I don't know why I never picked up on this before, but WHY is it not possible switch between Chrome Windows in OSX with a keyboard short cut? Now, before you start firing off the glib 'command + ` ' or 'control + `' answer. Consider this: I KNOW it's blasphemy to some to compare OSX to Windows, but I have both, and It is not unusual for me to have multiple Chrome browser Windows open at any one time.
The essential keyboard shortcuts ('hot keys') available in Google Chrome on the Mac OSX operating system.
On Microsoft Windows, if I do an 'Alt+Tab'. Windows will faithfully switch between ALL windows. Regardless of the application! If I have 25 separate chrome windows, It will tab through all 25 chrome windows! This is NOT the case in OSX (I JUST updated to 10.13.5 today). Even if I multiple chrome windows open, CMD+Tab will only find one chrome one Chrome instance!
The only way to get to the other window(s) is to Mouse to it in the nav bar! There are Plenty of ways to switch between multiple tabs within one Chrome window, but NO Shortcut to switch between windows! Does anyone know a way around this? Is this a shortcoming of Google Chrome? I just spent 1/2 an hour trying to find an answer to this. I'm surprised I haven't found an answer!
But you see the pain in the ass kludginess of this. Lets imagine I have 2 or more Chrome windows I would like to quickly access for reference. And I want to switch between them and another application with one keystroke. But no no noooo! You have to do One keystroke to switch applications, then do another (possibly more) keystrokes to get to the other window!
MS Windows figured this out Eons ago!!! Most GUI's for Linux I have seen have key commands for this also. I KNOW it's blasphemy to some to compare OSX to Windows, but I have both Having both still doesn't justify expecting the two Loss to work the same way. Windows might well create your separate Chrome windows as separate application instances in the application switcher. But macOS will treat them as windows/tabs of a single application for the purposes of the UI (simpler for the typical user to deal with), even though in the Unix background each browser tab or window actually might be separate processes.
Therefore macOS will only show the application in the application switcher, and not the windows. That is why you are going to get the answer to Command-Tab to the application and then Command-` to the window you want. Many Mac users have wanted to be able to see multiple application windows in the application switcher. For them, and for you,.
Apple will probably not change the behavior of the macOS Application Switcher, but at least you can hack it with Witch. Ok, I'll look for Witch (perfect name by the way! Black magic is apparently a solution for chronic OSX ailments! ) This is a particularly annoying problem for troubleshooting and developing in HTML/Javascript and switching between a text editor (my new choice is VsCode) and multiple windows of Chrome! I spend the majority of my time on my Windows 10 PC (mostly because its a big beefy monster desktop fortified Tank!).
You still have the necessity to use a different key combination to switch between tabs on One Chrome window, but I find that the solution (on MS Windows) is to just separate a tab into its own window if I want to simply Alt-Tab back and forth with one keystroke. It seems surprising to me, that Mac, which has always prided itself on it's design and simplicity of use requires such a painful combination of key combination steps to simply switch to a different window. I find it somewhat astonishing that they have not managed to find a solution to this by this time! It seems surprising to me, that Mac, which has always prided itself on it's design and simplicity of use requires such a painful combination of key combination steps to simply switch to a different window. I find it somewhat astonishing that they have not managed to find a solution to this by this time! It just occurred to me that Apple does have another way to do this that they probably consider more 'simple' and 'user-friendly' than the application switcher keyboard shortcut. It's Mission Control.
You hit the Mission Control shortcut key, and all windows are laid out before you. You just click the one you want, and you're done.
Application windows are displayed separately, so they're all there. I know, it's not perfect because there doesn't seem to be a way to pick a window with the keyboard, you always have to grab the mouse. And it is sometimes hard to pick out the right browser window if several look similar, because window titles are not displayed. If those are deal breakers then Witch is still the answer.
Apple probably believes Mission Control is the primary shortcut for picking out a specific application window. And I would agree, because it is more visual and it is known that only power users are interested in learning keyboard shortcuts like Command-Tab. Even though I use Mac 99% and Windows 1% of the time, I use Ctrl-Tab on Windows yet have run into Windows users who did not even know the Ctrl-Tab app switcher was there. (One time I was at a computer lab where all the PCs were in use except the one with a broken mouse.
I walked up to that one and managed to send a couple emails. Another Windows user asked me how I did that.they did not know you could Alt through Windows menus with the keyboard). Because people in general don't want to go through the rote learning of keyboard shortcuts. Actually, errr. Slight correction.
On a PC it's 'Alt-Tab' to switch apps, not Ctrl-app. The Alt key is where the CMD tab is on a PC keyboard. I think on PC Ctrl-TAB is used within Chrome to switch tabs. It's app specific. Surprisingly, Ctrl-Tab does not have a standard usage in Windows. The 'Ctrl' key is in exactly the same place in both OS's.
Which often screws with my brain when I switch from PC to Mac. I can't tell you HOW many times I have done a 'ctrl-C' to copy something only to curse shortly afterwards when 'ctrl-v' doesn't work!!!!:P. No correction needed, I just tested it and you're right, it doesn't display minimized windows. Technically it does display them, because if the Dock is hidden the Dock will be temporarily shown and it of course has the icons of all minimized windows in there and you can click one to open right away like anything else in Mission Control; but practically, you're still right because it's a lot harder to tell the difference between windows when you can only see the minimized icons.
Which lets the advantage remain with Witch.