Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
True, @SevenSystems
Some more feedback:
The most annoying thing for me is the fact that i cannot click on an App in the Dock to open it, have a look at it, and then click the same Icon again to send it to background again.
That's hindering me all of the day, thousands of times.
Just check the Mail App and return to the former App? Nope!
Just check the terminal session for the log that is running and return to the former App? Nope!
Just check the Website with the live ticker and then return to the former App? Nope!
And so on ...
And you cannot do this at all - only by clicking all relevant other Apps to the foreground again - because using the "minimize" button on a window does not just send it to background, it kind of "disables" this window of an App, so that is does NOT came back next time. Soooooo strange!!!
EDIT: Yes I know that there is the "Hide" button in the right-click menu ... but why not simply do this with the second click on the Icon?!?
Also, that always ALL windows pop to the front is horrific - but I understand that this is not possible as long as not every window get's it's own icon to be clicked.
Just some rambling ... :-D
Holding down option/alt and clicking on another window or the desktop hides all the other windows...
...way quicker than hunting down the right icon in the dock
Trackpad, Spaces, fullscreen apps, Three finger swipe gestures ... very fast, very easy. Also allows for keeping the the doc hidden and out of the way without having any impact on the workflow. Spaces also lets me keep multiple machines organized easily.
I tried that, even as this is not shown as possible option in the right-click menu (where shortcuts should be listed and explained), but it does not really what I would like to use.
I may try to use this and see if it helps in some way, thanks!
My wish is exactly the "Hide" option there, but it would be easier to do the same with the second click on a window instead of using the right-click menu.
Hide = Command + H
I really would not like to use a trackpad ;-)
Mouse and keyboard, both cabled, are my world!
Esp. as the same two devices will be used by my PC, my Laptop and my iPads ... all over a USB Hub.
Perfect.
My Dock is always hidden - only when I go down with the mouse, it appears.
Spaces are ... not that useful for me.
I use Apps, Terminals, Editors, Safari all together and copy links and move content.
Spaces are somewhat more separated, but I rarely have a situation where they could be helpful.
I even had some problems with them, but I can't remember the details right now.
And Fullscreen Apps are horrific to me too, out of several reasons (partly explained above in this thread) ;-)
I prefer using "Rectangle" and making window full sized or using exactly half of the screen instead.
Ah, that's great!
Why not show this shortcut in the right-click menu?
From where shall people guess this?
And then also remember this for all times!
Apple again ...
But while Command-H may be better than the right-click menu, it still would be better to bring an App to the foreground with the first click and bring it to the background with the second click ...
Wait, most other operating systems / window managers offer this!
So, we (Apple) cannot do it this way!
Thanks a big bunch for your help, @Samu and please forgive my ramblings about Apple ;-)
On the Mac, the contextual menus came second. Command-H has been around forever and like almost everything else on the Mac is exposed in the main menu for the application. Contextual menus aren't a primary focus of the UI and UX of the Mac.
I use multiple applications in groups inside Spaces as well as full screen apps. At the moment, I have 5 spaces open and three fullscreen apps (Mail, Blender, Xcode). The spaces are organized into groups, like the one I have with a couple of iTerm panels and a GitHub browser session going to explore some MIDI libraries I'm looking at. Bouncing around through that and the builds and documentation and Xcode to work across two spaces is really trivial with Spaces and the three finger swipe gestures. The gestures you can do with the trackpad inside of the Mac UI are really worth getting to know. You can certainly get around on the Mac without one, but a trackpad is a core feature of the usability of the Mac.
It's shown in the 'app menu' for each application.
None of the 'dock menus or dock app menus' have any shortcuts shown, not even for 'empty trash' since the 'dock.app' is not the 'finder.app' and trash is deleted by the finder.app (it makes no sense for one app to show shortcuts for another app).
True.
I never noticed that, to be honest.
I only checked and tried all right-click options for the Icons in the Dock.
Command-H will make my life a bit easier now
Since "Monterey", the Mini can not only not suspend / hibernate to disk (which always was the case), but it also cannot disable "power nap" anymore. And yes, "pmset -g" shows it to be disabled.
