Category: Macbooks

For those who like to maximise or minimise their windows on a Mac, you will likely be frustrated by the default behaviour of your Macbook (in that it doesn’t restore/focus minimised or maximised screens). Below are a few steps to make your mac screen restores behave like Microsoft Windows:

Install Homebrew (if you dont have):

## Install homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
## IMPORTANT: Once the install finishes run the two commands displayed in the terminal window
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> $HOME/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

Install AltTab:

brew install --cask alt-tab

Next run the AltTab application (click the magnify glass/search glass in the top right of your macbook (near the clock) and then type “AltTab”). When it starts up it will ask you to permission it to access the various system accessibility functions (ie window preview). If you don’t adjust the settings you will need to switch from using “Command + Tab” to using “Option + Tab”, or read the note below to adjust the settings…

Note: I recommend the following tweaks…

If you want to use the default windows style for tab keystrokes, you will need to change the “Controls” tab setting called “Hold” from “Option” to “Command” as per below:

Next, go to Appearance tab and change the Theme to “Windows 10” (as its hard to see the focus window on Mac style):

Note: detailed documents on AltTab can be found here: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

If you’re like me, little things bother you. When I turn on my bluetooth headset and it connects to my Macbook when its closed/sleeping, I get very frustrated. So I wrote a simple script to fix this behaviour. After running the script below, when you close the lid on your Macbook it will automatically turn bluetooth off. When you open you Macbook it will automatically re-enable bluetooth. Simple 🤓

If you need to install brew/homebrew on your mac then run this:

## Install homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
## IMPORTANT: Once the install finishes run the two commands displayed in the terminal window
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> $HOME/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

Script to automatically enable/disable bluetooth:

## Install the bluetooth util and sleepwatcher
brew install sleepwatcher blueutil
## This creates a file which switches bluetooth off when the macbook lid is closed
echo "$(which blueutil) -p 0" > ~/.sleep
## This creates a file which switches on bluetooth when the lid is open
echo "$(which blueutil) -p 1" > ~/.wakeup
## This makes both the files runable
chmod 755 ~/.sleep ~/.wakeup
## Finally restart the sleepwatcher service (to pickup the new files)
brew services restart sleepwatcher