For me it was a major revelation when it was pointed out that, for someone who doesn't want his desktop changed, I did install all sorts of crazy things when I was starting with Linux (Compiz plugins, anyone?). And while Gnome 3 pushed me into Mate, it wasn't because it was different but rather because it was bad. So I'm excited about someone trying something new, particularly someone who realizes that the Desktop is not a tablet.
Here's an idea that I believe I read in HN as "the original purpose of the desktop": add a Desktop Manager that manages which icons are on your desktop and makes it easy to switch.
The desktop is kind of weird, in the sense that it's prime real estate but, at the same time, there's an expectation that you shouldn't put too much stuff there, and then it ends up cluttered anyway. I think it's worth trying a stronger separation between "Desktop" and any other regular folder, emphasizing that the Desktop is where you place links to the files you need right now, but with a mechanism to clear it completely (without losing data) and another to switch which icons you see right now, kind of like browser tab groups. That way, when you're working on a project you place the files you need on the desktop and when you're done you clean it up.
> The desktop is kind of weird, in the sense that it's prime real estate but, at the same time, there's an expectation that you shouldn't put too much stuff there,
If we go further into the metaphor of a desktop, there would be sections for tools and sections for pending work. The inkwell versus the blotter, if you will.
But then, well, what difference is there between a designated permanent zone of the desktop for non-tools, versus a regular window showing some contents of a folder, which the user has chosen to position above an empty area?
When I was on Windows there was point in time when I use Stardock's Fences, around or between 2010-2014.
Pretty nice product as I recall, lots of features to make the "Desktop" more or less dynamic. Pretty soon after I stopped using the "Desktop" entirely.
Persistence. If you're going to have a physical metaphor, don't throw out one of the most useful features of the thing you're emulating.
On old Macs you could drag files and folders on the desktop, work from there, and then put them back where they belonged with a single command, one by one or all at once. Applications used file IDs to refer to them, so all references kept working (not only with the desktop, but with all moves and renames). But old Macs had a different filesystem; modern filesystems are probably not fit for that.
Modern macOS still lets you keep editing a file even if it's moved somewhere else, I think because file editing is done with the actual file ID rather than its bare location on the filesystem.
Windows, on other hand, prevents you from doing this in my experience.
Correct. It's not so much "modern macOS" though, it's a feature of APFS[1].
> Most of us still think of file systems in simple terms, like HFS+. Duplicate or copy a file, and macOS copies all the data to a new storage area and makes that a different file. Thankfully, APFS is much smarter than that, and regularly – indeed, as a rule whenever it can – doesn’t copy any data at all. What it does is create a clone file, which is a bit like a hard link, in that the file record points to the same data as the original. Unlike a hard link, the clone is a separate file, with its own iNode.
Yeah I think that's the ideal use of the desktop, as a temporary area for what you're currently working on. It's a shame that Microsoft didn't copy the "Put Away" feature when they added desktop icons to Windows 95, and the desktop became a combination of a generic storage area for files and a place where program installers dump application shortcuts. Then everybody (including Apple for Mac OS X) copied Microsoft's approach instead of Apple's.
I agree, GNOME 3 and all the subsequent versions are so bad. They made GNOME into a glorified tablet environment, but I'm using a desktop, not a tablet, for a reason.
I'm still mad at GNOME developers for ruining such a good desktop environment.
Luckily, Linux Mint managed to create a good environment that is as pleasant as using GNOME 2.
I bought a tablet to use with Krita and settled on Manjaro because Ubuntu had so many tablet issues. Everything I tried is especially bad with 4k touchscreen/pen. I started with KDE, then Gnome but DE really didn't matter because they're all so terrible - it's now for watching videos or travel only.
I left Gnome 3 for Mate early on and I never looked back, but here are the issues I remember.
First, dialogs could not be dragged to the side. It took me less than one day to realize that, when it comes to naming a file, I need to look at the document to remember, for instance, the name of the institution I'm writing to. If I can't move the Save dialog then I have to cancel, find the name, remember it, and start the save process again, at which point I also lost the folder I had navigated to.
Showing app icons without categories is useless to me because sometimes I don't know what the app is called, only what it does. I know I have a webcam app and I know it should be under Video, but I have no idea what it's called. Gnome's flat hierarchy makes it harder for me to find what I'm looking for.
Removing the individual window menus and the icons for minimizing and maximizing kills the muscle memory I've built over the last 30 years - same reason why I hate that the X button on Mac doesn't really close the program.
