Judging by public reactions, this is not a popular perspective, but I, for one, am grateful that Stage Manager exists, and I use it almost exclusively. To be clear, I only use it on macOS and don’t go near it on an iPad as it is not fit for purpose on that platform, sadly.

On the Mac, it is a tool that I use to help me with distractions, helping me concentrate on the task at hand and avoiding the distractions of the constantly updating timelines, documents open that require edits, or the myriad of other distractions presented by modern computer interfaces.

With ADHD, it is a constant battle to stay on track and to keep enough focus on the current task alone, that any assistance is helpful. For me at least.

It is not without its problems, however. Some applications don’t behave well. Excel is a good example. If you have two workbooks open in two different Stages, operations like undo jarringly flip you to the other stage and the undo is ignored completely. I’m sure that Microsoft are totally on top of this, and it’ll get fixed in about ten to twenty… years!

For now, I’m sticking with it and I turn it off now and again when I don’t have the need to focus as much.

While I think of it, one good example of this is when I present. Presentations don’t sit well with Stage Manager and simply and quickly turning it off makes the presentation work fine.

There are other improvements that could be made, like remembering groups of apps between sessions and reboots. I’d like to be able to designate what goes with what in which Stage to always open the apps concerned like that.

As I said, in defence of Stage Manager.

17 March 2025 — French West Indies