Weird(?) Ways I Use My Machine

Desktop Zero

I don’t put files or folders on my desktop or generally aspire not to. This is a soft limitation but I usually hold to it pretty well.

It seems akin to a messy desk. My desk is sometimes messy also but I’m not happy about it when it is.

Launching over searching

Some people have a lot of tabs and windows open at once. I aim to have as few as possible. My goal is do be able to open anything I am looking for from a zero state and I optimize for this. This means leaning on launch tools like Alfred, shell aliases, and bookmark managers.

I usually have an automatic stale tab closer extension running in my browser. When I used IDEs I constantly was running “Close All” frequently, opening the files I cared about when I needed them.

It almost always easier for me to just open a new tab or window of something than find the one that is already open, so I don’t even try to find it.

I also use my keyboard as a launcher to make this easier. I also don’t use macOS Spaces. I summon whatever window I want via hotkeys and Alfred.

Dock hidden, on the left

I mostly work on a laptop and screen real estate can be at a premium. Because of this, I always hide my dock. If you don’t do this, you lose that slice of screen to application icons. Since I take a launch first approach, I almost never look at the dock anyway. I put it on the left because my external display extends my screen to the right and it feels the most out of my way.

Clean Dock

While we’re dicussing the Dock, mine has minimal applications visible my default. You won’t find me using a computer with Number, Pages, etc. all visible, unused, in the Dock.