On the Mac, as on the PC, Alt-Tabbing shows a list of open apps to choose from. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how it is ordering the icons.
The first slot is reliably the most recent other app, and so issuing a single Alt-Tab toggles between the two most recent apps.
Beyond that it gets random pretty quickly. It seems like it’s trying to order the icons in LIFO order, but I often find a recent app buried down in the 8th position.
It’s been like this for years, and it makes task switching more of a chore than it should be, because you have to work harder to scan the icons for the app you want. And it’s only going to get worse as we upgrade to computers with a cushy 8GB of RAM.
Can anybody tell me what that the algorithm is for the order of the icons in the alt-tab UI?
See also:
It’s Z-axis window order. Click on your apps to arrange them by-z-order, then check alt-tab.
Minimizing an app places it at the bottom of the queue, which is the most annoying behavior, I think. But if you can get a finger on the Shift key, you can wrap around backwards from the active app to get to the last one.
David, you win a prize. How did you figure out it was z-order? And does this knowledge help you use it?
Philip- simple — I put on my programmer hat and said “what data structure do I have lying around that would enable me to implement this feature?”
And no — it doesn’t help me at all. In addition to Mr. Cortright’s comment, I also notice two other annoyances. Sometimes a minimized or hidden application doesn’t show on the list at all (I’m sure this is just a bug — re-doing the alt-tab dance usually adds the app back).
Worse, Apple took away a feature from OS 10.4 alt-tab: arrow-key cycling. In 10.4 an earlier I could hit alt-tab, then holding down the alt (command) key tap left or right arrow. When the selection was at the leftmost app, a left arrow tap would cycle to the rightmost app. The list was a circle. Doesn’t work anymore, and I had to untrain my fingers. Annoyingly, tab and shift-tab WILL cycle. I still mostly use the alt-tab-then-arrow keys to choose an app.
Ok, David, I put on my “If I were Apple’s Alt-tab designer” hat on and discovered that you can press Alt-Tab, and, while keeping the Alt button pressed, also press the Home or End button to get to the start or end of the list. Yes, that’s Alt-Fn-Left and -Right arrow.
That might help get to a faraway app icon.
(How is this going to scale when we all upgrade to computers with 8GB of RAM and have 40 apps running at once?)
- Philip
Philip-
what makes you think we’ll have 40 apps running with 8GB or RAM? The 5-10 productivity apps I normally have open just keep using more resources as the years go by….
More interesting to me are the explorations of e.g. Quicksilver. I may not have 40 apps open at once, but I have 400 _websites_ I visit from time to time, and will often keep 5-10 web browser tabs going as I’m working. In effect, these tabs are applications too (e.g. a programming reference manual). Too often I hit alt-tab when I need to choose a different _browser_ tab. Ack.
David-
As we get more RAM, we get more reason to use more applications at the same time. Browsers, image editors, viewers, application launchers, etc. are becoming more and more common to use at the same time / more of them for various reasons.
Using firefox with add ons such as foxtab allow you to control tab between icons, I know that works in Windows, not so sure about Mac.