New preference: re-distribute thumbnails around rows to avoid orphans

[alt-tab-macos-bot]

This issue was opened by a bot after a user submitted feedback through the in-app form.

Message:

• Allow to use the app without screen sharing enabled. Some companies that manage our laptop aren't allowing to enable screen recording for security reasons.
  Consequently, when having the thumbnails off, maybe the layout can be that app icons are centered with their window title centered below.

• My settings are: max width 55%, max height 30%, max 2 rows. When the amount of windows wraps to the second row, can it be evenly distributed between the two rows?

Instead of row 1 [1,2,3,4,5,6] and row 2 [7], could it be: row 1 [1,2,3,4] and row 2 [5,6,7]

@alber70g

[lwouis]

@alber70g

1. Please see Is providing screen recording permissions a must? is it safe? #970 (comment)
2. This UI would go against one of the thing I'm trying to have with AltTab: visual stability. If you remove 1 window and press alt-tab again, ideally everything is visually unchanged except one thumbnail disappeared. Same if you add a new window. Everything being re-shuffled around every time 1 thing changes reduces the landmarks you can use as a user, and your ability to be familiar with the thumbnails you get after consecutive alt-tabs. So no, unfortunately I won't implement this dynamic rows feature.

[alber70g]

1. An option to have screen recording permission turned off would be great. A message telling the user that the app won't show the titles of the windows in the AltTab view, would suffice. I.e. "Continue without Screen Recording permission (note: this will disable thumbnail previews AND the title won't be visible. Instead, the application name will be shown)"

2. You could make it an option to have this, without abandoning your vision for AltTab regarding "visual stability". Also, I've already enabled "Align windows: center" so the visual stability is already gone, in that sense

• distribute app windows evenly over rows

[lwouis]

It would be possible indeed. Ok I will re-open this ticket and let's see if other people are interested in this. It's a high-effort endeavor, so it requires multiple people to ask for it to make sense.

[lwouis]

Closing this as too niche + lots of work, unfortunately