Just curious if anyone uses it and finds it useful. I cannot find any utility in it but was curious what use scenarios there are out there where it could be handy.
I have trouble finding any usecase for it. On the iPad it might be ok in some situations but so far I’ve been fine with a simple split view if needed. And that’s not permanent like Stage Manager.
On the Mac I don’t understand at all why it exists. We already have overlapping windows and spaces, what else would I need?
Apple was not able to explain to me why this was made. Feels like a hobby project by a young developer who imagined a new way of dealing with windows.
I use it daily on my iPad Pro, and started using it regularly on my MBP.
iPad
I teach English. Basically instead of using a white board, I connect my iPad to a TV using a USB hub and use FreeForm with an Apple Pencil as my whiteboard. In the same “stage” as Freeform, I have a Safari window open to DuckDuckGo image search. If a student doesn’t understand what something might be and my explanation doesn’t suffice, I use safari to search an image, then I can just drag it into the freeform and add notes to it. After class, I export the FreeForm to PDF and email it to the students. I have another “stage” with Readdle Documents for doing PDF’d textbook work along with the students, paired with a small timer app and other simple class management tools.
Mac
In the past, I used to just have all my most used apps open to full screen. Primary desktop in the middle with a bunch of finder windows open, then swipe desktops left and right to reach different apps (or use command center or whatever it is to make bigger jumps quickly). I would put reference-based and background things like a browser, numbers, Slack, etc to the left of my desktop and production-based apps like Affinity Publisher, Pages, and Keynote to the right. I would keep a second desktop open for personal things like iMessage, safari, calendar to be open in windows.
With stage manager, now I just keep all my chat apps grouped in a stage, a group of finder windows in a stage, my email & calendar in a stage, and my safari windows in a stage. I still keep numbers, pages, and affinity in dedicated full-screen spaces because it’s better for focusing. I feel the trade off is that my apps are better grouped and better organized. However, stage manager still pisses me off in several ways.
Issues
- There’s a limit to the number of stages you have access to on the side of your screen.
- Mission Control doesn’t group apps by stages and it makes everything super messy.
- You can’t open an app into a stage. It needs to be opened into its own stage, then you need to drag it into the one you want it in.
- There’s no way to preset and launch stages.
- There could be better keyboard shortcuts for navigating stages.
- Migrating an app from one stage of apps into a different one is tricky.
There’s more but this is good enough and I need to go to work now.
Incredible write up. Gave me some ways to try it out. Thanks!
My iPad mini doesn’t support it, so I have no use for it on that, and I never use it on either of my Macs because I have 16 years of using macOS without Stage Manager so haven’t been able to figure out why it exists.
I mean, I know why: It’s to offer some level of familiarity for iPad users when they upgrade to a Mac, but it doesn’t seem to do anything useful on a Mac. I tried it, I really did. Spent a few days working with it to see if it would click. But nope. I spent a good amount of that time wishing I could just go back to what I knew.
I’m using it on the work Mac.
Got a lot of windows open: email, browser, IDE, chat app and so forth… Stage Manager grouped them all really well. Also, I’m using it on a big monitor so I can resize those windows however I want.
I like that my desktop is not that messy and when I have to share screen with colleagues I won’t get lost in windows.
On the iPad I see no use-case for it, it’s quite sluggish on my iPad Pro 2020
