someone told me to change this setting and i never went back

I used to end every day minimizing a combination of 9+ Chrome windows, VS code windows, Slack pages, & whatever else I had open so that I could open them all back up the next day. With a few simple UX suggestions, I have been able to maintain all windows on different screens and navigate through them exclusively through my keyboard.

aerospace

an i3-like tiling window manager for Mac. instead of floating windows you stack and minimize, organizing everything into workspaces you move between with a keyboard shortcut. there is also no SIP disabling required unlike other window managers for Mac.

install: brew install --cask nikitabobko/tap/aerospace (via Homebrew). here’s the getting started guide.

vimium

a Chrome extension that lets you navigate entirely with the keyboard: you can open links, switch tabs, scroll, search, all mouse-less. I can now refresh pages and open new tabs with the click of one key.

one important note: I did have a problem with it on Coderpad during an interview, so I would disable before going into any live coding interviews.

install: search “Vimium” in the Chrome Web Store, or use the link above, and click Add to Chrome.

vertical tabs

a built-in Chrome flag currently in experimentation. pretty self explanatory - your tabs are in a sidebar vertically with readable titles on all.

enable it: go to chrome://flags, search “Vertical Tabs,” switch it to Enabled, then relaunch Chrome / right click to enable vertical tabs.