MacOS – Useless swipe in App Exposé in Sierra

exposemacos

If I invoke Exposé and use the gesture to swipe between fullscreen apps, open windows from other applications will show (similar to ⌘+⇥). However, I cannot click on them to bring them to the front, so it is practically useless.

I noticed this behavior since Sierra and wonder if this is intended behavior or just a bug.

Bonus question (Since I don't have access to macOS 10.11 or lower): Has this behavior existed before?

Best Answer

My interpretation of the question's scenario is:

  1. Enter App Exposé with a four-fingered downward swipe, then
  2. Swipe left or right with three fingers to show the open windows from each of the other open apps (this works whether or not any windows are full-screened at the time). The windows on screen will not show the blue border highlight typical of Exposé on mouseover, and clicking on one of them will (in most cases) exit Exposé without changing focus to the clicked window.

If you reproduce this state and then perform a downward three- or four-fingered swipe, the windows will "bob" a little and the blue border highlight will reappear; clicking on the highlighted window will bring it to focus and exit Exposé, which I suppose is the expected behavior. (I believe this is what an earlier answer was alluding to.) The arrow keys will also cause the blue highlight to reappear and allow a window to be selected.

My personal opinion is that the initial lack of response to mouseovers is a bug and not intended, but I have no evidence either way. Hopefully these workarounds help, though.

Related Question