But on the topic of Mac, that's for me the main problem: that Gnome 3 wanted to be MacOS and copied their ideas regardless of whether they make sense to their users. I know the things I mentioned above may sound small but those are constant papercuts that remind me every 5 minutes that I didn't use to have so many papercuts. I can't imagine that anyone did a proper usability test before dropping what, to me, were breaking changes.
There were other factors like the attitude of "this is how it is now so take it or leave it", but the whole process led me to realize that I don't want to think about my window manager and that, if I'm thinking about it, then it's getting in my way of doing actual work.
> First, dialogs could not be dragged to the side
It's GTK, not gnome and I agree it's not the most logical behavior, but I don't think it's all that relevant to the general workflow the gnome-shell provides.
> App icon without categories
Folders are a native feature of gnome-shell, it's on your distro for not using it.
> Maximize, minimize
Getting used to something is surely a strong effect, but I don't think it's a fair criticism in and of itself, otherwise every change would be unequivocally bad. See my broader reply here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829080">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829080
I really don't think gnome copied too much stuff from mac, especially that I like gnome and pretty much dislike Mac. Gnome people have a pretty well thought out design and workflow idea, so this criticism doesn't fly. I can accept that you may not like that design idea, but it's definitely not a cheap, no thought copy of Mac.
On dialogs: I don't think it's fair to say "it's GTK, not Gnome" when a. the behavior started happening with Gnome 3, b. it doesn't happen in Mate, and c. GTK is maintained by the GNOME Project. Behavior, BTW, that (AFAIK) was exclusive until then to MacOS.
On categories: I don't think the Debian people had a big input into how the menu was supposed to look like. I'm willing to bet that it's the default seeing as, again, it's also the default in MacOS.
But on the main topic: I believe that good design should be invisible, and Gnome 3 was the absolute opposite of that. Take Firefox mobile: one day they asked me if I wanted to try the new layout with the navigation bar on the bottom, I said yes, and I never looked back because it made my life SO MUCH easier. In contrast, Gnome's Wikipedia page has an entire section titled "criticism" detailing entire distros that dropped it and successful forks that kept the old behavior. I therefore feel strongly against the idea that it was "well thought out", or more precisely, I think it may he been "well thought out" but not "well tested with the actual users".
When you familiarise yourself with macOS, you arrive at the conclusion that GNOME is indeed not a cheap copy of Mac, it is something worse: a miserable attempt at copying its ideas. There are many examples, but from the top of my head and clicking around:
- Window title bars
- Menu bars: removed while copying macOS, but no global menu either. If only it was like macOS!
- Symbolic icon craze
- Autohiding a context menu after 0.5 seconds of holding the button (since GTK 3)
- The top right area in GNOME's Hell
- The "Apps" view in GNOME's Hell, which also has a Dock wannabe
- Nautilus is basically Finder
- Nowadays animations that you can't turn off
Most of the damage to GNOME has been done in version 3. I've converted away from anything GTK 4 because I can't stand it anymore.
Though I admit that it's cohesive and if you expect very little, it kind of works. Also there's probably nothing better for touch screens.
There's no point in answering this question, either you get it or you don't. If you get it you get it. If you don't it's because the way you want to use your desktop fits exactly into the design decisions of GNOME and you can't even imagine somebody wanting different features.
It can't even be chalked up to an extreme lack of imagination because there is a plethora of desktop environments that do things differently from GNOME that you could look up to figure out why one might think GNOME is bad.
> and you can't even imagine somebody wanting different features
You may want to read that sentence again, and change the subjects around. Maybe it's gnome doing stuff differently that you can't accept because it's not win 98?
Go to gnome.org, scroll down to "Developer Platform" and look at the title bar of the screenshot there. If you see a clean interface, then no reason other people give you will help.
But, if you do see the arrows there and think - why are there so many arrows and dots? It looks like bad UX. They you can see the issues others are talking about.
what an amazing example. We have on one window title bar:
- a "+"
- a down-arrow which presumably opens some sort of menu
- a hamburger menu (why is this different to the down arrow?)
- a "..." menu (err, isn't this the same as the hamburger menu and/or the down arrow?)
- A "hammer" icon next to the word "fetching". Because... Hammer Time! Also, yeah we use a hammer to fetch things. I think that's something we can all get behind.
