I was actually surprised to find that it works really well for me in the end (contrary to my experience on iPad, where I don’t like using SM). I thought it could reasonably “just work” for casual users on intuitive basis, but most advanced users wouldn’t like it—not having a good concept of how things work is a big barrier, and there is absolutely no documentation or good way of discovering this—so I decided to share my understanding lest Apple kills this feature due to lack of demand.
To add to my description one thing that I noticed just now: there’s a distinction in behavior between “heterogenous” window sets and single-app window sets. For example, if your window set is heterogenous—contains windows of multiple apps—then command-` indeed switches only between windows in the same multi-window set (so you won’t leave that set). On the other hand, if current multi-window set consists only of windows from a single app (e.g., multiple Terminal windows), then command-` will switch between 1) windows in current window set, as well as 2) this app’s windows in other homogenous sets (and standalone windows). I’m not a fan of this particular behavior, because every time it kind of breaks my expectations when I leave a multi-window set due to command-`, but maybe it’s because I got used to thinking that command-` only works within a set too quickly.
Add: and there is an outright bug in that if you use command-` while in some non-English keyboard layouts, it starts command-`’ing infinitely. Guessing Apple might be aware but too lazy to figure out their ticket tracker…
I was actually surprised to find that it works really well for me in the end (contrary to my experience on iPad, where I don’t like using SM). I thought it could reasonably “just work” for casual users on intuitive basis, but most advanced users wouldn’t like it—not having a good concept of how things work is a big barrier, and there is absolutely no documentation or good way of discovering this—so I decided to share my understanding lest Apple kills this feature due to lack of demand.
To add to my description one thing that I noticed just now: there’s a distinction in behavior between “heterogenous” window sets and single-app window sets. For example, if your window set is heterogenous—contains windows of multiple apps—then command-` indeed switches only between windows in the same multi-window set (so you won’t leave that set). On the other hand, if current multi-window set consists only of windows from a single app (e.g., multiple Terminal windows), then command-` will switch between 1) windows in current window set, as well as 2) this app’s windows in other homogenous sets (and standalone windows). I’m not a fan of this particular behavior, because every time it kind of breaks my expectations when I leave a multi-window set due to command-`, but maybe it’s because I got used to thinking that command-` only works within a set too quickly.
Add: and there is an outright bug in that if you use command-` while in some non-English keyboard layouts, it starts command-`’ing infinitely. Guessing Apple might be aware but too lazy to figure out their ticket tracker…