Window Switcher — Switch to a specific window of an app in the current Desktop Space

[sepulchra]

Ah super interesting. I hadn’t thought about unnamed windows in that context. Regardless, I hope this was helpful. I’ve been using this workflow quite a bit lately and it has been very helpful for getting to 3 different finder windows I keep open for a project I’m working. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by sepulchra

[vitor]

I’ll release the update ignoring small windows later today.

[yinan]

Hi, this is a nice workflow. I am wondering is there a way to close and quicklook the selected window?

[vitor]

You can’t Quick Look a window. Closing requires a bit of a hacky approach so I’d rather avoid it but I’ll look into it a bit further.

[yinan]

Okay, cool, that would be great! Thanks!

[terrell707]

Loving this workflow! One feature request. Would it be possible to add a hotkey/option to only show windows for the frontmost app?

[vitor]

Welcome @terrell707,

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

To only show windows from a particular app, type its name. The workflow filters by window and app name.

[xilopaint]

On 5/23/2023 at 6:42 AM, vitor said:

I’ll release the update ignoring small windows later today.

 

I still have an unnamed window when the app is maximized.

[vitor]

Will have an update later today to handle those as well. Though maximised windows aren’t as important because there’s nothing else to switch to.

[defmc]

Hi, just found this workflow after having tried several window-swicher-apps that did not play well. This workflow is amazing. Thanks for maintaining it so well. Only question I have is if it is possible to also search for windows that have been hidden in Finder (CMD+H)?

Edited July 2, 2023 by defmc

[vitor]

Thank you for the kind words. It is not possible to search hidden windows because the API it uses only detects windows drawn to the screen. There are alternatives (the workflow previously used a different method), but they’re considerably slower and don’t preserve window stacking order.

[samdale67]

Hi there,

 

I'm sure I've missed something, but could someone clarify that this app does not recognize minimized window?

 

Thanks all,

Sam

[vitor]

4 minutes ago, samdale67 said:

could someone clarify that this app does not recognize minimized window?

 

It does not. See post right above yours:

 

On 7/2/2023 at 10:49 PM, vitor said:

It is not possible to search hidden windows because the API it uses only detects windows drawn to the screen. There are alternatives (the workflow previously used a different method), but they’re considerably slower and don’t preserve window stacking order.

 

That says “hidden” but it’s the exact same reason.

[Raffi]

Why hello! I bumped into the same limitation as mentioned in the previous comments, about hidden or minimised apps not appearing in the workflow results - but! after some exploration I came across a little macos utility called Tuck that helps to circumvent this issue. Tuck sends windows to the side out of sight at a keyboard shortcut, much like minimising them, but the OS still "draws" them even though they are not on display. And so they appear in the workflow results still!

 

The link, if you're interested, is https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/tuck/.

 

Tuck (with which I have no affiliation at all) helps to make this workflow pretty much perfect now!

[Floating.Point]

Howdy Vitor,

 

Firstly thank you for this insanely helpful workflow. Such a superpower to add to Alfred! (Another superpower! 🦸‍♂️)

 

I assume the limitations preventing access to minimising windows might be the reason this isn't possible, but couldn't hurt to ask…

 

Is there any change this could be configured to find all open apps (even on different spaces?) or even those that are fullscreen?

 

Cheers, Nathan

[vitor]

Thank you for the kind words.

 

16 minutes ago, Floating.Point said:

I assume the limitations preventing access to minimising windows might be the reason this isn't possible

Yep, that is correct.

[Floating.Point]

Ah yeah, assumed as much. That's a shame. If myself or any others would like to submit a ticket through Apple's Feedback Assistant, seeking to have such things exposed in their API's, is there any specific terminology you'd suggest to make it clear what is lacking and how it could be improved?

[vitor]

Usually I’d be all for submitting such Feedback to Apple, and I’d even have a number you could duplicate in Feedback Assistant, but I doubt in this case it’s going to make a difference because Apple’s own tools work like that: In the Shortcuts app, add a “Find Windows” and tell it to find “All Windows”. Then run the Shortcut. You’ll only see the windows in the current Desktop too. But if you still want to open a report, you can mention the “Quartz Window Services”.

 

Unrelated to that, just pushed a new release (2023.5) which changes how unnamed windows are presented (now it’s the name of the app instead of “Unnamed”).

[Belfong]

Came here to praise Spotify Mini and discovered this workflow! Oh wow! It's so good, it might just sherlocked Witch, which is a tool I used to Alt-Tab into each open window. But Witch is slow. Alfred is FAST!

 

And, I can even show only Excel windows by "win excel" or "win preview" for PDFs! Excellent!

Or,

Ctrl-Alt-W (my hotkey) and type excel ... Thank you.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Belfong

[TomBenz]

On 8/30/2023 at 4:42 AM, Floating.Point said:

Howdy Vitor,

Is there any change this could be configured to find all open apps (even on different spaces?) or even those that are fullscreen?

 

Cheers, Nathan

@vitor thanks for this workflow. would like to find out if an additional keyword / option can be added to find all open apps on different spaces as well as full screen? It is similar to command+tab but with name search capability.  

[Floating.Point]

3 hours ago, TomBenz said:

@vitor thanks for this workflow. would like to find out if an additional keyword / option can be added to find all open apps on different spaces as well as full screen? It is similar to command+tab but with name search capability.  

 

Hey Tom unfortunately due to limitations with MacOS this is not currently possible

[TomBenz]

1 hour ago, Floating.Point said:

 

Hey Tom unfortunately due to limitations with MacOS this is not currently possible

Thanks for your reply. It will be great to understand this better.

 

I thought AppleScript can be used to get list of all active applications easily. For example, code like this:

 

tell application "System Events" to ¬

set appBundleIdentifierList to ¬

the bundle identifier of ¬

(every process whose visible is true)

 

repeat with appBundleIdentifier in appBundleIdentifierList

try

tell application id appBundleIdentifier to ¬

set {appName, winCount} to {name, (count windows)}

log appName & ": " & winCount

on error errorMessage

log errorMessage

end try

end repeat

[Belfong]

Witch was also able to show all the Safari tabs. It will be super useful if this workflow could do the same for Safari tabs.

[vitor]

AppleScript is noticeably slower and it cannot guarantee window order. This workflow specifically moved away from it. It will also not show Safari (or any other browser) tabs, that is out of scope as it would drown relevant results (and again, be slow). There are other workflows which can do that, and there are Automation Tasks which return information on browser tabs which can both be used to get tabs and switch to them.

 

This workflow should be considered feature complete. It does what it sets out to do, and does it as fast as possible within the available constraints. I carefully weighted all pros and cons of every possibility and this is what it has landed on.
 

The workflow is still maintained: it will get bug fixes if any are found and updated to newer macOS versions if necessary. It may also get tweaks in behaviour if they are reasonably small and don’t affect the workflow as a whole. But what it does will not change unless new relevant possibilities are added to macOS.

[sepulchra]

I just want to add that it does what it intends to do with lightning fast speed and im grateful you are not going to bog it down.