The Crux of the Switch ⇾
Joshua Kofman, from back in January, posted this detailed piece on switching between applications in OS X. He gives a lot of background along with his personal preferences, and the entire post may be helpful for those wishing for a better experience in this area.
He also included a tip that I was unaware of, for reopening the window of an app you had closed. That is to say, you have not Quit the app, but simply closed the window (think iTunes — the app is running, but you have closed the window):
It goes like this: hit Command-Tab to switch as you would normally, then when the app you want to switch to/reopen is selected, hit Option while continuing to hold Command. Then release Command before you release Option. Go ahead and try it now. When you first start using it, it’s quite painful after the simplicity of Command-Tab, but it does get slightly easier over time.
That’s a handy piece of information in an overall enlightening piece.
As someone who has wrestled with this subject in OS X, I have to add another mention for Witch. Between the built-in app switcher in OS X and Witch, I’m very happy with my window management process.
As I like to work on one thing at a time, I often hide windows (Cmd + H) that I want to keep open but want out of my site. Witch allows the user to cycle through the active windows on the desktop, rather than the built-in switcher, which cycles though open applications. It also works well with Spaces, only displaying the open windows in each individual Space.
This additional tip from Joshua will be a nice addition to my workflow.
