Amethyst: Shortcut for temporary fullscreen mode

Created on 25 Oct 2017 · 16Comments · Source: ianyh/Amethyst

System

Amethyst version: 0.11.4 (52)
macOS version: 10.12.6

What's the problem?

Not a problem per se, just an issue for improvement. I would like to temporary switch modes from current to fullscreen and back with a shortcut, similar to i3. E.g. default shortcut would be Shift+alt+F.

This is contrary of cycling through layouts and is meant to be temporary.

Trello Card

discussion needed enhancement

Source

lumio

👍4

Most helpful comment

You can assign shortcuts for switching directly to a layout. This would help with the step of switching directly to fullscreen, but there would not be a general switch back. You would need to define a shortcut for each of your other layouts.

ianyh on 12 Nov 2017

👍2

All 16 comments

+1 for this. I currently use BetterTouchTool rules to essentially disable macOS's full screen mode invoked by the green maximize button. Right now I have it set to instead toggle a Amethyst layout switch (by hitting the key combo) and only have two layouts active, so I functionally get something like this, but it'd be super nice if I could add more layouts and have it trigger temporary full-screen instead.

(I auto-hide my menu bar and my dock, so there' literally no visual difference between a Amesthyst-maximized app and a full screen app except for the fact that you can't suddenly decide to open a window along side it. Super obnoxious.)

brettneese on 10 Nov 2017

👍1

I'm not sure I quite understand. It seems like a temporary fullscreen mode would functionally be the same as switching to the fullscreen layout and switching back.

ianyh on 12 Nov 2017

Well, kind of. When you have only 2 layouts enabled, then sure, changing the layout would just do that.

But as soon as you have multiple layouts you need to cycle through all of your layouts. Sometimes I just want to switch to fullscreen real quick and go back as soon as I've finished a task :)

lumio on 12 Nov 2017

ianyh on 12 Nov 2017

👍2

Oh right, this would work for me right now :)
But still would be great for a temporary switch though. So I'd leave it open if you don't mind.

lumio on 12 Nov 2017

👍

ianyh on 12 Nov 2017

Curious - what would happen if you are in this temporary fullscreen layout and you then try to switch layouts? What does i3 do?

systay on 4 Apr 2018

@systay you do not switch layouts in i3wm. Since its based on the bsp all the time more or less, so there is no real switch layout, or at least i've never used such a command in my i3wm setup

because when you launch a new window you can mark the edge of what direction / place it should get inserted at.

ptomasroos on 22 Oct 2018

@lumio Is this an instance where the fullscreening capability provided by the OS would do this job better? (Assuming #674 gets fixed)

Try cmd+ctrl+F

ianfixes on 23 Oct 2018

👍1

@ianfixes I'm not sure. Unless it would be easy to disable macs fullscreen mode by also disabling the app from moving to another space, this issue might be not a big of a deal.

However, I tested it with BetterTouchTool and it doesn't work as good as expected as the windows are rearranged on focus change

lumio on 23 Oct 2018

So maybe instead a great way to do this would be a shortcut for "toggle layout" -- ie "switch to this layout, if in this layout, switch to last layout @ianyh @systay

@ianfixes the problem with OSX full screen is that it's so slow. I have a retina 12", sometimes I want to maximize my screen real quick to read something and then quickly plop it back. OSX's full screen mode takes far to long to animate and I would pretend to prefer it doesn't exist.

brettneese on 10 Jan 2019

I agree that it's slow.

@ianyh I wonder if the thing to do here is refocus this feature request as "have more ways to cycle layouts". If we had a system that functioned more like the command-tab switcher (where the most recently used item goes to the beginning of the list), the "temporary fullscreen mode" would be emergent behavior. You'd hit the hotkey for fullscreen, then "command-tab" (or whatever you end up calling it) to switch back. And then you could continue to command-tab to toggle.

MVP would be just a single "switch to last layout" option. Full implementation would be an outright clone of the task switcher but with layouts instead of apps.

ianfixes on 10 Jan 2019

+1
There is another problem with the OSX fullscreen and amethyst: When I throw a window to the next desktop left, windows get thrown onto an OSX fullscreen window without any tiling features. What happens in most cases is that the window I throw gets maximized as well and therefore it covers the entire OSX fullscreen app.