My "favourite" (/s) feature is windows that _stick_ on top of others. Like, some updater for some app that just stays on top of other windows even without having the focus.
Oh, and all these times where a running program doesn't want to be focused. I run my shortcut to focus it, nothing. I type its name in spotlight, nothing. I click its icon in the dock, magic, it gets into focus!
Or when the dock doesn't hide away as it should but just stays there for unknown reasons.
> My "favourite" (/s) feature is windows that _stick_ on top of others. Like, some updater for some app that just stays on top of other windows even without having the focus.
Then in Apple's infinite wisdom, doesn't let you manually set a window to be always on top - one of my most missed features from Gnome, KDE, and even Windows has it with PowerToys.
I love my macbook's hardware, but macOS has to be one of the most frustrating operating systems I've ever used.
Agree to both points. The UI part of macOS is trash, and there are a few times I'd like to have kept a window on top but couldn't despite the random updaters and reminders doing it without asking.
I just wrote a "program" (ok, tiny utility) that behaves like you describe, but don't worry, it's for my personal use so you you won't have to deal with it :)
(i run it when I have an image in the clipboard and it shows an always-on-top window with that image. i can drag it around but it doesn't take focus. it's so on my single monitor setup (aka laptop on the couch) I can take a snapshot of something and then easily reference it in a maximized/semi-fullscreen application). I honestly mostly wrote it to see how fiddly winapi stuff from rust is but I actually end up using it a bunch)
I see where Wayland is coming from but I've come around to preferring the chaos of every app getting to do whatever it wants over hoping that various compositors are willing to support some obscure special case some app or other might want. Like, it sucks if apps are misbehaving but it sucks more if you can't reasonably fix an app to behave like you want it at all.
I actually really like the AmigaOS way. Where all windows have this behaviour. In fact, bringing something to the foreground is an explicit action. Sounds weird, but it allows you to, for example, drag something from a background window to the foreground one, or have a background window in focus.
For the first thing:
Right click the titlebar (or left-click the icon at the left corner thereof) -> M_ore Actions -> uncheck "Keep A_bove Others".
Personally I activate it quite frequently, e.g. to keep a small text editor or terminal open in front of a maximized browser window for reference.