I've just been giving it the old college try to see if I can get a proper workflow going with it.
I teach, so I often have a lot of apps open for research/reference, lesson planning/preparation, as well as messaging services and other various apps.
I keep Apple Numbers full-screened in a space to the left, where I maintain a Grade/Schedule/Planner "book". I have Affinity Publisher 2 full-screened to the right, where I make prints/handouts for my classes.
On my desktop in the center, the stages (app sets) I keep are dedicated to...
- a single instance of Safari for lesson research (and procrastinating on Kbin)
- all my chat applications (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc)
- multiple finder windows to find, manage, and organize materials and resources I require to prepare new lessons every week.
- both my email client (spark) and calendar (FirstSeed).
- occasionally Spotify, if I need some music to help me focus.
If I didn't have stage manager, I would have been using a similar setup across around 2-3 desktop spaces and some full-screened apps. My "home" desktop in the middle, with reference-based stretching apps leftward, production-based apps stretching rightward, and my entertainment-based apps out on the fringes. This worked really well for me in the past, but stage manager has actually made things smoother for me, since I'm doing a lot less swiping around. (Yes, Mission Control was ideal for reaching more fringier desktop spaces, but when you're in the habit of just quickly swiping between 1-3 key desktops, it gets easy to forget how "far away" some of the other desktops are.)
Currently, my two biggest wishes for Stage Manager are...
- that we could save stage presets so I could launch mine quickly with a Siri shortcut, and save a LOT of organization time after a restart.
- that there were more comprehensive keyboard shortcuts specifically for navigating stages rather than individual apps. (There might be, but I haven't found a clear guide anywhere since most publications are more interested in the fact that Stage Manager exists than how to make it useful.)
- a greater number of stages, with the ability to scroll through them and pin favorites to the top.
(I'm still on Ventura, so if these features were added in the betas, I wouldn't know.)
Question:
Has anyone else been discovering ways in which Stage Manager on Mac as worked out for them?
I don't use my Mac much, but I was just recently looking at Stage Manager to help me set up a few app arrangements for some work I was planning to do soon. I thought it was the answer to my prayers but I was, again, disappointed by the lack of options and what I would consider common-sense features.
I did see something called Moom on the App Store and it was $10. I didn't buy it myself yet but I think it might solve all or most of your problems. I think its sole purpose is to save app and window arrangements and allow you to set up keyboard or trackpad (or mouse I assume) shortcuts to get back to those arrangements. It seems to have options relating to how the apps are handled (are they opened if not already open? do they default to a particular file or action upon the shortcut being used? etc).
If you do happen to try it out, let me (us) know what you think of it?