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0 pointsdanaris4y ago0 comments

Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do.

But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage.

I've been a Mac user since before the system even had proper multitasking, and the general answer to your question is that we would keep open the applications and windows that were useful to us, sometimes hiding an application that we're not actively using and don't need to have cluttering up the screen. Once Mac OS X came along, we would also minimize individual windows we weren't using—and if you minimize a window, then hide the application that it belongs to, that also hides its minimized windows in the Dock.

Also note that for every application up until a few years ago, and for some applications even now (and dependent on a System Preference setting), you can keep an application open on the Mac without any windows open.

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cycomanic4y ago· 1 in thread

> Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do.

> But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage.

> hiding an application that we're not actively using and don't need to have cluttering up the screen.

So having only used macs very sporadically what is the difference of hiding an application and minimizing a window?

> Also note that for every application up until a few years ago, and for some applications even now (and dependent on a System Preference setting), you can keep an application open on the Mac without any windows open.

So am I understanding correctly that hiding an application is essentially the same as minimizing all windows of that application (into some hidden space), I assumed from the previous posts they would just be moved to some virtual desktop? I guess that would be very nice for some applications but very annoying for others, e.g. do terminals count as the same application?

danarisOP4y ago

Hiding an application, very simply and straightforwardly, just takes the application out of the foreground and makes all its windows disappear. They are still considered to "exist", in the same desktops/spaces, and no state is lost—when you switch back to the application, all its windows reappear exactly as they were when you hid it (assuming no background processing changed them, of course). They are just not visible for as long as you keep the application hidden.

The difference between this and minimizing is that a) it affects all windows of the application, not just a selected one, and b) a minimized window either goes into the side of the Dock, or into the application icon on the Dock (depending on your set preferences); hidden windows, as I said, are completely invisible.

There is also a "Show All" option under the application menu (the one just to the right of the Apple menu, with the name of the foreground application) that will un-hide all currently hidden applications.

Virtual desktops are a relatively recent addition to the Mac; this hiding behavior has been around and worked consistently since the mid-'90s, well before Mac OS X.

(As a final random tidbit, one of my most common methods of hiding an application—particularly if it's the one I'm using at the time—is to simply option-click on either the desktop or another application's window, as that is a longstanding shortcut for doing so.)

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