I like Stage Manager a lot, but I desperately wish it were more keyboard-accessible. It’s so many clicks and drags to do so many of the workflows described in this post, many of which feel like they could be reduced to a single key combination. It also seems have some vague issues with application focus, where certain apps don’t get full focus back when you put them on the “Stage” from the “Cast.”
This is my impression as well, which is why I just can’t start using it. I’m also being put off with all the unnecessary animations that distract me all the time. I know I can turn on Reduce Motion but then I lose all the other UI animations elsewhere in the system that I have come to enjoy quite a bit over time (if I have to stare at a screen for 10 hours a day, I might as well enjoy a nice UI with nice, smooth animations, otherwise I can switch to Ubuntu or something).
Stage Manager is designed to work well with Spaces, but when you’re first getting started I recommend that you don’t combine them, at least until you’re fluent with Stage Manager alone.
My experience was that Stage Manager only worked in the first Space, so I gave up and turned it off after five seconds. Maybe I should try again.
One odd note is that when you only have one window in a space, the “stage” seems to go away entirely until another window is open to occupy it. This is good in one sense because it saves space, but it also gives the appearance sometimes that one space is in Stage Manager mode and another is not. Unsure if that’s what you were hitting, but I’d second that you should give it another try.
I like Stage Manager a lot, but I desperately wish it were more keyboard-accessible. It’s so many clicks and drags to do so many of the workflows described in this post, many of which feel like they could be reduced to a single key combination. It also seems have some vague issues with application focus, where certain apps don’t get full focus back when you put them on the “Stage” from the “Cast.”
This is my impression as well, which is why I just can’t start using it. I’m also being put off with all the unnecessary animations that distract me all the time. I know I can turn on Reduce Motion but then I lose all the other UI animations elsewhere in the system that I have come to enjoy quite a bit over time (if I have to stare at a screen for 10 hours a day, I might as well enjoy a nice UI with nice, smooth animations, otherwise I can switch to Ubuntu or something).
My experience was that Stage Manager only worked in the first Space, so I gave up and turned it off after five seconds. Maybe I should try again.
One odd note is that when you only have one window in a space, the “stage” seems to go away entirely until another window is open to occupy it. This is good in one sense because it saves space, but it also gives the appearance sometimes that one space is in Stage Manager mode and another is not. Unsure if that’s what you were hitting, but I’d second that you should give it another try.