Atom CLI triggers OS X Sierra native tabs

[moeriki]

Prerequisites

• Can you reproduce the problem in safe mode?
• Are you running the latest version of Atom?
• Did you check the debugging guide?
• Did you check the FAQs on Discuss?
• Are you reporting to the correct repository?
• Did you perform a cursory search to see if your bug or enhancement is already reported?

For more information on how to write a good bug report or enhancement request, see the CONTRIBUTING guide.

Description

When opening a second atom window from the CLI it triggers OS X Sierra native tabs in some case(s?). I could reproduce this in safe mode and after a factory-defaults reset.

This may or may not be an Electron issue though I could not produce it in another Electron app.

Steps to Reproduce

1. have a 2 monitor setup
2. open terminal (iTerm in my case) full screen on monitor 2
3. in terminal cd to any project
4. in terminal atom .
5. atom opens on monitor 1 (instance 1)
6. put instance 1 in OS X fullscreen mode if it is not and keep it in foreground on monitor 1
7. in terminal cd to any other project
8. in terminal atom .

Expected behavior: Atom opens instance 2 in a second window (fullscreen optional)

Actual behavior: instance 2 opens in a native tab

Work-around: in step 6, make sure atom is nowhere in foreground

Notes: AFAIK issue could not be produced with one monitor, considering you need atom in fullscreen foreground to trigger this issue. If you have a terminal that can overlay your fullscreen Atom I'm guessing you can also produce this issue.

Versions

macOS Sierra 10.12 GM

Atom    : 1.10.2
Electron: 0.37.8
Chrome  : 49.0.2623.75
Node    : 5.10.0

[moeriki]

Fixed it.

System Preferences > Dock > Prefer tabs when opening documents > manually (default is In fullscreen mode)

[thomasjo]

@zcbenz Can we prevent this functionality entirely, regardless of the user's system preferences setting?

[danielbayley]

Maybe there should be an option to replace Atom tabs with the native tabs? There are already a few UI themes that try to emulate them anyway; of course, then the behaviour would have to be switched to managing documents rather than windows…

[zcbenz]

@thomasjo There should be a way to disable it completely, but I will need to read Apple's documentation first.

Refs electron/electron#6124.

[Ben3eeE]

@zcbenz Heads up, correct ref is electron/electron#6124 I believe.

[thomasjo]

@Ben3eeE Hehe, I literally just edited his comment with the correct link 😄

[davibe]

I love this behaviour and i consider it a feature. I like to be able to finally open multiple projects in the same window and have sub-tabs for each of them. I don't need to struggle with multiple windows if i don't want to (i understand the multiple screen thing). I think Atom should support native tabs by adding menu items and shortcuts to cycle through them (I can only use the mouse at the moment).

[kevinsawicki]

This is being addressed in electron/electron#7415

[miketamis]

This "randomly" happened to me, and it was really awesome, but then I couldn't figure out how to get into it again. I google how to get into it only to find this ticket. While I agree its a bug an should be fix, I think should be an easy way to get into it if it is what you want. (makes alt-tabbing to Atom so much nicer, because you keep all your atoms under the same window)

[intemperie]

+1 for keeping it as a feature. As @davibe said, it's very useful to support this really nice system feature. Let the user decide whatever they want :)