- another two down-arrows. One probably opens out options for the "hammer" bar. The other...?
- an up and down arrow. Maybe this actually changes the options for the "hammer/fetching" bar.
- A search magnifying glass (no search field curiously).
I currently have ~12 windows open (Win11 explorer, office, dev / terminal apps, sublime, Firefox, signal) : almost every one of them has a different top bar.
Also, something about "Podcasts" in what is presenting as a Rust IDE. Looking more closely at the rest, I assume this is because it's the name of the project being edited, but it's still confusing. Fundamentally the title bar is being split in two, with a separate part for each main column of the window, as if it were really two windows docked together.
I... disagree. GNOME Builder is GTK4 and Libadwaita, with lots of custom widgets to build out the "IDE-lite" experience.
It looks like this because it's also how XCode and Visual Studio looks. I don't like it, I don't use Builder, but the design isn't foreign.
Visual studio does not look like this, because it uses text instead of icons. Which both uses less space, and is much easier to parse.
The gnome style client side decorations versus traditional menu bars is just bad. It works okay if your application has like… two buttons. Which, to be fair, is many gnome apps because they’re so feature-anemic. But once you have many functions, it becomes a mess that wastes huge amount of screen space.
Nobody wants to adapt because the workflow is worse. Things take longer, more clicks, and more information is hidden, necessitating submenus and more submenus.
Simple example: you have 3 file manager windows open. Go choose the correct one with the directory you want. On my KDE setup, the window is right there in the dock. I can see the window title and know it’s the correct window, so I click it.
On Gnome, first I drag my cursor to the left to show the dock. Then I click the icon, because of course app windows stack. Then I squint at the thumbnail and find it. Or, alternatively, I open the overview and hunt for it. Maybe it’s on a different desktop, I hope not.
The workflow is just worse, and this extends to basically every workflow in gnome. It only becomes okay when you abuse keyboard shortcuts, because the actual desktop UX is so bad. And people will actually turn around and claim that gnome is good because of keyboard shortcuts!
No, it’s not! Every desktop has keyboard shortcuts. Gnome is the only one that forces you to use them, because the interface is so obtuse, slow, and obnoxious to use.
The Desktop isn't prime real estate when you are actually using your computer and have windows covering it. Then it becomes cumbersome to access anything on it, even with a one click show desktop button.
Having the desktop not also be a file dump by default and instead a space for mostly useless widgets was one of the few good things KDE 4 did.
Key issue driving any conversation about desktop environments; so many people have vastly different workflows and expectations for their computer.
Personally, I keep my desktop absolutely sterile, usually some geometric patterned background, and that's it. Autohiding taskbar, no shortcuts, etc. It keeps me from having the "stepping into another room" effect when I sit down at my computer, which I'm very prone to. That means I can hit win/option/spotlight depending on the comp and launch the program I sat down to get into, without thinking "Oh yeah, I meant to edit that excel file..." and going on a 30 minute tangent.
> and launch the program I sat down to get into, without thinking "Oh yeah, I meant to edit that excel file..." and going on a 30 minute tangent.
I have the opposite problem. I leave things on the desktop as an intentional reminder to get back to them, but it doesn't work.
It's for this reason that I find the desktop generally of more use on a Mac than I do under Windows or under Linux with a Windows-type DE.
macOS is built around the idea of windows being sized and positioned as they will, with very little management (automated or otherwise), leaving a substantial amount of desktop exposed most of the time. As a result, the desktop gets a lot more usage as a staging space since it's constantly available for drag and drop operations (both to and from).
In Windows-paradigm systems on the other hand, it's almost a given that the screen will be filled entirely with 1-2 windows and the desktop is only ever really visible upon reboot or hard context switches.
The Amiga Workbench was semi-spatial in that you could snapshot icons in place so their locations would persist, but you could also drag and drop icons everywhere without saving their location and it'd reset next time.
My current desktop works like that. It's not quite what you're describing, but it's a couple of minor iterations away to allow multiple different snapshots.
I remember in the old days the desktop was like a starting point. You'd open the drive that had the program you wanted to use, double click it. Or a little later you could double click the document you wanted to edit and the relevant application would start up automatically and open the doc.
Now I never see my desktop. A handful of apps, primarily Chrome, are permanently open in front of it. The computer is always on, if I reboot then the previous state more or less restores automatically.
So the desktop itself is not really prime real estate any more. It's more of an abstract idea, the layer underneath all the useful bits. The windows have taken over.
