[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a tool to solve window management
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I built a tool to solve window management
Hello, my name is Andrew. I'm an indie developer and I'm excited to
release Smart Switcher for Windows 10/11. I'm looking for feedback
on the overall project and the application itself. I built this
because I couldn't find a window switching/management solution that
worked for me. I tried all kinds of different solutions, virtual
desktop extensions, obscure GUI window managers, you name it.
Overtime I realized I wanted something that prioritizes one window
at a time, is keyboard driven with has minimal if no GUI elements.
I figured this part out, but knew something was missing. I had my
eureka moment when I realized I could combine my switching method
with a prediction algorithm. This led to the creation of Smart
Switcher. Smart Switcher is a data driven window switcher aimed at
improving the overall window switching experience. It logs data on
your windows switching, then a prediction algorithm analyzes this
data and uses it to predict which window you would want to switch
to next. When you need to switch windows, you press the switch
shortcut to switch to the next predicted window. If this isn't the
window you wanted, press the override shortcut to switch to the
next most likely window. You can press the override shortcut as
many times as needed until you arrive at your desired window. It's
a paid app with a demo and trial version. There is a introductory
discount and some additional discount tiers for early adopters.
Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!
Author : atommachinist
Score : 42 points
Date : 2025-07-08 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aboveaverageuser.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aboveaverageuser.com)
| jmercouris wrote:
| Cool idea, what model does it use to predict my next window?
| thyristan wrote:
| LRU i guess.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Would be interesting to know if it's using a Markov chain,
| frequency analysis, or some more complex ML approach for the
| prediction.
| atommachinist wrote:
| The algorithm started off by using one of those more simple
| methods and has evolved a lot since then. I'm exploring a few
| different directions now. It's difficult to say what will be
| the best direction to take it in until I have some more data
| to see what's working. I want to make something that works
| well for a lot of different types of workflows.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I know what window I want to switch to, I don't need
| "intelligence" to predict it.
|
| One way to implement this is to use window manager with one
| workspace per window (or multiple related windows) and use a
| single hotkey to switch to it. Very muscle memory efficient and
| takes no confirmation delay.
| quchen wrote:
| That's pretty much what I do! 3x3 virtual desktops,
| Win+(qwe,asd,yxc) switches to one just like the keys are laid
| out on my (qwertz) keyboard.
|
| Top middle is browser. Bottom left is everything chat and
| communication. Center left is the editor. Whatever is out of
| place is mercilessly closed or moved if I'm feeling generous.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| The problem i have with this kind of thing is that i very
| often want to reference something in browser while using my
| editor or similar so have ing them on different desktops is
| really inefficient.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Indeed. When I read this, I thought: "Doesn't he know about
| virtual workspaces?"
|
| I also use a tiling WM (awesomeWM). I tend to keep one window
| per workspace, and then merely select multiple workspaces if I
| need to see multiple windows in tandem.
|
| For my work Windows laptop, I've installed a virtual workspace
| manager.
| atommachinist wrote:
| That's a decent approach to window management as well. I still
| use virtual desktops for windows that I want to have open but
| don't need to switch to often. The reason I build Smart
| Switcher is I wanted something that works well for managing a
| single virtual desktop and only uses two keys for the
| shortcuts. By default it overrides Alt + Tab.
| deviation wrote:
| Neat idea. I'm sure this will solve some friction for the
| neuroscientists/mathematicians out there with ~20+ windows open.
|
| Personally (as someone with ADHD), this would just relentlessly
| grind my gears. My thoughts are unpredictable by nature and so I
| value the "reliability" of knowing my chrome is two alt+tabs
| away, etc.
|
| If an algorithm started messing with this and changing throughout
| the day... Damn, I'd go crazy.
| atommachinist wrote:
| Thanks! The long term goal of Smart Switcher is that the
| algorithm becomes reliable enough that window switching almost
| always requires only one Alt + Tab press. It's an ambitious
| goal that will require a lot of work, but that is the goal.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I similarly would have issue with the non-deterministic
| behaviour. I use space hammer and bind many apps directly to a
| dedicated chord each, so I know that (hyper)-b is browser, t
| for terminal, s for Spotify (or songs) etc.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| deviation's ADHD has not read The Bitter Lesson
|
| https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...
| craftkiller wrote:
| > I wanted something that prioritizes one window at a time, is
| keyboard driven with has minimal if no GUI elements.
