Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard shortcut to switch to them.

On Mac you generally just don’t minimize windows unless you explicitly want that behaviour (sort of hidden and available manually through the dock). It’s just a different workflow.

This seems like a weird comment, what did people do before macs got virtual desktops (which was relatively recent compared to unix)? As a side note I remember discussion with apple users arguing that virtual desktops are not how one "should work" and are useless, now it's "you should use virtual desktops, obviously".

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.

> 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?

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.)

As someone who used Mac back then: mostly just complain about it and accept that OSX did not have any good way of stashing away windows. I am still not impressed but is less painful now that we have virtual desktops.

The few times I've used a Mac, trying to use this workflow just leads to a lot of visual clutter. Everything sits on top of everything else, and every window is sitting somewhere on the screen, a constant reminder that nags at the back of your mind.

I guess like the other person mentioned I just don't find myself minimizing that often on Mac.

That being said there is an option. The first is if you are in an application you can do control-down or (if you enable it under gestures >> more gestures for your trackpad) you do 3 fingers down you will see the minimized windows for your current application at the bottom. I did also just look it up and apparently if you do cmd-tab and press up on an application it does the same thing.

Not exactly what you are looking for, but you can at least do it on a per application level for anything minimized.

I never minimize windows at all on the Mac, perhaps because of this behavior. I hide apps with (Command-H) instead, and use multiple desktops for managing different workflows instead.

Yeah I hide stuff all the time and I find myself using Single Window mode a lot too, especially on a smaller screen.

While the app switcher is highlighting the app with minimized windows, press cmd+1 to switch to those windows.

The keyboard shortcut to switch to them in ctrl-down (or whatever you have set to "Application windows") and then arrow keys.