On macOS the desktop path is where screenshots go... so mostly I just have a litter of 100s of screenshots there.
Communicating at work seems to involve taking lots of screenshots.
Usually these are files I don't really care to keep around, I just need it in the moment so I can add it to a message in Slack, Teams, Jira, Github etc.
So it feels like this primitive could maybe be built into the OS in a more developed way than just screen area -> file, so that you could access it directly from apps (in a consistent way - as an OS feature) and avoid generating junk files.
I've noticed this shift too, my computer is normally turned on 24/7 and has things open. Because rebooting it and reopening things is usually a pointless waste of time. Did this shift coincide with the internet changing from a place you visited to a place you always were, with the rise in smartphones?
Probably also goes along with the shift to more efficient and quieter devices - first with the OS adding a working 'sleep' mode so you don't have to turn the computer all the way off, later enhanced by SSDs and fanless laptops etc
> On macOS the desktop path is where screenshots go... so mostly I just have a litter of 100s of screenshots there. […] you could […] avoid generating junk files.
Some features that may help with this:
After opening the Shift-Command-5 screenshot interface, in the “Options” menu, you can change the folder your screenshots are saved to from the Desktop to any other folder of your choice. Files will still be saved, but you may find it easier to organize those files, as they will be separated from anything else on your Desktop.
After opening the Shift-Command-5 screenshot interface, in the “Options” menu, you can change the save location to Clipboard. Or when taking a screenshot with any other shortcut, you can save just that screenshot to the clipboard by also holding Control. Copying to the clipboard ensures there is nothing to clean up afterward.
If you want to take two screenshots and then paste both, you can still use the clipboard if you enable macOS’s clipboard history feature. That would let you copy both screenshots, then paste them both into your app. To enable clipboard history, see official docs at <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/search-your-clipboard-history-mchl40d5b86b/27/mac/27" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/search-your-clipboa... or a more detailed guide at <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/how-to/mac-clipboard-history#enable" rel="nofollow">https://www.cultofmac.com/how-to/mac-clipboard-history#enabl....
probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
Here's an idea that I believe I read in HN as "the original purpose of the desktop": add a Desktop Manager that manages which icons are on your desktop and makes it easy to switch.
The desktop is kind of weird, in the sense that it's prime real estate but, at the same time, there's an expectation that you shouldn't put too much stuff there, and then it ends up cluttered anyway. I think it's worth trying a stronger separation between "Desktop" and any other regular folder, emphasizing that the Desktop is where you place links to the files you need right now, but with a mechanism to clear it completely (without losing data) and another to switch which icons you see right now, kind of like browser tab groups. That way, when you're working on a project you place the files you need on the desktop and when you're done you clean it up.
Terr_ · · focus · HN ↗
If we go further into the metaphor of a desktop, there would be sections for tools and sections for pending work. The inkwell versus the blotter, if you will.
But then, well, what difference is there between a designated permanent zone of the desktop for non-tools, versus a regular window showing some contents of a folder, which the user has chosen to position above an empty area?
jrimbault · · focus · HN ↗
Pretty nice product as I recall, lots of features to make the "Desktop" more or less dynamic. Pretty soon after I stopped using the "Desktop" entirely.
[] <a href="https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/" rel="nofollow">https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
regularfry · · focus · HN ↗
Mikhail_Edoshin · · focus · HN ↗
reddalo · · focus · HN ↗
Windows, on other hand, prevents you from doing this in my experience.
ctippett · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
It also keeps a file around on disk with no way to access it as long as it's open.
When are we getting filesystem transactions.
hmng · · focus · HN ↗
ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗
rifty · · focus · HN ↗
reddalo · · focus · HN ↗
I'm still mad at GNOME developers for ruining such a good desktop environment.
Luckily, Linux Mint managed to create a good environment that is as pleasant as using GNOME 2.
officialchicken · · focus · HN ↗
gf000 · · focus · HN ↗
probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
First, dialogs could not be dragged to the side. It took me less than one day to realize that, when it comes to naming a file, I need to look at the document to remember, for instance, the name of the institution I'm writing to. If I can't move the Save dialog then I have to cancel, find the name, remember it, and start the save process again, at which point I also lost the folder I had navigated to.
Showing app icons without categories is useless to me because sometimes I don't know what the app is called, only what it does. I know I have a webcam app and I know it should be under Video, but I have no idea what it's called. Gnome's flat hierarchy makes it harder for me to find what I'm looking for.