|
| Sounds like tiling window managers like sway or i3. Those don't
| have any sort of predictive switching but otherwise:
| - My window management is done via keybindings - The status
| bar is completely optional (personally I use it but there is no
| *need* to use it) - I set `hide_edge_borders smart_no_gaps`
| so if I only have 1 window open in a workspace, it doesn't have
| any border at all. No titlebar, no close/minimize/maximize
| buttons, just the window content.
| atommachinist wrote:
| Tiling window managers are great and I admit they gave me some
| inspiration for this project. I just don't find myself needing
| to have windows be split screen very often, at least not more
| then two. The one exception to this is terminals which I
| usually keep in a separate virtual desktop but besides that I
| would rather have the window I'm using be full screen.
| IceDane wrote:
| I think 90% of peoples issues with window management can be
| solved by using workspaces intelligently. I won't prescribe a
| specific method, but I personally keep certain things on
| certain workspaces. Browser on 1, dev on 2 and 3, chat on 4,
| music on 5, misc on others. I rarely need to use more than 5.
| And then I have bindings to go straight to these
| workspaces(mod-number keys).
|
| My personal hot take is also that most people who think they
| really need another monitor are just addressing these
| symptoms because they're exhausted by alt-tabbing through 15
| windows. They would be more productive on a single screen
| with a nice workspace configuration, though there are of
| course plenty of good reasons to want multiple monitors.
| antonvs wrote:
| Tiling window managers typically allow you to configure that.
| For example with XMonad (what I use, on Linux), you can set
| it so that all new windows are full screen by default, it's
| just a line of config like `layoutHook = fullscreenFull
| Full`.
|
| You can also set any number of standard layouts that you
| like, and toggle through them with Mod-Space. So full screen
| could be the primary one, two-pane split screen the secondary
| one, all windows visible be the 3rd one, etc.
|
| And as others have mentioned, using this in conjunction with
| virtual desktops is quite powerful. E.g. moving windows
| between desktops is just a key combo and is very quick, so
| it's easy to switch between full screen and side-by-side of
| any two tiles just by moving one to the same desktop as the
| other.
| jerryjappinen wrote:
| Without having tried this, I'd say the problem with a predictive
| algorithm is that it is (ironically) impossible for the user to
| predict what will happen.
|
| So after switching, they will need a short moment to reorient:
| understand where they were taken, check if it matches where they
| wanted to go, and then either switch again or stop the switching
| process to resume work. In UX design, it's better if you can
| complete a longer process without having to halt and reorient
| many times in the process (like opening a menu that was hidden
| and wait for a loading animation to complete, until you can
| actually read the menu items are).
|
| If it's impossible to keep a mental model of where you are in the
| system, and how you can move to another specific window, then
| actually EVERY window switch requires much more effort and
| conscious thought.
|
| I think windowing systems, virtual desktops, spotlights, stage
| managers, exposes, mission controls, are all too complicated... I
| don't know what the solution is, and I think it's great that
| people are working on novel solutions. But I do know I want to
| easily switch between 2-4 windows without the order randomly
| changing.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| I have a very similar frustration with the complexity here, and
| found that scrolling tiled window managers (like PaperWM, Niri,
| etc.) might actually be the answer. All your windows are in a
| line, press the shortcut until you hit focus the one you want.
| Reorder with a shortcut or with a mouse.
|
| The main problem with them is system support, they are buggy
| when tacked on top of a desktop OS (PaperWM), or require a
| pretty finicky custom setup (Niri).
| medwards666 wrote:
| This! I actually kinda miss the Win7 enhanced switcher (I
| actually kinda miss the whole Win7 Aero desktop, but I digress)
| ... Win-Tab bringing up a scrollable stack of the actual
| windows you have open and being able to either directly select
| the one you want or just keep Win-Tabbing through them. The
| Win10 tiled view is similar, but lacks the charm somehow...
| atommachinist wrote:
| I completely agree, a lot of the existing solutions are too
| complicated. I just want to be clear that once you use the
| override shortcut, the algorithm won't have any effect on the
| your switch order. When you are ready to switch windows, if you
| use the switch shortcut to switch from window A and it takes
| you to window B (because this is that the algorithm predicted)
| but this isn't what you wanted, you would press the override
| shortcut to go to C instead. Now because you have an override
| in effect for A, every time you switch from A it will take you
| to C, unless you use the override shortcut again.
| observationist wrote:
| Sometimes I want to switch between multiple windows quickly, or
| even toggle between them. Having two keys - alt+tab - allows me
| to enter the "window switching" state by pressing alt, while tab
| increments the selection, and shift+tab decrements (all while
| holding alt down). I leave switching state when I release alt.
