I have the same complaint about UX. I sorely miss tiling window managers. I miss configurability of window management.
I have baked into my muscle memory the expectation that when I hit the keyboard shortcut to summon virtual desktop number 5, that desktop will show up on the monitor that currently has focus, no matter which monitor(s) it may have appeared on before. This setup is impossible in Mission Control or whatever the multiple-desktop thing MacOS is called. I can choose between:
"Displays have separate spaces" checked: left monitor has desktops 1,2,3, right monitor has desktop 4,5,6, and if I add a new one to left its number is 7. Want to put desktop #4 on the left? You can't except by dragging all the windows one by one, like a cave-man. What happens to the numbering when you add or remove another monitor? It's weird.
"Displays have separate spaces" unchecked: now I have numbered Left+RightMonitorMonstrosity desktops, but if I want to switch the left monitor between "documentation" and "email", while leaving the right monitor on code, I'm out of luck. This setup behaves a bit better about adding and removing monitors, I will admit.
My old Xmonad setup with numbered desktops (which I cloned from my ion3 setup) behaved beautifully when adding and removing monitors. This is to say nothing of having had a Mod4 key solely for my own use, which I ended up using almost exclusively to interact with the window manager.
I can't wrap my head around a film strip of horizontally situated desktops that I swipe through or page through. I can't fathom the idea of making "full screen" change an app from looking like a window to looking like a desktop, and whats more appending the new desktop to the end of the list. I know that MacOS already knows what the windows on that other desktop are going to look like before I switch, so why does it insist on showing some kind of animation when switching (even "reduce motion" changes it from a wipe motion to a useless fade), like iOS does to hide load time? I know about amethyst and rectangle and setting up a "hyper" key with karabiner-elements or qmk or whatever. No amount of it adds up to the same experience that I had with ion3 back in 2006 and I get worked up that I paid into the ecosystem and bought this otherwise-great laptop and I can't make it work the way I want it.
I have "Displays have separate spaces" checked, and I can drag a desktop from one display to the other by grabbing the desktop from that "film strip" and dragging it over to the other display. I don't have to drag all the windows individually. They move together with desktop.
The limitation, which you might be bumping into, is you can't drag the current desktop that's visible on a display, which is sometimes annoying but makes sense. Switch to a different desktop first.
I agree with you about the confusing ever-changing number labels on the desktops. I would really like to assign names to desktops, like "Work" and "Project 1". The GUI has room for it, as the full-screen app desktops already have names.
I have baked into my muscle memory the expectation that when I hit the keyboard shortcut to summon virtual desktop number 5, that desktop will show up on the monitor that currently has focus, no matter which monitor(s) it may have appeared on before. This setup is impossible in Mission Control or whatever the multiple-desktop thing MacOS is called. I can choose between:
"Displays have separate spaces" checked: left monitor has desktops 1,2,3, right monitor has desktop 4,5,6, and if I add a new one to left its number is 7. Want to put desktop #4 on the left? You can't except by dragging all the windows one by one, like a cave-man. What happens to the numbering when you add or remove another monitor? It's weird.
"Displays have separate spaces" unchecked: now I have numbered Left+RightMonitorMonstrosity desktops, but if I want to switch the left monitor between "documentation" and "email", while leaving the right monitor on code, I'm out of luck. This setup behaves a bit better about adding and removing monitors, I will admit.
My old Xmonad setup with numbered desktops (which I cloned from my ion3 setup) behaved beautifully when adding and removing monitors. This is to say nothing of having had a Mod4 key solely for my own use, which I ended up using almost exclusively to interact with the window manager.
I can't wrap my head around a film strip of horizontally situated desktops that I swipe through or page through. I can't fathom the idea of making "full screen" change an app from looking like a window to looking like a desktop, and whats more appending the new desktop to the end of the list. I know that MacOS already knows what the windows on that other desktop are going to look like before I switch, so why does it insist on showing some kind of animation when switching (even "reduce motion" changes it from a wipe motion to a useless fade), like iOS does to hide load time? I know about amethyst and rectangle and setting up a "hyper" key with karabiner-elements or qmk or whatever. No amount of it adds up to the same experience that I had with ion3 back in 2006 and I get worked up that I paid into the ecosystem and bought this otherwise-great laptop and I can't make it work the way I want it.