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This is entirely a skill issue. I don't mean that dismissively, let me teach you the Mac way to close apps.

You hit ⌘-Tab, this brings up a list of every app you have open. Keep the thumb on the ⌘. More tabs go right, ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q. When done, release ⌘.

My preferred way to launch an app is ⌘-Space and the first few letters of its name. This can have some frustrating delays of a second or two, but it will for the most part remember what you've opened. Other users are much more dock-oriented, I keep it hidden on the side and use it seldom.




> ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q

I didn't know about either of these, thanks.

Also apparently, up or down brings up a view of all the windows for that app.

A while ago I put together some hammerspoon lua for making cmd-tab go by window instead of by app because that's how my brain works, but it's slower than the native cmd-tab. Are there other similar hidden tricks for Dock.app (which, I presume, is the thing that makes the cmd-tab overlay appear)?


You can two-finger drag to make the selected app move around, although I rarely do so.

You can also three-finger drag down on the selected app to get Mission Control view for that app, to select a window directly. I do that somewhat more often.

Those are the other ones I know. Discoverability of the various affordances in the macOS interface is terrible, but it stays pretty consistent over the years.

There should be a manual of a couple hundred pages. I miss the days when that was standard.




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