|
| Alt+tab is an optimal controller.
|
| Maybe operating on the order of items in the queue, and use your
| prediction to sort windows, allowing faster selection? Even that
| disrupts sense of place - I know what applications I have open
| and where they are, and if I'm using alt+tab over 5 or more, I
| know the order in which I've opened them, and "where" I need to
| go to navigate to them.
|
| There are second and third order impacts to changing interface
| behaviors, so the superficial benefit you might gain will be lost
| by creating friction at different levels.
|
| A single key is insufficient for granular control, and no AI
| widget short of human level AI is going to capture the edge
| cases, which will create friction, at which point I will
| aggressively remove the offending piece of software.
|
| I'd go back to the drawing board and work on a more complex model
| of window switching and all the ways in which people use alt+tab,
| and see if there's a use case for your idea at a different level.
| As it is, for me, it would interfere with a reliable and
| predictable interface, and I would be very unhappy.
| craftkiller wrote:
| > Alt+tab is an optimal controller.
|
| Having to iterate through your windows is not optimal. I use
| sway, with windows divided across workspaces. So if I want to
| switch to my web browser I hit super+1. If I want to switch to
| my code editor I hit super+2. If I want to switch to my
| terminal(s) I hit super+3. I use 4 through 0 for other random
| windows (for example, I usually launch games or videos on 0. If
| I'm working in two code bases I generally put the editor and
| terminal for the 2nd code base on 4 and 5).
|
| What takes you O(n) takes me only O(1).
| voidUpdate wrote:
| press alt, tap tab, click the window you want
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If you're going to go all the way to the mouse, you could
| just... click the window you want.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Standard out-of-the-box Windows behavior: quick Alt-Tab press
| switches between last two windows; pinned apps on taskbar are
| switched with Win-1..9 shortcuts.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I don't understand why people like to navigate their windows
| temporally.
|
| Super+h/j/k/l (left, down, up, right) to move focus spatially
| feels much more natural, given that you can know at a glance
| which window is to the left of yours but they typically give no
| indication about whether a window is the 6th most recently
| touched or the 7th...
| justinrubek wrote:
| I do this with tiling and Super+f for maximizing the focused
| window. It feels wrong when I work in other environments
| without this.
| mook wrote:
| It would be good to mention in the blurb here early on that it's
| for Windows. I kept trying to figure it out from the text here
| and failing...
| dang wrote:
| We've added a mention of that to the text above. Thanks!
| alanpearce wrote:
| Funny, this sounds like a good idea, but I'm quite happy with the
| exact opposite: I use rcmd[1]. I hold down the right command key
| and press the first letter of the window name to switch to it. I
| can override this dynamic mapping by pressing right command +
| option + <other key>, so I have an IM client on I, for example.
| It means I never have to remember/guess how command+tab works
| (although I had fewer issues with alt+tab on Windows)
|
| [1]: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Cool, but how does it work if you have multiple windows in one
| app?
|
| I used hammerspoon for something similar, but it worked on the
| window title. So, I could add custom titles to my
| chrome/iterm/code windows, and switch by pressing a shortcut
| and then typing 1-4 letters to match the title. It was my
| favorite window management UI for my work laptop with an absurd
| amount of tabs open.
| dcuthbertson wrote:
| I can't imagine wanting this. When I press ALT-Tab or SHIFT-ALT-
| Tab I can see most of the Windows I have open, and can get to the
| one I want quickly. The last thing I want is some algorithm
| showing me a next/previous window that may have nothing to do
| with where I'm headed. How would I be able to predict where it
| would send me so I can reliably know how many key presses I need
| to make to get there?
| layer8 wrote:
| At least for the last three or four windows, I would want strict
| LRU behavior, because that's automatic muscle memory. I could see
| a "smart" heuristic be potentially useful for less recently used
| windows, although I have a hard time imagining how that could be
| significantly predicted from prior use.
| Xss3 wrote:
| This.
|
| I wonder, OP, what is it that you dont like about how it just
| uses your most recent windows in order of last opened?
| atommachinist wrote:
| This actually works fine a lot of the time. There are just
| cases where that isn't the window I want to switch to. I
| wanted to find a solution that would cover more of these
| cases. One example is when my computer starts I have a some
| applications that automatically run. I don't want to tab
| through the Alt + Tab list to get it in the right order, I
| want it to be ready to go.
| apozem wrote:
| An interesting idea, but not something that would fit my workflow
| for several reasons (not the least of which is it's Windows-
| only).
