It would be great if the menu bar icon showed the current layout and screen

[ldeck]

To know what the current layout is you have a few options as I understand it:

1. open the menu bar icon > layouts to see which one is selected
2. cycle layouts via keyboard shortcut
3. switch screens back n forth
4. others?

But nothing I've seen tells me 'now' without an action what the current layout is. It would be great if the menu bar icon itself showed this. (This might be a preference opted in)

Similarly, to know what the current space is you need to perform an action. The cherry on top would be to show the current space number as well. There are other menu bar icons people can install for this like this, but given that Amethyst provides functionality to switch screens, it seems like it's relevant context to its own icon.

WDYT?

[ianyh]

I'm not sure this is a road I want to go down. Every status bar icon already takes up precious real estate, and there's a shortcut for checking the layout mod1 + i by default.

[ldeck]

Thanks for the reply and the pointer to the shortcut for checking the layout.
That does help, though it naturally requires performing an action, as mentioned, to see it rather than a quick glance to a known location on the screen.

To your point about precious real estate, I understand. At the moment, however, the Amethyst icon remains static, so my assumption was that for it to show the current layout as an icon (or text, depending on the user's preference) in place of the logo icon would not take up more real estate than asked for.

When switching back n forth between, say, 16 macOS screens... it's not always the case that the current layout is what you're on the lookout for at the exact point in time of switching screens. A quick glance whilst doing something else would be possible, though, if the icon was able to show it (as an opt-in, of course) without having to divert your typing to a keyboard shortcut.

Nevertheless, it was a nice to have. I can see, given that a shortcut exists and preferences for notifications when changing screens, that this would not be a very high priority even if it could be shown to be useful. It would likely require a fair amount of effort and UX to define icons that would distinguish all the various layouts defined, particularly custom ones.

Thanks again!