rxhanson

You can also set a keyboard shortcut to activate it as a toggle.

Good to know, that's what I was expecting. I'll have to give the Cat a spin! Also, thanks for this article and the Jef Raskin one - I thoroughly enjoyed them and their depth. I was in the middle of reading the book version of folklore.org (Revolution in the Valley) and these were a pleasant surprise.

Up and down arrow keys will cycle matches.

At the moment the Accessibility API results are limited to the frontmost window; it's on my todo list to expand this to additional windows and displays. Also, the green line will only be drawn on results on the main display - another item I plan on fixing.

In Superkey, all of the matches are highlighted yellow, and the selected one is highlighted green with a line to it from the text field. You can keep typing to narrow down the match, or you can navigate matches using the arrow keys (and optionally, cycle through them with the semicolon key, which is what I use). There's a screenshot at https://superkey.app.

For the Canon Cat, I'm actually not sure as I've only watched videos of this functionality there.

Not that I'm aware of, but I do have plans to at least bring some version of this to Windows at some point.

Without knowing about Jef Raskin's ideas, I implemented something really similar to one of them in one of my Mac apps, Superkey. This idea in the Canon Cat was that you hold down a key and type text that you want to select anywhere in a document, then let go to select it - typically faster than reaching for a mouse or hitting arrow keys. In the Canon Cat it was an additional key (the leap key), below the space bar.

For the implementation in Superkey, you can select a key to use for this, like caps lock. The way I use it is I hold the caps lock key and type text, then the app uses OCR and optionally the macOS Accessibility API to search for matching text. Releasing the key or hitting enter will click (or double or triple click, etc) on a match.

Raskin's idea was of course more text-editing focused, and tapping on the leap keys will also move the cursor. I typically use Superkey to navigate UIs quickly, kind of as though UIs all have keyboard shortcut navigation. There are also limitations that Superkey faces, like not having access to offscreen parts of a document.

Glad you like my software! A long time ago, I had some RSI issues that were alleviated by using the Magic Trackpad, and this led me to create the Multitouch app[0] to add a bit more functionality to the Magic Trackpad. From there I wanted to add in window management, and ended up rewriting Spectacle as Rectangle. I feel really lucky to have people enjoying the things I've built!

[0]https://multitouch.app

Good to know! I'm surprised that Magnet has any improvement over Rectangle in these areas, since Rectangle isn't really adding any overhead to the Accessibility API commands, but I'll have to investigate.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree and have had some ideas for improving this - one of them being copy/paste and drag behavior where you could copy a selection in Rectangle Pro and paste it as prettified JSON in an editor, and vice-versa. The dot file idea is also one that I like - it's just a surprisingly large effort to "do it right". Making UI's for representing this complexity is kind of tricky, and what's there now is actually my first cut - something that I figured I would iterate on but haven't gotten the time together to do it.

If you don't mind me asking, what are the warts? I'm always interested in improving the app.

Rectangle is FOSS.

https://rectangleapp.com

FWIW Rectangle is FOSS

https://rectangleapp.com

I'm the developer behind Rectangle. There are a handful of features in Rectangle that aren't in Magnet, like being able to repeat shortcuts to achieve different sizes/positions, and being able to modify a lot more of the behavior of the app (there are more settings, and there are terminal commands listed on the readme of the GitHub repo). The main draw is that Rectangle is FOSS, which comes with obvious benefit.

Beyond that, Rectangle Pro (paid, closed source) is where I've put a ton more features. You can find Rectangle & Rectangle Pro at https://rectangleapp.com

Rectangle is a drop-in replacement for Spectacle, and provides an option upon first install to select the Spectacle default keyboard shortcuts. Note that Spectacle only included keyboard shortcut window management, while Rectangle also includes the drag to screen edge snapping.

I was hoping to move over to Google Cloud Domains, too. Looks like Google Cloud Domains "is to be fully deprecated as part of this sale".

https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1669726481130434563

Yes, there is an API for this in macOS, and I use it in two of my apps (multitouch.app and charmstone.app). The haptic feedback is really subtle though and it doesn't give the full power of the feedback that is in the trackpad, which limits the usefulness of it. You can make it buzz for longer durations to make it more apparent, but then it starts to get annoying. I think there is a private framework that can give you stronger haptic feedback, if I remember right (I avoid private frameworks).

I just happened to make a post about this today, too, in the form of a quick tutorial with Automator to turn the hidutil commands into an app that can be configured in launch on login system settings, if desired:

https://medium.com/ryan-hanson/key-remapping-built-into-maco...

Thanks for trying it and for the feedback. Would you use it if you could set the keyboard shortcuts to mod+hjkl or something like that, rather than mod+arrow keys?

Charmstone [1] is a different take from everything mentioned here (I'm the developer).

The idea is to use your spatial memory to switch/launch apps faster than anything else that I've found, with a smaller learning curve and less memorization.

You can use keyboard shortcuts with the arrow keys, modifier keys + cursor movement, or a trackpad gesture.

[1] https://charmstone.app

I did not, but will definitely do this if I hit this problem again (thanks for the link). I had reported it to the Google safe browsing pages multiple times over the past month and that had no effect, but going that legal reasons route seems like a better bet.

Quick update that the fraudulent site has indeed been suspended. This restores some confidence that things can happen with reporting, and I think it just took more people reporting it to finally get a result.

Thanks for the reply! For some reason I don't see rectanglemac as being suspended, but if it really is, then that would be great. Good to know that you've seen success going the registrar route. From what I've read online, NameCheap (the fraudulent site's registrar) appears to have a reputation for a lot of criminals using their service, so I've been skeptical that I'll get results from that route.

Not sure if you've seen this issue in the tracking: https://github.com/rxhanson/RectanglePro-Community/issues/46

I am planning on adding some control into the UI for it, but no guarantees on a timeframe.

Thanks for the feedback! This is definitely in the works, I just have to force myself to stop getting excited about coding new features and ideas and finally get back into video mode :)

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you like it :)

In Rectangle Pro [1], mentioned in the article, there is a feature built specifically for saving and loading layouts, in the “Applications” tab.

The app is not free and I’m the developer.

1: https://rectangleapp.com/pro

Rectangle dev here. You do not need to pay anything to get full functionality, including configuring the app any way you want. It's FOSS, after all.

The Pro version of the app just has a lot of additional features. Here's a comparison chart: https://rectangleapp.com/comparison

Rectangle dev here. Rectangle will get you some more window actions, as you can see in the GitHub readme [1]. There are also some hidden configurations beyond what's in the UI [2].

There's also a feature called todo mode that kind of lets you pin a window on the side of the screen. This feature was created by Patrick Collison of Stripe and Nat Friedman.

And there's the fact that it's open source.

The real differences come in the paid, closed source version: Rectangle Pro [3]. Here's a comparison of some of my similar apps: https://rectangleapp.com/comparison

Rectangle is not on the Mac App Store, though, if that's important to you.

[1] https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

[2] https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/blob/master/TerminalCo...

[3] https://rectangleapp.com/pro

Rectangle dev here, I wrote a post about this a while back [1].

TL;DR The APIs are the same between the two, but there is the potential of a security risk with Spectacle. Something I didn't mention in that post is that Rectangle technically should outperform Spectacle, although it might not be noticeable, as Spectacle loads a JavaScript engine to perform window size/pos calculations while everything in Rectangle is in Swift.

[1] https://medium.com/ryan-hanson/why-switch-from-spectacle-to-...

Spectacle was created by a different developer. Rectangle contains nearly everything in Spectacle, and it includes an option when you first start the app or when you go to reset the default shortcuts to select the Spectacle shortcuts.