Switch to Witch

Posted by Elliott Cost on 05/29/07 in Fun & Unique, Productivity, Tips & Tricks

Witch Icon Recently a friend recommended an application to review called Witch. Witch is a small application that lets users quickly and easily switch between every open file or window on their Mac. You might be wondering why you would need such an application, sinse every Mac now comes with Exposé. This is a common misunderstanding, because Witch makes application switching flawless, while Exposé gives the user an unorganized thumbnail view of all their open applications.

Witch enables every user to customize the interface, hot keys, and behaviors of Witch, in the system preferences. Witch is also very easy to use. After you have set-up your hot keys, you can start using Witch immediately. Witch runs in the background until you hit your designated hot key. When you do so, a small window will pop up with all of your open applications. This makes is easy to select the window or file that you would like to switch to and continue your work.

Witch Panel

Witch Preferences

After I had downloaded Witch, I installed it and set my hot keys. With flawless ease, I was able to switch between any of my open applications. Witch is an extremely fast application and makes Exposé look slow and cluttered.

The best thing about Witch is that it’s completely free. If you enjoy Witch as much as I did, I would recommend donating some cash to the developers.

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7 Comment(s)

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Techslacker said on

May 29th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

Witch is a great solution for people like me who believe Apple’s method of switching apps and documents is flawed.

And, yes, I strongly believe that. Expose sorely needs the ability to select apps that have no windows open. That method with a CMD-Tab solution like Witch would be perfect.

The biggest downside to Witch though is that it’s actually not fast unless you’re not doing much on your system. Sure, I’m running on an older 1.33 12″ Powerbook with 1.25GB of ram. If there’s anything going on stressing the system a bit, you’ll notice quickly that Apple’s current CMD-Tab solution is much, much quicker than Witch. Witch gets a bit laggy. I still use it for its convenience but I could see people getting put off by how slow it is. I’m guessing it’s paging out when not in use and back in when called.

A. R. said on

May 29th, 2007 at 10:27 pm

I might be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure Witch is donantionware, which is not free.

Nathaniel Perales said on

May 30th, 2007 at 4:32 am

I agree with most of your review, but honestly Witch is definitely not as fat as the cmd+tab that comes with the mac. I actually got so sick of Witch (after using it for 8 months regorously) that last night I deleted the application from my system preferences and deleted the application enhancer that disables cmd+tab. I just couldn’t stand how slow it is.

Yes, my Powerbook is a G4 and only 1.5GHz, but come on, it is definitely not strikingly fast as you make it seem. I have to literally wait 2 to 5 seconds for it to come up. It takes longer than actually moving my mouse to the dock and clicking what I want.

I also disagree that it makes expose look slow and cluttered. I use expose as my primary application switcher.

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Trevor said on

May 30th, 2007 at 6:45 am

I’m a much more visual person so I prefer to see thumbnails of all my windows. Aside from that, Witch is a very nicely done app for people looking for something like Alt+Tab in Windows. I must say it has a lot better layout than Alt+Tab.

MrSIn said on

May 30th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

I don’t think about “Witch.” I just use it, daily. I’m thinking this is the best compliment, or recommendation, I can give an application?

Matt J said on

June 1st, 2007 at 11:11 am

I tried running it on my Mini Core Solo, but it’s just too slow to be of any use. ⌘-tab is near instant, but Witch takes several seconds.

Jorge said on

October 17th, 2007 at 9:35 am

I know its been said before, I just thought I’d chip in as well. Two words. Too Slow.

I’ve got a 1st rev MBP with 2 gigs of ram. That should be MORE than sufficient to invoke this app near instantaneously. When someone is task switching, they are multitasking, which probably means they have a short attention span (at least that’s my case :P).

I just use Quicksilver as my task switcher/launcher/swiss-army-knife-of-configurable-goodness. Even with all the UI enhancements turned on with QS its still way faster than witch.

Jorge
Quicksilver Evangelist