Many Tricks
Today we’re thrilled to announce the release of Witch 3.0. This version offers many improvements over Witch 2; you can read the full release notes to get a sense for all the changes. Some of the most interesting new features, though, are these:
- Witch 3.0 now allows you to use Command-Tab and Shift-Command-Tab (or Command-`) for activation. This means you can use Witch to completely replace the OS X Command-Tab application switcher.
- Like the Command-Tab switcher, Witch now reacts to the window management keys (H for hide, Q for quit, etc.) instantly, instead of when Witch closes. (If you prefer the old behavior, you can set it in the preferences.)
- You can now save and load appearance settings, so you can save your favorites for easy switching, or trade appearances with others. We’ll have a bit more to say about this feature in the near future.
- A width slider allows you to control the width of the Witch window (say that five times fast!). In other words, web pages with horrendously long title strings will no longer result in a Witch window that’s as wide as your monitor—unless you want it to, of course.
There are lots of other changes, too, including full 64-bit support (no more System Preferences panel restart) and Sparkle integration, for easy in-app updates.
One thing not in Witch 3.0 is support for switching to windows in other Spaces; this is the number one item on our to do list, and assuming we can get it working in an acceptable manner, we’ll release Spaces support as a free Witch upgrade in the future.
Witch 3.0 costs $19, or $8 if you own a Witch 2.x license. For those who purchased Witch after March 17th of this year, you’ll be receiving a free upgrade to Witch 3.0; your license will be arriving in your inbox in the very near future. Update: You should now have received your license; if you did not, please let me know!
As always, you can report bugs, request features, and ask for help with Witch 3 on our support site.
So far so good, thanks for the update. Width slider and command-tab replacement are welcome upgrades. Next on my list for top upgrades would be the ability to set a delay for the Witch window to appear. It’d be great if for quick window switches (e.g. key press <0.3s) the window did not appear so I didn't get the window flicker. I know I should be happy with what I have, but I'm American, what can I say?
Very nice, thank you. License also already in my Inbox, that was VERY near future indeed.
One idea for a (not total) workaround until you’ve worked out that Spaces problem:
If you could include at least ALL running applications in Witch’s window, i.e. also those in other Spaces, while—for the time being—ignoring their open windows, I could much easier totally forget about the Mac OS X App Switcher while now I still have to use it as soon as I have apps in multiple Spaces. Should be easier and faster to implement, methinks, so the wait for a cure to the problem would be mitigated. Whaddyathink?
Greetings, Tom
p.s.: I think I like Nathan’s idea.
Good news.
Are there any trick to getting the Command-Tab switcher working? If I set this to cycle windows it doesn’t seem to ‘stick’ so it’s back to ⎇-Tab for now.
Basically, no, there are no tricks; it should just work and does so here on 10.5 and 10.6. Please post any followups over on our support site; I’m trying to keep the tech support chats out of the blog comments :). Post there and I’ll get a ticket that we can use for follow-up discussion to figure out what’s going on.
-rob.
Another vote for Nathan’s idea. There are two use cases for command-tab switching. First one is the obvious: I don’t want to use the mouse, go to the Dock and select the next application I have to work on (which is already open), so everything that saves time to select the appropriate window is welcome. The thing is that this use case is probably only 15% of my command-tab activity. The vast majority goes to use case two: Using the switcher as a LRU list (least recently used), and quick switching between two windows (think copy-pasting things from the browser to the terminal etc.). I don’t even have to see a visual indicator of the application I’m switching to, since I have been there 10 seconds ago.
Ok, and since we’re discussing new ideas, just wanted to drop that I would love to see a search across window titles implemented. This would feel a bit like Qucksilver/Spotlight, but would only search over window titles.
Another idea which would make Witch even more powerful is that it would be nice to not only be able to select windows, but also tabs within windows (in combination with the search, this would be an absolute dream). Often nowadays, applications try to not clutter the screen too much and do it by opening new content in tabs (big exception: Finder). But as I am a software developer myself, I can see quite a lot of difficulties with this one, as I think tabs aren’t standardized by Cocoa, and there would be a lot of application specific coding involved to make it work. Well, just wanted to drop the idea, maybe something comes from it.
Thanks anyway for Witch and keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Daniel
We have the “delay before activation” on the list now. Search is an interesting idea, but would require some pretty fundamental UI changes (a search box in a borderless floating box would look odd, i think). Tabs is on the list of things to look into, and yes, you’ve nailed the main issue with it: Apple doesn’t provide a standardized way of accessing and knowing about tabs. But we’re going to see what may be possible.
-rob.
Fantastic! I actually owe a lot of my day to day productivity and staying in the “flow” to small utilities like Witch & app launchers because they make interaction _between_ apps more fluid. So thank you very much for trying to improve on this small but very important aspect in power user-computer interaction.
For the search: I think that it actually wouldn’t require that many UI changes. Just highlight the matched string, and reduce the list to only matches. If I mistype, then the list is empty. Alternatively have the search text hover over the Witch popup (or maybe shown in lower left corner). When entering search mode, the search string is timed out like in Quicksilver, where you can type a string continuously unless you pause in your typing longer than some timeout (1s or so). Works great for me.
BTW IMHO 3.0 feels a lot snappier. Might be my upgrade to 1.6, but anyway, performs great!
Witch doesn’t show windows from others Spaces.
useless.
1) please add support for windows from other Spaces (checkbox, whatever).
2) i think price for Witch is too hight. $9 is good price for this tool.
thanks.
1) We will do so only if we can do so in a manner that doesn’t affect Witch’s usability. We know people want this feature, and it’s the first item on our hit list.
2) We believe the product is fairly priced for the value it delivers and the amount of work required to create and support the product. You obviously disagree, so you’re probably best served by finding an alternative solution that’s more in line with what you’re willing to pay.
-rob.
1) thanks!
2) I know. both programmer. this is recommendation for popularize this application (only).
:)
Popular is good … but if the price at which it’s popular doesn’t allow us to pay for the people required to help support all those customers who made it possible, that’s bad. It’s a delicate balance, but one of our tenants is that we are going to be known for our customer support, and we don’t want to outgrow our ability to provide excellent support.
-rob.
I think I commented on this before, but the much more active development presence is much appreciated.
One more thought on potential features, I think that for Witch command-tab replacement to be fully successful, there should be some mechanism to cycle between just applications. I actually find utility in both window and application switching. Having Witch handle both would be a nice feature, though I know nothing prevents me from just using both the native switcher and Witch (as I do now).
BTW I use BetterTouchTool, a wonderful little tool for enhancing the Magic Mouse, which, similar to Butler, has quite a learning curve and I often find new ways to utilize this.
In the “General” tab of its preferences the current version of BTT tells me:
“These apps may conflict with BetterTouchTool (most likely they will not, but if you have problems try deactivating them): witchdaemon”
I guess you wouldn’t want anybody to deactivate witchdaemon … Perhaps a reason to contact?
Greetings, Tom
Just downloaded Witch 3.0, but there is no way to REMOVE keyboard shortcuts that we had previously set in Witch 2.0. So we are stuck with all these keyboard shortcuts that we don’t want.
I’m not sure I understand this comment — you can remove any trigger by pressing the “X” next to the box in which you see the shortcut. I see you filed a bug report; I’ll work through the details there if that doesn’t work for you.
-rob.