I cannot tell you who much I hate this.
I did start the following line before sending the Mac to "regular" sleep with "pmset sleepnow":
And at the next day, I see this:
It did wake up 5 times in the night!!!
I haven't paid any attention since moving to Monterey, but mine wakes up for various things -- network activity, syncing with other devices, I think my NAS wakes it up when it wakes up for maintenance, etc. My iMac wakes up sometimes when I walk in the house and my iPhone wants to talk to it.
All sorts of things could be waking it depending on what's installed configured on the Mini or even other things on your network. I don't think sleeping Macs or iDevices is much of a priority for Apple anymore with all of the syncing and communication that apps and the OS's do now. It's more about how efficient they can be when waking to do these tasks.
Yes.
That's the problem.
I have no services running at all and no communication between devices of any sort - no daemon, no file sharing, no remote access, ... the Mac just want's to know if something is up ...
Ideally, I want my Mac to enter standby mode, by suspending to disk ... for as long as I want and need.
And only wake up again, when I press the button.
This is possible with Apple laptops, as far as I know.
And those things are documented in the man page of "pmset" ... they just don't work for my Mini
I just cannot believe how stupid macOS windows / desktop / spaces management is.
I'm totaly speechless.
Without any concept for handling single windows seperately, it seems to be doomed anyways.
I tried to separate Finder windows, Terminal windows, Safari windows, Thunderbird windows and Application windows to seperate desktops / spaces.
As I often need Safari and Terminal windows in parallel to the other windows, I changed them to be on all desktops / spaces.
So far, so good.
But ...
I cannot push the terminal or Safari windows into the background, without them in background in ANY desktop / space!
Which means, that they are in the background in any and all desktop / space or in foreground in any desktop / space
And as soon as I put them to foreground in any other desktop / space, they are in foregound of all other desktops / spaces.
This totally disables any usage of those windows.
The only solution - as long as there is no handling of separate windows - is, to at least have the foreground / background state of windows to be separe on all desktops / spaces! This is so easy to understand.
For me, the implemented behavior is just plain stupid.
I cannot be the only one with such problems ...
People want to use applications together, easily.
macOS just does not allow this.
But to change this, macOS needs a concept of handling single windows seperately, as done in Windows or Linux.
What irrititates me even more is, that macOS is praised as "UI king" for easily handling of such stuff and it clearly is NOT!
Just in case my text was to theoretic again, how would you handle the need for having one of your Safari windows and one or your Terminal windows together on one desktop / space?
For example to copy number from a website to have some calculations in the terminal?
You have just one monitor, to have things simple and two Safari windows on Desktop 1 and two Terminal windows on Desktop 2.
As soon as you bring forward Safari, you get both Safari windows and any Terminal window will be invisible.
So you need to bring one of the windows to background ...
But then, this window will be in background (invisible and unaccessible) on any desktop / space!
If you switch to it's desktop / space, only one of the windows will be visible/
Bringing it to foreground there, also brings it to foreground on all other desktops / spaces!
Which kills any sensible use of the windows.
It's so stupid.
I cannot rule out, that there is a solution for this, but it is not apparent!
Fullscreen Split-View?
Hmm.
I stopped using "Full Screen" in macOS, as it was mostly horrible.
But as you recommend this, I will try again ... thanks
Not sure if it can achive the same flexibility as is possible on Windows and Linux.
I will report back!
The way I use it is simply if/when I have multiple windows on the screen (regardless of which apps) I take one window, long-tap on the green zoom button and shove the window to either left or right side and then pick one of the other windows that happens to be on the screen at the same time.
Yes.
It seems that this helps in what I want to achive, many thanks!
I tried around a bit and even as it is not as easy as when the windows of each App could be handled separately, it definitly helps ...
It introduced some additional work, as when leaving this full-screen split-view for any App, it renders the remaining App as full-screen, so you need to fix this too, when when returning to some "regular" view.
But it seems, I can handle some of my problems with this, thanks again!
