Stage Manager first impressions

Ever since Stage Manager was demoed at WWDC 2022, I’ve been keen to give it a go. The idea of grouping windows by project, task or any other theme is really attractive to me and it looked like it did just that.

In the months leading up to the release of macOS Ventura, Stage Manager has received a largely negative reaction in the coverage I’ve seen. I suspect that’s mostly because of the myriad Stage Manager issues in iPadOS.

But I’ve been using it over the last few days and I’m pretty into it.

Stage Manager vs Spaces

Years ago, I tried Spaces. That kind of worked, but I didn’t like zapping between screens. That was particularly annoying if I opened an app forgetting it was in a different Space as I’d find myself whisked away from what I was doing.

(This may have changed since I last used Spaces – apologies for any mischaracterisations here.)

To me, Stage Manager feels like a more manageable and flexible version of Spaces. There’s no desktop-wide transition and, if you happen to open an app forgetting it’s in a different Stage, it’s easy to visually move the app or reorganise your Stages.

Spaces are relatively flexible, but the setup always felt a bit more fixed, not least as apps could be set to specific Spaces. Stage Manager seems more ephemeral: set up a Stage that you need right now and close it when you’re done. Or don’t.

Workflow options

I particularly like that apps with multiple windows (i.e. browsers) can have windows in different Stages. That gives a real flexibility to how Stages are grouped: they can be hyper-focused to a specific task/project or more general (i.e. a productivity Stage).

Now if the Notes app could open multiple windows, that would be very handy...

I also just discovered that making a window full-width in Stage Manager causes the sidebar to move off-screen. It then reveals on-hover, like the Dock can, which makes for an interesting use case on smaller screens.

All-in-all, I’m enjoying Stage Manager so far and would recommend giving it a go, particularly if you’ve tried Spaces previously and didn’t quite get on with it. Stage Manager definitely won’t be for everyone, but it’s good that Apple continue to over multiple workflows without forcing a specific technique on their users.