Is anyone using stage manager?

22

Your assessment sounds exactly right. SM seems designed to solve a problem that most in this forum don’t struggle with.

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23

That is a great tip! I’m going to try it with my Dad. I hope it catches on with him.

24

I’m not sure that was Apple’s intention at all. My gut feeling is Stage Manager was designed to support and enhance iPad multitasking, and to enable iPad to offer full external display support. I think it was added to macOS to open up a consistent multitasking experience across devices. In other words, anybody coming to macOS from iPadOS would hardly see a difference. Otherwise, it makes almost no sense.

My case for this position follows….

The public has been living with pointer-and-keyboard gui interfaces for some 38 years. I don’t think most users were having a hard enough time with macOS’s windowed environment to justify Stage Manager to solve a problem for the few people who struggle that much with window management.

Also, using it day-in-and-day-out I don’t find it to be an easier form of a multi-windowed interface. I think it’s different and that’s it. One may have a preference in terms of which form appeals to them, but one is not inherently easier than another. With one exception. It is a little bit harder, but not impossible, to get lost with a messy desktop while using Stage Manager. But with Stage Manager you could get lost with a messy set of stages (and full screen windows in other spaces!).

In other words, I think these are really six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other interface options. As such, it seems Stage Manager on macOS was not to solve a user interface problem on macOS, but to solve the problem of bringing parity of design between multitasking devices (and, to take it one step further, was done because it was easier to conform the mac desktop to the iPad experience than the reverse).

Q.E.D. (Maybe?)

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25

I believe I stand corrected. Your explanation makes a lot sense and mirrors frustrations about iPad multitasking I’ve heard on several podcasts. Thanks!

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26

To take your point (which I think is correct) one step further, given the information available about how apps will work on “RealityOS”, stage manager might be a better way to manage multiple apps on a virtual head’s up display than either Split View or Spaces would be… Perhaps the odd addition of Stage View to MacOS is a signal of other interfaces to come.

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28

I’m back to trying it on my Mac. I really like the idea. I like that I click on the desktop and my apps go off to the side clearing the way. I can see a lot of potential in it. I like how it displays items off to the side that I can click and get back to. I like that I can set up “screensets” and go back to those when switching back.

I have been a heavy user of spaces and I can see where this might work. It is a bit clunky to setup - and the SM Dance is peculiar - and not very Apple like.

I don’t know if Apple is going to go all in on SM - or like many things before, just let it linger and wither. But if they go all in, and fix some of these issues, I can see it working well for me and replacing what I currently do with Spaces.

29

I’ve been using Stage Manager / Sonoma for the last 2 weeks on an M1 Mac Mini with 2 Displays.
It’s a nice feature, but I have noticed an overall lag (2-3 seconds) and some sluggishness with Safari over 2 displays. I think Stage Manager is good when you’re in a focused zone mode. But I don’t think it’s convenient (at least not for me), if I just casually browsing or what not.

30

I tried Stage Manager on the Mac Thursday and loved it instantly, which is surprising because I’ve tried it a couple of times in the past and hated it instantly.

This time, however, I’m using Stage Manager on my new 34" Dell Ultrawide display, which I received last week, rather than my ancient 14-year-old 27" Apple Cinema Display.

I like to have one app open on my desktop at a time, not a clutter of windows. With the Apple Cinema Display, that was simple: maximize the app. But that result is far too wide on the Dell.

Stage Manager lets me have one app centered on half-width and everything else tucked off to the side, for easy access. Plus I can have two or more apps sharing a screen, which suits me when I have a document in one app and I’m taking notes on that document in another app.

Spaces, which is older technology, is very similar. I’ve hated it in the past, but maybe I should give it a try again. Maybe I would like it, too.

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31

Thanks for sharing. Stage Manager seems to work really good in a ultrawide - for focus. I don’t use this much so I have a couple of questions:

  • is SM something I can turn on/off with a keyboard shortcut? That would be nice, instead of having to turn on/off in Settings or from the Control Center
  • secondly, the app bar is tucked to the right side of the monitor. I much prefer to have it tucked to the left side. Wonder if there is a way to do so?

So, I am categorizing my apps so there are a couple of them opened at the same time:

  • Unread and Threads for the social group
  • a few Discourse forums (which I am using fluid.app to make each forum a standalone app)
  • Outlook and Fantastical for emails and calendar
  • Whatsapp, Discord and iMessage for the IM stuff.
  • Excel by itself, with a few Excel windows opened

Quite nice, in the scheme of things.

32

I also started using Stage Manager now and again recently. I find it handy for quickly making my mess of windows across apps quickly disappear and allowing me to temporarily focus on one window.

