this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Wow, that sounds awful. If you needed to use a touchpad their UX developers already failed.
Look, I'm not an apple fanboy by any means. I kinda hate their UX. So I'm not defending Apple by putting my suggestions here. I'd prefer a Linux desktop 100% obviously, but most jobs (in my experience) do not offer that unless you work for a company with a dedicated IT department.
First of all, I can cmd+tab to different apps/programs just fine. So I don't know what feature your missing that you need additional software.
Second of all, you can use ctrl+arrowkeys to cycle between desktops without a touch pad.
Third, I use an Mx Master mouse with gestures mapped to the Gesture button on the mouse. I hold the button and move my mouse left and right, which switches desktops.
Honestly, I prefer virtual desktops to alt tabbing 100%. When I'm developing a web app, for instance, I have a browser desktop in between a front end code desktop and a backend code desktop. Viewing my changes is just holding down a mouse button and a quick flick of my wrist. Its consistent and quick.
Switch between programs, yes, but not between all of your open windows.
Ah that makes sense. I guess I always got annoyed by that in windows because I didn't want to cycle through 100 different windows to find what I wanted. Conversely, on Mac os, I hate that my window is sometimes hidden from me when I'm "alt tabbing," so I get it.
You can do the separate desktops without using a touchpad, there are keyboard shortcuts to do that.
Still embarrassing that you need separate desktops to easily switch between active programs rather than just cycling through them on one desktop with alt+tab.
Not quite sure what the person is talking about really though. I am able to cmd+tab between applications, and cmd+~ between windows of an application.
So yes, you can't alt+tab, but you can have similar functionality.