Removing the individual window menus and the icons for minimizing and maximizing kills the muscle memory I've built over the last 30 years - same reason why I hate that the X button on Mac doesn't really close the program.
But on the topic of Mac, that's for me the main problem: that Gnome 3 wanted to be MacOS and copied their ideas regardless of whether they make sense to their users. I know the things I mentioned above may sound small but those are constant papercuts that remind me every 5 minutes that I didn't use to have so many papercuts. I can't imagine that anyone did a proper usability test before dropping what, to me, were breaking changes.
There were other factors like the attitude of "this is how it is now so take it or leave it", but the whole process led me to realize that I don't want to think about my window manager and that, if I'm thinking about it, then it's getting in my way of doing actual work.
gf000 · · focus · HN ↗
It's GTK, not gnome and I agree it's not the most logical behavior, but I don't think it's all that relevant to the general workflow the gnome-shell provides.
> App icon without categories
Folders are a native feature of gnome-shell, it's on your distro for not using it.
> Maximize, minimize
Getting used to something is surely a strong effect, but I don't think it's a fair criticism in and of itself, otherwise every change would be unequivocally bad. See my broader reply here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829080">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829080
I really don't think gnome copied too much stuff from mac, especially that I like gnome and pretty much dislike Mac. Gnome people have a pretty well thought out design and workflow idea, so this criticism doesn't fly. I can accept that you may not like that design idea, but it's definitely not a cheap, no thought copy of Mac.
probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
On categories: I don't think the Debian people had a big input into how the menu was supposed to look like. I'm willing to bet that it's the default seeing as, again, it's also the default in MacOS.
But on the main topic: I believe that good design should be invisible, and Gnome 3 was the absolute opposite of that. Take Firefox mobile: one day they asked me if I wanted to try the new layout with the navigation bar on the bottom, I said yes, and I never looked back because it made my life SO MUCH easier. In contrast, Gnome's Wikipedia page has an entire section titled "criticism" detailing entire distros that dropped it and successful forks that kept the old behavior. I therefore feel strongly against the idea that it was "well thought out", or more precisely, I think it may he been "well thought out" but not "well tested with the actual users".
premysl · · focus · HN ↗
- Window title bars - Menu bars: removed while copying macOS, but no global menu either. If only it was like macOS! - Symbolic icon craze - Autohiding a context menu after 0.5 seconds of holding the button (since GTK 3) - The top right area in GNOME's Hell - The "Apps" view in GNOME's Hell, which also has a Dock wannabe - Nautilus is basically Finder - Nowadays animations that you can't turn off
Most of the damage to GNOME has been done in version 3. I've converted away from anything GTK 4 because I can't stand it anymore.
Though I admit that it's cohesive and if you expect very little, it kind of works. Also there's probably nothing better for touch screens.
EdiX · · focus · HN ↗
gf000 · · focus · HN ↗
You may want to read that sentence again, and change the subjects around. Maybe it's gnome doing stuff differently that you can't accept because it's not win 98?
tecoholic · · focus · HN ↗
But, if you do see the arrows there and think - why are there so many arrows and dots? It looks like bad UX. They you can see the issues others are talking about.
seanhunter · · focus · HN ↗
- a "+"
- a down-arrow which presumably opens some sort of menu
- a hamburger menu (why is this different to the down arrow?)
- a "..." menu (err, isn't this the same as the hamburger menu and/or the down arrow?)
- A "hammer" icon next to the word "fetching". Because... Hammer Time! Also, yeah we use a hammer to fetch things. I think that's something we can all get behind.
- another two down-arrows. One probably opens out options for the "hammer" bar. The other...?
- an up and down arrow. Maybe this actually changes the options for the "hammer/fetching" bar.
- A search magnifying glass (no search field curiously).
- A cross.
reddalo · · focus · HN ↗
makapuf · · focus · HN ↗
zahlman · · focus · HN ↗
gf000 · · focus · HN ↗
How about actually talking about the topic at hand, which is the gnome shell and its UX?
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
bigyabai · · focus · HN ↗
It looks like this because it's also how XCode and Visual Studio looks. I don't like it, I don't use Builder, but the design isn't foreign.
preg_match · · focus · HN ↗
The gnome style client side decorations versus traditional menu bars is just bad. It works okay if your application has like… two buttons. Which, to be fair, is many gnome apps because they’re so feature-anemic. But once you have many functions, it becomes a mess that wastes huge amount of screen space.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
xeyownt · · focus · HN ↗
And you don't want to adapt.