@Topre : you can set a keyboard shortcut to toggle Stage Manager in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Mission Control > Turn Stage Manager on/off. I set it as hyperkey-M a while back and that seems to have stuck for me.

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33

Didn’t think of checking there! Thank you. That will come in handy.

I wish the Stage Manager will only work with my main monitor, leaving the secondary and third monitor alone. It triggers for all. SM looked weird on a portrait monitor where the side icons and previews were elongated. Yikes. Homely new macOS will enhance it further.

34

This was one of my early – and consistent observations about stage manager – it works fantastic in a single-display environment. But from a workflow standpoint, it does not work as efficiently across multiple displays. I’ve written about this before here, along with a collection of my other thoughts on Stage Manager:

It might work better for multiple monitors if the two displays were treated as a single, unified stage. As it is, it’s inefficient to move windows from one display over to the other display and onto the right stage on that other display.

If Apple brought some of the Stage Manager controls from iPad over to the Mac, it would probably also solve a number of this problems. E.g., using Globe+^+\ to move a window from ipad to display and vice versa would be very useful on mac Stage Manager.

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36

So, what does it say about this feature when I had completely forgotten that it exists until I saw this post? I definitely don’t use it, haven’t figured out a reason to use it, and haven’t even thought about it for a long, long time. I’m starting to worry that I’m losing what little status I had as a Mac power user.

37

You have an irrationally strong opinion about a Mac feature. You are absolutely one of us.

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38

My daughter loves Stage Manager, and uses it instead of spaces. So, it definitely makes sense to an 11 year old!

I cannot stand it, I’m very keyboard centric and l have too much muscle memory to move away from my current setup. I found Stage Manager slow and frustrating compared to having everything at my fingertips in spaces.

Different strokes… as they say!

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39

Two questions, out of curiosity:

  1. Does your daughter use SM on a single display set-up?
  2. Did she come from SM on an ipad?
40

I’ve been loving it for a while but I think I’m going to try Spaces just to see how I like that. Moving app windows between stages seems a little clumsy.

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41

I learned to love virtual desktops, aka spaces, on Linux and they’re central to my workflow. It’s well worth learning the Mac’s excellent keyboard shortcuts for working with them.

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42

My $0.02; it’s growing on me.

I’m on macOS, don’t have an ipad that supports it. Like most here it seems, I tried it when it first came out and wasn’t super impressed. But I’ve toyed with it on and off, and actually just started trying it a couple days before this post was made. So here’s some of my observations:

  • When my dock is screen left, the recent apps (“stages”?) move to screen right.
  • I kind of like how it automatically “uni-tasks” for me. I find it helps me focus by getting everything else out of the way except the app I’m using.
  • When I do need multiple apps or windows up at the same time, shift + clicking on windows in the manager, adds them to the current “stage”. Using this with a window manager (I use Rectangle) is pretty seamless.
  • You can manually drag apps to take up the whole screen (not “full screen” mode) and the stage manager will hide, and will reappear if you hover on the screen edge where stage manager is.
  • I have a two screen setup and each screen has it’s own stage, I kind of like that. If I move windows over to the other display, those windows become the new stage and what was on that screen is minimized to the other stages for that screen.
  • Like with spaces, you can assign an app to show in all spaces or stages…but I just learned that apparently you have to have more than one space open to have that menu available in the dock. I have Slack assigned to all spaces / Desktops, and that carries over to stages; Slack never minimizes to the stage manager, it’s always visible no matter what. I use Quitter so Slack does hide (⌘ + H) most of the time, but it’s not changing out my stages in this case.
  • I like getting to see my photos as wallpapers again since I don’t have a dozen windows up all the time.
  • I use this Alfred workflow to toggle SM on/off

Cons:

  • It is clunky. Not as smooth as ⌘+tab or even mission control. If I do need a lot of windows from different apps, it takes a minute to set up.
  • I would prefer the app icons to be larger and the window previews to be smaller in the stage manager list thing. It does take up a lot of real estate and shows it was intended for touch interfaces.
  • I don’t think I would use it on just a one screen setup on macOS.
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43

I tried Spaces again for a few minutes and noped out. Not for the first time.

For me, the main value of Stage Manager is, as @dustying put it, unitasking. Much of the time, I’m using one at app a time, centered on the display, half-width or two-thirds width. Stage Manager makes it very easy to manage that.

Often, I want to use the full screen, either to show multiple documents side by side in Obsidian, or two run a browser next to an Obsidian document. Stage Manager works well for that too.

@dustying Cmd-Tab works extremely well with Stage Manager. I use Cmd-Tab a million times a day.

I absolutely use Stage Manager with a one-screen setup.

I’m going to have to try that shift-click trick. Until now, I’ve been dragging windows out of stages onto the screen when I want two apps to share a single window.

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