Full Screen (Premium)

Switching regularly between the Mac and Windows 11 over the past few weeks, I’m struck by a familiar juxtaposition. I love the Mac’s full-screen mode, and how well it works with touchpad gestures, but it integrates awkwardly with apps that aren’t running full-screen and works inconsistently with the system’s other multitasking features. And I very much prefer the logical and efficient multitasking features in Windows 11 though there’s no true full-screen mode per se, and the touchpad gestures are at the mercy of hardware quality.

Previous to macOS Tahoe, I would use a handful of free and paid utilities to fix some of the major issues with multitasking on that platform. But after clean installing macOS Tahoe recently, I confirmed that even the latest version of macOS doesn’t solve one curious inconsistency with full-screen apps: Yes, the menu bar is transparent by default now, but when you hide it, it still leaves behind an empty black bar in its place. Full-screen apps on the Mac are never really full-screen.

But I discovered something else while testing macOS in this configuration: I miss seeing the time display. This is one of those things you don’t think about explicitly until it’s not available anymore. And each time I hid the macOS menu bar, I ended up re-displaying it. I can pretty much live with it being hidden otherwise–you can display it by mousing up to the top edge of the screen–but I always miss seeing the time, go figure.

Windows implemented a true full-screen mode for Windows 8, and it was nice for staying focused. But the Metro apps and Start screen that were exclusive to it proved unpopular. And so Microsoft moved back to a more traditional desktop-style interface with floating and full-screen app windows instead.

Today in Windows 11, you can hide the Taskbar, but that’s about as close as we get to a universal full-screen mode on the platform: With this change, any maximized app literally does display using the entire screen. And a few apps, mostly web browsers, do support a true full-screen mode that’s usually toggled by typing Alt + F11. And because this is Windows, you can Alt + Tab between any open apps and windows, regardless of them being full-screen, maximized, or floating windows. This works consistently, and it’s a nice advantage over the Mac.

Windows also supports the same basic touchpad gestures as the Mac, so you can do things like swipe three fingers left and right to switch between apps (windows), swipe three fingers up to view all available windows (Task view), and swipe three fingers down to view the desktop. The problem here is that I often have to disable three finger touchpad gestures in Windows because most PC laptops have inferior touchpads that don’t work as well as is the case with the Mac. That’s a shame, but at least Alt + Tab still works properly.

When you hide the Taskbar, you also hide the time/date display in the system tray. And so I have the same issue as I do on the Mac: I miss seeing the time, and I don’t realize how frequently I use that feature until I hide it. There are UI features you can hide on the Taskbar like Widgets, Search, and Task view that still work with keyboard shortcuts, but if you hide the Taskbar, all you can do is tap Start or use a Taskbar-based keyboard shortcut to see the time.

This was disappointing to me because when I use a laptop, I use most apps maximized in Windows–the big exception being File Explorer. And I really like how hiding the Taskbar gives you back some vertical on-screen space. It makes the typical 16:10 display panels we see today feel taller and more productive.

If Windows supported desktop widgets like the Mac–and like Windows used to, speaking of features that have come and gone–I might learn to live with a Clock widget, as I could quickly toggle “Show desktop” by tapping WINKEY + D. But that’s not a thing, of course. Plus, it’s still not ideal. It would be better if I could just display the time all the time, on top of whatever apps and windows were there on-screen. Surely, such a thing exists.

Well, such a thing does exist.

With a bit of Googling, I found a utility called DS Clock that does the trick nicely. It’s free, has some nice customization capabilities, and meets my needs. And though it’s an x64 app, it works fine on Windows 11 on Arm. There is, however, one downside: I don’t believe this app is updated or supported anymore, and all I can find online are third-party download links. So it’s possible I will find myself looking for an alternative at some point.

Until that day, DS Clock does what I want. I customize it to display in a minimalist fashion, with a basic time and date display in a reasonable font. And I disable its sound and reminder features. It runs at startup and it lets me see the time (and date) at basically anytime. The only exception being when the app I’m using clashes with the time/date color scheme I chose or if there’s some on-screen UI that makes it difficult to see.

I’m still playing with my preferred placement: You can move DS Clock around the screen as needed, of course, and I go back and forth on keeping near the top of the screen, where it might sit over an app’s title bar, and keeping it near the bottom of the screen, where it might sit over the area where the Taskbar normally is.

Neither is ideal. Some apps, like web browsers, have lots of UI all over the top part of their windows (for tabs, in that case). Some apps likewise have busy status bars or other UI at the bottom of the window. So I keep experimenting.

Still, it’s better than not having the time. And I find myself gravitating to this full-screen experience in Windows 11 more and more. It’s not truly full-screen, of course. But close enough.

All I needed was a little time.