Just watched a video of a guy ranting on Gnome 3 14 years ago, the reasons are just wtf, mentioning things I almost never used in my life.
I also had issues, but just learned to get over it and now my workflow is excellent while requiring only minimal customization.
preg_match · · focus · HN ↗
Simple example: you have 3 file manager windows open. Go choose the correct one with the directory you want. On my KDE setup, the window is right there in the dock. I can see the window title and know it’s the correct window, so I click it.
On Gnome, first I drag my cursor to the left to show the dock. Then I click the icon, because of course app windows stack. Then I squint at the thumbnail and find it. Or, alternatively, I open the overview and hunt for it. Maybe it’s on a different desktop, I hope not.
The workflow is just worse, and this extends to basically every workflow in gnome. It only becomes okay when you abuse keyboard shortcuts, because the actual desktop UX is so bad. And people will actually turn around and claim that gnome is good because of keyboard shortcuts!
No, it’s not! Every desktop has keyboard shortcuts. Gnome is the only one that forces you to use them, because the interface is so obtuse, slow, and obnoxious to use.
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
Having the desktop not also be a file dump by default and instead a space for mostly useless widgets was one of the few good things KDE 4 did.
Silagi · · focus · HN ↗
Personally, I keep my desktop absolutely sterile, usually some geometric patterned background, and that's it. Autohiding taskbar, no shortcuts, etc. It keeps me from having the "stepping into another room" effect when I sit down at my computer, which I'm very prone to. That means I can hit win/option/spotlight depending on the comp and launch the program I sat down to get into, without thinking "Oh yeah, I meant to edit that excel file..." and going on a 30 minute tangent.
zahlman · · focus · HN ↗
I have the opposite problem. I leave things on the desktop as an intentional reminder to get back to them, but it doesn't work.
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
macOS is built around the idea of windows being sized and positioned as they will, with very little management (automated or otherwise), leaving a substantial amount of desktop exposed most of the time. As a result, the desktop gets a lot more usage as a staging space since it's constantly available for drag and drop operations (both to and from).
In Windows-paradigm systems on the other hand, it's almost a given that the screen will be filled entirely with 1-2 windows and the desktop is only ever really visible upon reboot or hard context switches.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
My current desktop works like that. It's not quite what you're describing, but it's a couple of minor iterations away to allow multiple different snapshots.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
anentropic · · focus · HN ↗
Now I never see my desktop. A handful of apps, primarily Chrome, are permanently open in front of it. The computer is always on, if I reboot then the previous state more or less restores automatically.
So the desktop itself is not really prime real estate any more. It's more of an abstract idea, the layer underneath all the useful bits. The windows have taken over.
On macOS the desktop path is where screenshots go... so mostly I just have a litter of 100s of screenshots there.
Communicating at work seems to involve taking lots of screenshots.
Usually these are files I don't really care to keep around, I just need it in the moment so I can add it to a message in Slack, Teams, Jira, Github etc.
So it feels like this primitive could maybe be built into the OS in a more developed way than just screen area -> file, so that you could access it directly from apps (in a consistent way - as an OS feature) and avoid generating junk files.
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
anentropic · · focus · HN ↗
roryokane · · focus · HN ↗
Some features that may help with this:
After opening the Shift-Command-5 screenshot interface, in the “Options” menu, you can change the folder your screenshots are saved to from the Desktop to any other folder of your choice. Files will still be saved, but you may find it easier to organize those files, as they will be separated from anything else on your Desktop.
After opening the Shift-Command-5 screenshot interface, in the “Options” menu, you can change the save location to Clipboard. Or when taking a screenshot with any other shortcut, you can save just that screenshot to the clipboard by also holding Control. Copying to the clipboard ensures there is nothing to clean up afterward.
If you want to take two screenshots and then paste both, you can still use the clipboard if you enable macOS’s clipboard history feature. That would let you copy both screenshots, then paste them both into your app. To enable clipboard history, see official docs at <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/search-your-clipboard-history-mchl40d5b86b/27/mac/27" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/search-your-clipboa... or a more detailed guide at <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/how-to/mac-clipboard-history#enable" rel="nofollow">https://www.cultofmac.com/how-to/mac-clipboard-history#enabl....