Comment by lynndotpy

Comment by lynndotpy 6 hours ago

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I come from Linux land so I'm used to things being lightning fast, so using software on a Mac requires a thousand workarounds. A terminal integrated into the IDE is one of those necessary workarounds.

MacOS has very very slow slow window- and desktop- switching (over one FULL second to switch from one desktop to another - this is not a joke!) so having a terminal integrated into the same application is very useful for maintaining flow for users developing on a single-screen Macbook.

Aloisius 6 hours ago

It shouldn't take over a second to switch desktops.

I just checked with a screen recording. Switching desktops takes 15 frames (250 ms). If you turn reduce motion on, it takes 13 frames (216 ms).

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  • lynndotpy 4 hours ago

    The 1200ms was an estimation, but it's definitely closer to 1200ms than it is for 250ms for me. There's definitely a difference in set up here- I'm on a Macbook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

    From a screen recording, I count 53 screen-recorded frames from the apparent start of the animation (which occurs after it's invoked) to desktop widgets becoming transparent (which appears to be the point input is no longer blocked). IINA says the video is 50.582 fps (very strange frame rate?) so that would be ~1050ms.

    Of course, that doesn't include any input latency or the display latency, so I also took a video with my phone. I took two trials and I recorded a full 1.08 seconds from key depression to transparent widgets. I did two more with Reduce Motion on and got the exact same time.

    I am very curious what your set up is, because I am invested in getting this as close to 8.3 ms as possible.

    edit: For comparison, my Linux desktop with a similar experimental set up, this takes about 24ms from key depression to the next desktop becoming visible. The only experimental difference is that I had to switch to the "slow mo" camera to record the difference, and I have a 240hz monitor. The desktop is also considered one of the slower ones (GNOME).

    TLDR: It takes 1.08 seconds, on my Macbook, to complete a desktop transition.

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    • Aloisius 3 hours ago

      I'm also on a M1 Macbook Pro, running Tahoe 26.2.

      Not sure why yours is so much slower than mine. Mine is definitely 250 ms long or 15 frames from the time I hit the shortcut.

      I used the onscreen keyboard viewer to get visual feedback when the shortcut was pressed and recorded audio so I could hear it being pressed. I even recorded it a second time using OBS to ensure I was at 60 fps and trimmed the whole segment down to just the animation and sure enough, the video is exactly 250 ms long according to IINA.

      Also, I don't have any visible delay between pressing the key and the animation starting. The animation starts on the same frame as when the shortcut is recognized by the onscreen keyboard viewer (which is the same time as I hear it being pressed) in the recording. The keyboard delay must be < 16.6 ms.

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      • lynndotpy 2 hours ago

        You might not be aware of this, but you are in possession of a secret treasure that many MacOS users desperately want!

        There is some input display on Macbook Pros, but that'd account for easily <100ms of the difference we're seeing (I'm holding `control` and measuring from depression of the arrow key).

        I tried changing screen resolution, quitting apps like Rectangle, etc. No dice.

        In digging more deeply than I had before, I did find some things which were rumored to speed it up. Disabling multi-color preview, and disabling "displays have separate spaces". (I am using only one display). This shaves off some time (taking about 950ms)! (!!!)

        There is also a four-finger gesture which, if done fast enough, appears to speed things up. But it's difficult to reproduce and often "overshoots" to other spaces.

        I have a few questions, if you'd oblige:

        - Are you also using ProMotion (120hz)? (The biggest thing I can find to speed this up is switching to 60hz, but this does not quite get to 250ms).

        - Are you also switching using ctrl+arrowkey(left/right)? (Ctrl+number is notably faster, but not what I'm looking for.)

        - Were you using MacOS before this M1 Pro? (This is my first MacOS machine, I'm wondering if there might be some hidden configuration carried over from a previous install with faster transitions).

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    • dagi3d 3 hours ago

      Agree. I hate the fullscreen animation so I prefer apps that have a non-native and no animation option such as Ghosty.

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spacedcowboy 6 hours ago

I guess I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. I don’t often switch desktops - I tend to keep a project on a desktop, and there’s enough real-estate for everything I need for that project right there - and I don’t work on more than one project at a time.

Window switching is instantaneous though, and I do that a lot

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  • lynndotpy 6 hours ago

    As you said, it's the set up. I'm almost exclusively using a single monitor, which works well when there's zero cost to switching desktops.

    For your use case, imagine if the Window switcher, instead of being instantaneous, was a ~1200ms animation which blocked all key presses during the animation.

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