hand off the trackpad to press F3, and faster than using cmd-tab, whist letting me select which window I want to come to the front if an app has more than one window open.
Ahhh, was unaware you could create Mission Control via a hot corner. I can get Mission Control by pressing the fn key and pressing f3, but this should be smoother. Only problem is that for a while I may give in to muscle memory! Thanks so much for the hint!
Although you can’t disable the hard-wired mission-control keystroke (F3 or Fn-F3), you can define an additional keystroke via System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts… → Mission Control. In my case, I’ve defined the F16 key for this:
