Different folders for different desktops in Mission Control

Seems to me that the current Mission Control ("MC") implementation is minimal and intended by to build up experience among developers and users. I'd hope for incremental improvements in future updates. This post is about some experimentation I've done in the meantime.

AS OPs have noted, one helpful innovation would be better terminology. For this post, I'll propose "user desktop" ("UDT") to denote one of n user-defined desktops selectable through MC. So plain-old "desktop" is still generic.

MC works well for me as it is, except for keeping track of which UDT is which. I definitely need some kind of text to remind me what's going on in each UDT. (Paper sticky notes on the display are not an option!) Plus, as a personal preference, I'd rather not be required to activate MC to switch.

To explore alternatives, in Xcode I hacked and kludged a Cocoa application to do only this: open a window and display, in very large type, the name of the application. "ItsMe.app" displays "ItsMe" in 144 point type. Then I set out to clone this app. This isn't a software development forum, so I want to stay out of the details, but there's a bit of magic required make app clones that MacOS will recognize as distinct. That accomplished, I built "ItsMe01.app" through "ItsMe10.app".

See where this is going? I renamed "ItsMe01.app" to "DT1--General", "ItsMe02.app" to "DT2--Webwork.app", "ItsMe03.app" to "DT3--MacTroubleshooting", etc. etc., 'n' in all to represent my 'n' active projects. Then I used MC to initiate 'n' UDTs. I opened all 'n' cloned apps, and assigned them one by one to corresponding UDTs. Now, I've got n generic app icons, one for each UDT, in the Dock. As I pass the mouse pointer over them I get pop-up text reminding me of the content of each UDT. When I get to the one I want, I double-click the icon, and presto! I'm switched to that UDT. Problem (most) solved.

Note that including the UDT number in the label/app name is mostly unnecessary, a kind of reflection of MC's current primitive numbering system.

There are other glitches in this scheme --it is far from perfect-- but I've used it for about a week and I find it much more convenient than using MC as presently implemented: a three-fingered up-swipe followed by a guessing process: which project is in which UDT? Often repeated because I guess wrong.

Here's hoping that upcoming versions of MC will include

--User labeling of UDTs

--An (optional) echo of the currently active UDT label, say, at top-center of the main screen

--Improved MC thumbnailing (for me some active windows never show up at all)

--"switch to UDT" by label or number scripting

--A scripting hook to run code on activation of each UDT

--Improved Resume capability to better restore UDT state

What else?

In the meantime, I'm curious if I missed something, 'cause I couldn't figure out how to accomplish the large-display-my-own-name-in-a-window with Applescript. Anyone?

TIA

the fact that Apple may or may not monitor these discussion boards in itself illustrates a major problem.

and because of all the changes in Lion, my cost of doing business per project is way up, probably 25-50%.

Change for the sake of change, with few percieved benefits and a ton of irritation.

thanks for Trying R Bryan, Maybe Mt. Lion will have better luck at inplementing this?

love your Banter BTW.

The reason why people don't want all the folders on every desktop, and why we want different desktops is because we have projects that require many folders to be placed upon the desktop. After a while , things get cluttered. We need those folders available on the desktop. What we want is another clean desktop devoid of all these folders that we can dedicate to a different task. This isn't too different from how people work at home and at work. I may have one desk where all my tax stuff is layed out; another desk where I am working on accounts payable, and another desk where I am sorting out pictures. Thx.

Did you find a solution for this? Because I would like to have the same functionality. I am trying to create several desktops by Mission Control and dedicating them to diffrerent things. I would like to save/show files and folders in desktop 2 and prevent showing them in destop 1 or any other deskops. That would be a great feature. Is it possible?

I would love to have that too! My workaround ist setting up different users. In my case, one is called home, the other one work. Switching between them is not as quick as spaces, but still easy enough for me. But I do hope Apple is implemantig this in spaces, otherwise it's useless for me. I don't need different applications open, but a different workspace.

Hi Zedius,

I am aware you posted this issue a long time ago but Rolando did not resolve it and I share your same opinion about how useful it would be to have different desktops for different uses. I am just wondering if it has become possible with the new versions, have you discovered how to do so?

Thank you for your help

As far as I know, it is still not possible to have different folders on different desktops on my Yosemite.

I also use Linux, the community made it possible there -for free, years ago- with the "activities" of KDE desktop: https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma

Should be easy for Apple to reproduce that on OSXs, a modified BSD linux, but they seem to neglect us, paying customers.

(sigh.... I use Mac just for hardware compatibility reasons, otherwise....)

gr

gr:

Thanks for your post.

(I note this thread has extended for almost 5 years. Interesting!)

As much as I'd also like different folders to appear on different Mission Control Desktops --lots and lots-- I wonder: do the most obvious implementation make it too easy to mislay folders? I'm thinking: I assign folder "foo" to appear only on Desktop #3, which works great for organizing the project I associate with Desktop #3. (Still can't name Desktops either, right?) But maybe I get completely, long-term distracted from Project #3 (OK, I'll name my projects to conform) am I likely to lose track of folder "foo"?

Easy solution: "Desktop #0" shows all folders. Yes? No problem, unless "foo" happens to be placed (on Desktop #3) exactly in the same place as "fum" (on Desktop #2). Since (arbitrarily, why not?) desktop number labels also indicate priority, putting #2 icons on top in stacking order, then in this view "foo" will be difficult, maybe impossible, to see.

What does your experience with Linux KDE desktop tell us about such issues?

TIA

Dear Zedius, five years later, i found your post, and it is exactly what i've been looking for.

Do you maybe still have the scripts, and if so would they work on what is now 10.11.4 OS X?

Hi TIA, thank you for your comments that are actually putting forward a desktop workflow to reproduce.

My comment on those issues are not so interesting, "activities" in plasma KDE are transparent to the user. You can have a look on reviews and tutorials online to understand details on the structure underneath "activities". For example https://www.google.com/search?q=kde+activities+tutorial&oq=kde+activities+&aqs=c hrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.6567j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=kde+activities+explained

gr

gr:

Thanks for the link. Honestly, I’m not going to be changing over from Mac to Linux, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time studying Plasma KDE. I’ll accept from my quick look that there is at least one more advanced alternative to Desktops in Mission Control.

I maintain a number of completely unrelated projects on my Mac. I spend a lot of time and effort arranging my desktop so folders pertaining to each project are clearly separate — but the desktop still gets crowded, and it still takes me effort to ignore desktop items (files, folders, aliases) for Projects “A“, “B“, “C“, “E“, and “F“ while I’m working on Project “D“.

So, yes, I could definitely benefit if Apple moves Mission Control technology forward.

I’ll add this: Recently, luckily, I got access to a spare Mac and I’m just now spinning off Project “D” to that machine. This is one way of having different folders for different Mission Control Desktops, right? So far, I’m finding that it is really a luxury to have this much elbow room! That is, I don’t need to ignore Projects “A“, “B“, “C“, “E“ anymore. That’s very helpful.

Thanks!

there's a way to do this, but it requires some setup and a third party app, DIM: http://www.parker9.com/desktopIconManager2.0.html#d

install DIM. then for each Desktop, place the icons (folders, apps, files, etc) where you want them. for any icons you do NOT want on that Desktop, simply move them to just off the screen. then in DIM create a new Arrangement (hit the 'gear' symbol), create a name for the Arrangement. it should store that Desktop's icon arrangement. repeat for each Desktop.

the downside, of course, is when you switch Desktops w/ Mission Control, the new Desktop will be showing the previous desktop icons. you'll need to run DIM again, select the Arrangement you previously saved for that Desktop and then hit the Restore Icon Positions button.

it would probably be easy to have DIM automatically run when Mission Control switches Desktops, but i'll leave that as an exercise. DIM comes w/ full source code so one can modify it.

the real fix must come from Apple.