Hi Francis, what’s the name of the plug-in?
It’s called custom toolbar editor, when you install it, it won’t be on the extensions or view menu it’s on the tools, almost at the end.
I would say that there never was a more useless thread on the forums.
5 years of comments on this topic and…crickets from devs and not a single change in the UI.
No changes and no communication are apparently the evidence for a lack of any intention to address the core user base concerns.
There are certainly solutions. One of the simplest was one users mention of Apple Pages/Numbers. Side mounted tool panel fly out with top tabs for different types of tools. Blender has a unified UI for PC and Mac and have “workspaces”, areas, and regions and a right side panel with vertical tabs to distinguish tool types.
And the idea that a unified UI would please some and not others is a mute point in my mind. I would gladly be unhappy with some things in an actual unified solution to this problem rather than continuing to be frustrated with no progress or updates.
In Windows SketchUp 2023 the devs converted the UI to use the Qt framework instead of native Windows framework. Qt is portable across multiple OS, and other than unifying SketchUp across platforms, I can’t think of a reason to do this. So, hopefully conversion of Mac OS will follow. Perhaps even a Linux port?
Of course, the windows conversion has not been free of issues. The devs may be proceeding carefully.
fingers crossed, that’s the plan. translating the old UI in QT then when it’s all running fine, porting it to mac os.
an unified UI would be good. I’m also half expecting the mac’s UI to go borrow ideas from the ipad one within the next few years. no rumor, nothing, just would not be surprised if they did it.
So just to keep this fun thread alive…
Keep waking up every day to this fun Mac UI insanity. No matter what I try in the actual UI, this condition remains diligently present to assail my senses with consternation at startup or a bug-splat restart. A floating panel that should be on my 2nd screen and 4 plugins floating around that I always have to turn off…always…which means “every-single-day”!
My flat headed nature, or maybe my narrow-minded blindness can not work out why this behavior is acceptable to developers. Can anyone help me with this? Any staff members?
Is this considered quality workmanship in the software development community?
I hate that Im reduced to confrontation and subtle mockery. Why can’t we just get some answers and fixes to this issue that are within the UI?
My Mac isn’t that glitchy… have your turned off the extension tool pallets and tried doing a ‘save workspace’ (or whatever it is called)?
Regarding the second monitor - the only panel I have that does what your scene panel does is my entity info - but it is like 1/15 times I have to reset my screens.
Have you tried the Mac extension I suggested? Makes my life so much easier.
this one is on the extension developers. I have a pair of extensions with the same behaviour, unless I turn them off, they will always pop a launch. I read several times on this forum that this is actually a parameter the extension devs can add, hence only a few of them popping up.
On some of them, it’s actually worth it contacting the dev and telling them. one of my popping toolbar is from an obsolete plugin (last update, 2018). in this case, no solution.
that one is on apple’s guidelines. You see, on mac, you have the impression that panels and toolbars can go wherever they want. but that’s not true. there is an invisible area where, at launch, everything is supposed to be contained. If you leave a toolbar or a panel a bit too low or slightly outside of the screen, it’ll move to a “safe area”.
more about it here.
The guy at apple in charge of deciding how windows should behave regarding safe zones at launch. or the guy with the power of deciding when mac’s version will finally get harmonized. these two guys can solve it.
as long as SU UI obeys Apple’s guidelines, and Apple guidelines behave this way with windows and safe zone, you’ll have this.
don’t agree…no plugin should publish if it doesn’t meet Sketchup UI standards…None.
Plugin UI’s are all over the place and some are garish and obtrusive and Sketchup does nothing about it.
Not sure that is what is happening here. I have my second monitor laid out with all the panels. I moved this last week for a zoom meeting and then left the computer after the meeting. Came back. Put the panel back in place on the 2nd monitor where it normally sits and has sat for over year. Shut down at the end of the day. Next morning it shows up where it was in the image. Now it always loads there. ???