I tried around with this, @Samu
The split-screen full-screen can help in some situations!
But it would still be much better and more easy, of the foreground or background flag for any window would be separate on any desktop / space!
And this can only be fixed by Apple, who have no interest and understanding for this.
And in general, it would be the best to offer a way to handle each and any window separate for itself.
But, your advice helps to live with the situation, thanks!
I must not understand the problem, but I have no issues running different combinations of apps. My standard layout starts with:
Space 1
Space 2
Space 3
Space 4
This is more of a general guideline than a fixed ruleset, as I don't yet have rules forcing apps or windows to a given space, but Space 1 ALWAYS has a terminal, occasionally two, and almost always a browser for documentation and quick access. The browsers on Space 2 are the primary "surfing" windows, though.
I frequently use the Mission Control view to move windows between spaces or displays, because I've been too lazy to yet integrate using hotkeys for that.
I don't use the Mac built-in split-screen view anymore as I find Yabai's BSP algorithm to be much more useful and flexible.
I don't understand how this could fix the general problem.
@Samu is right in that full-screen split-screen can help, even if introducing additional work.
Any final solution would require handling of any windows totally separately, as in Windows or Linux.
What I'm saying is different window instances of the same app are decoupled for me. I have no idea what your problem is. For example I have four instances of Edge open and they're isolated across spaces, screen spaced shared with other apps with no issues. It sounds like you're describing "sticky" windows, where the same window can be seen on multiple spaces, but that requires a helper app for most things other than picture-in-picture pop-outs.
Honestly most of the time I just use Command+Tab and switch the the app I need to use and seldom use full-screen but I do put windows side by side or above on-top of each other when needed.
In some cases I use F3 (System Preferences -> Mission Control) with a few shortcuts Control+Up to show all app windows, Control+Down to show all windows in the active app) and pick the app I need.
I also extensively use spotlight to launch apps among other things...
...before spotlight I was an avid user of LauncBar (It's free to use if you accept small 'breaks').
https://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html
Personally I seldom bump into annoyances and I'm not particularly fond of the way Windows or most Linux Window managers works, but that's just me... (I've been using Mac's since -94).
I have no idea how Command-Tab could solve the problem of getting Apps side-by-side for a temporary need.
I have a simple need:
Having two Safari-Windows open, side by side, I often want to replace of those windows by one of my Terminal windows.
Or any other App ...
This can be done with full-screen split-screen.
But simply clicking in the Termin App will replace both windows.
I have no idea, how to do this in any other way .... using the "background" button of a window, also puts it into background in any and all other desktops / spaces.
TBH, I have no idea what you are talking about
Please see my reply to wim.
Yeah, we're definitely talking past each other. The only thing I can think is that this is behavior from something else you have installed, although I don't think it's Magnet. Mac doesn't have a background button. There's a minimize, but that solely minimizes the targetted window, not all instances of the given application. The only other OS-managed buttons are the Close and Fullscreen buttons.
Option-Clicking on the minimize button will minimize all instances of the app.
I meant the "minimize" button, when writing "background" ... sorry.
It renders the windows kind of inactive for all desktops / space, which was the reason I used the term "background".
And I don't want to minimize anything.
I just want two windows of different applications (that each have multiple windows) to show side-by-side.
That is a problem and can be achived by full-screen split-view ... with a bit more work.
The only other way I found, is to "minimize" one of the windows and then do the same with a window from the other application - but this is a very bad solution, as it puts these window to background on all desktops / spaces!
Such a window will not pop up again anywhere, if not explicitely opened again ... not when clicking on the App in the Dock, or even when using "show all windows" for the App. It is pushed to background.
Using the minimize button only minimizes that window, unless you are Option-Clicking on the minimized button. If you want to restore a window to a different space than the one it was minimized on, Cmd-Click on the window's icon in the Dock. Note that the "restore to this space" feature only works if you don't have the Minimize Windows to App Icon option enabled in System Preferences.
I still think you're fighting Magnet or something because running multiple instances each of multiple apps is not painful, and it's easy to combine them in whatever layout you want.