|
| Cmd-Tab on Mac and Alt-Tab on Windows does the same thing every
| time. Its consistency lets me use it extremely quickly, with
| confidence. It does what I want it to, every time. I don't wish
| to sound dramatic, but if I hit a shortcut with a window in mind,
| and this app picked the wrong window even once, I would uninstall
| it immediately. "Cmd-Tab, but it doesn't work sometimes" sounds
| frustrating and strictly worse than the system shortcut.
|
| Maybe it should look more like GitHub Copilot. It watches what
| you're doing and shows a small indicator somewhere of the window
| it thinks you want to switch to. If the app guessed right, you
| hit a keyboard shortcut and switch to it. If the app guessed
| wrong, you just ignore the suggestion, like with Copilot.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| Reminds me of how some FPS games have a "quick weapon switch"
| button to toggle to a specific weapon separate from the full
| menu of all weapons.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Uh.. it does not? Alt+Tab on windows switches all the windows,
| indiscriminately. Cmd+Tab on osx only switches between apps? If
| you have two Firefox windows on osx, you need Cmd+~ to switch
| between them, when you have finally reached the Firefox app
| through Cmd+Tabbing
| apozem wrote:
| I am aware that Microsoft and Apple have implemented fast
| window-switching slightly differently. I use both OSes daily.
| The point I was making was both make similar high-level
| design decisions.
|
| When you begin alt-tabbing, you cycle between your other open
| windows, arranged by how recently they were last open. Cmd-
| Tab is the same, but between apps. Both features rearrange
| items only based on recency, and always keep the same order.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I like the idea of focusing on one window at a time with keyboard
| shortcuts for getting around quickly.
|
| I feel like the only predictable workflows are when I'm cycling
| through N windows repeatedly. Tabbing works great for N=2 already
| due to reorganizing the list so the first element is always the
| previous window. But N=3 or 4 and maybe 5 are also common for me
| and kind of annoying with tabbing. Of course I don't know how
| predictable those are either, they're annoying to tab because the
| patterns are almost regular but also have frequent exceptions.
|
| I am sorta talking myself into wanting normal tabbing alongside a
| browser style forward/back (which would NOT reorder the alt/cmd
| tab list). That way once I have my N windows as most recent, it's
| all back/forward navigation and the path to each window is
| something I would remember for the session.
| atommachinist wrote:
| For me, Alt + Tab was always almost good enough. I find the
| shortcut itself to be a good experience but as you said, it's
| annoying tabbing through the window list. The idea with Smart
| Switcher is that you wouldn't need to override too often so it
| ends up being less keystrokes then tabbing through the window
| list.
| nartho wrote:
| I switched to a tiling manager (I use Hyprland). There are no
| floating windows, I have multiple spaces I can easily switch to
| and if I need to temporarily switch a window to full screen
| it's really easy. Because of that I don't spend any time at all
| looking for the window I want.
| revskill wrote:
| It's funny that Windows is too stupid for window switching, let's
| also forget about screen switching, a total nightmare.
| jpc0 wrote:
| Virtual Desktops + alt tab has always done it for me.
|
| I would love to see your workflow in action for a real use case,
| unless your real use case is switching between calculator and
| paint...
| tempodox wrote:
| Microsoft traditionally already knows better than their users.
| Another crystal ball that pretends to read my thoughts is the
| last thing I want.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| On MacOS, I just have a single key associated with my top apps.
|
| cmd + shift + {key} takes me right there
|
| J = Chrome K = Terminal H = 1Password ... etc
|
| Hammerspoon setup:
| https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/aab6c4631c4c6b09...
|
| Global maps:
| https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/aab6c4631c4c6b09...
|
| (local maps are not version controlled for obvious reasons)
| atommachinist wrote:
| Appreciate all the feedback so far!
|
| For those who do try the demo or trial version, or purchase the
| full version, if you want to take a more active role in providing
| feedback, you can email me at hello@aboveaverageuser.com.
| prennert wrote:
| I need this combined with eye tracking so that I can switch the
| focus to what I am looking at. If it was a macOS app, I would
| definitely pay for it. Especially if it was a one-off fee of $50
| or something like that.
| hiatus wrote:
| Can you expand on what you're thinking here? It sounds like a
| window switcher that followed my eyes would be pretty
| disorienting.
| mtillman wrote:
| Irix made panes active on mouse over. Which was at times very
| helpful and other times widely distracting.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-08 23:01 UTC)