Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Moom 4

Many Tricks (release notes, tweet):

Moom 4 has a completely revamped user interface designed to help you get the most out of Moom. Gone is the multi-tabbed non-resizable window, replaced with this new resizable window.

[…]

The pop-up palette is both customizable and expandable, supporting up to 61 of your own custom actions.

You can use folders (and folders within folders) to organize your actions.

[…]

Every custom action can be renamed, not just saved layouts.

[…]

Any saved layout can be added to a screen edge in Moom’s snap feature. Once you’ve done that, drag a window onto that region, and the associated saved layout’s window locations become drop zone targets[…]

[…]

That Hover entry in the sidebar? It’s an entirely new way of working with windows. By defining some modifier key combos, you can move and/or resize any window—even one in the background—by simply holding down the defined modifier key combos and moving your mouse.

[…]

Chains—combinations of multiple actions—now have two operating modes. As before, they can run as one command (e.g., resize this window and move it to the other display), or they can run sequentially, executing each action in the chain each time the keyboard shortcut is used (e.g., move from one-third left to center third to right third).

This looks really great. With the launch sale, new licenses are $10 (vs. $15) and upgrades are $6. Apple never did add an entitlement for accessibility access, so with the major version upgrade Moom is no longer grandfathered and has to leave the Mac App Store.

Previously:

Update (2024-08-22): Rui Carmo:

The key highlight for me is the new “drop zones” functionality, which looks a lot like the Windows PowerToys’ FancyZones feature I have come to rely on.

Update (2024-09-10): See also: Mac Power Users Talk and Hacker News.

timenova:

The thing with most of these macOS window managers is they lack support for workspaces, an essential feature in WMs like i3.

An API for Spaces is long overdue.

Many Tricks:

But the big news in Moom 4.1 is the expanded access to drop zones: You can now activate drop zones in three different ways, including by holding a modifier key (Shift, Fn, Command, Option, and Control) down while dragging a window. This means you can quickly access any of five different layouts’ saved window locations simply by holding a key while dragging a window.

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I have no idea if I need any of the features, but it’s a no-brainer for $6. Long live Many Tricks.


Besides entitlement gating, The App Store also does not support their business model (the Evolutionary Update model / JetBrains model), which I think is a much fairer model than subscriptions to both devs and users.


@Hammer What do you mean by "the Evolutionary Update model / JetBrains model"?



Got it, thanks! I do find that to be a far more preferable model over subscriptions, which I'm distressed has become the new norm.


@Bri Same. I get that subscriptions make sense for products with ongoing costs, but Moom is just not that kind of product. There's no server upkeep or anything like that once you've downloaded it. So that's why we came up with this compromise of sorts.

By the way, thanks for your kind words, everyone, and thank you @Michael for discussing the update in the first place!

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