Disagree with the first comment…totally agree with the second. This is not a Mac issue. As I have stated in other posts and further up on this one, there is plenty of precedent for Apps that are PC/Mac. Adobe, Blender, AutoCAD are just a few that I can mention. Adobe and Blender in particular have unified UI’s with no floating panels or complaints about Apple’s UI behavior.
Just a horribly random guess here…could it be that there is no solution as currently written in the code and it would take a full rebuild of both Sketchup and Layout to solve the myriad issues pointed out that get no love or attention?
Seems like the love and attention is going to iPad, Trimble Drawings, Trimble Drive.
I absolutely love Sketchup, and the modeling UX is wonderful. But the floating pallets are notoriously bad and won’t anchor in one spot on the screen. Furthermore there’s not a single app on my Mac that has toolbars and window pallets that don’t have a docking option, except for Sketchup and Layout.
In the 90s and early 2000s, Apple did use floating toolbars and pallets as part of its core user experience, but in 2004 they really began abandoning them with haste (most noticeably with the transition from AppleWorks/ClarisWorks to iWork). By macOS Tiger (2005), they were rare, and when Snow Leopard came out in 2009, I think floating toolbars were more endangered than snow-leopards themselves.
I never thought I would showcase Adobe’s creative suite as an example of good design, they do one thing well: they have the option to switch between floating toolbars and pallets, and a unified application window. See below (both are Adobe Photoshop, both are the same version, just with a different view setting):
I would be okay—or more content—if Sketchup’s pallets would stay in one place, but they frequently break apart into small floating chunks and randomly snap to each other in a totally different order when expanding and collapsing their view.
I totally understand that certain people prefer the way Macs were before OSX, but for the majority of users who haven’t used “Classic” MacOS 7, 8, or 9, we are not accustomed to having floating toolbars. Some compromise would really be nice, even if that was just a way to anchor the pallets in place.
Below are examples of professional apps that I rely on, none of which use make floating pallets standard.
Vectorworks
Sketch
Affinity Publisher
Linearity Curve:
Pages:
Love this reply!
Like the real world examples of other modern platforms.
Im hoping, after Sketchup delivered the performance boosts to Layout, that they will focus some energy (read: money) on this issue and give the users a true customizable UI with panel anchoring that makes sense, fixed panel options, saved setups for different types of platforms (desk in an office with three monitors vs. on the road with a laptop.
Thanks for the Apple history as well. Always good to have that background.
That’s exactly right. I love modeling in Sketchup, but I hate the interface so much !
The floating palettes are unbearable and never stay where they should. The worst is when i plug in or unplug my macbook pro from my studio displays : the palettes are completely disorganized and go anywhere because of the change in screen size.
I think it would be a good idea for Trimble to follow the example of other well-developed Mac software such as Affinity or Apple’s iWork suite.
Well said. The mac UX is extremely outdated and positively archaic.
The windows version was never great on this front but actually really improved (at least visually) in SU24. However, I have just moved back into the mac world after about 5 years and it my first response has been shock at the jarringly bad UX on the side menus and lack of customisability.
I use a huge range of free and paid 3D & CAD softwares and I’m always sad at how underdeveloped & feature-lite Sketchup’s UX is compared to more or less any other program I use.
Can we hope that the mac version will also receive a similar rethink & update in the near future?
Bingo! No professional software I’ve used in the last decade treats tools like this, and it is such a departure from macOS itself that it feels foreign to those of us who have used the platform from the beginning.
Likewise, I use a huge range of paid design, photo, video and layout software that elicits the same reaction: how is sketchup so behind when every other piece of software I’ve seen can manage this with seeming ease?
Be patient: reportedly one of the motives for converting the Windows versions to the Qt GUI library was to unify the code base across the two OS. Due to its differences, this may be harder, hence take longer, on Mac.
Patience is good for sure. If what you say is true, why doesnt someone from SU say that - at least we’d know it was being addressed. Right now, it feels like were being ignored…
Trimble has a long-standing policy to not discuss their plans.
they kinda have. several times since the framework change last year SU employees implied what slbaumgartner said. it’s not just speculation on his part.
and yeah, big companies tend not to talk about what they’re working on.
Just switching from big heavy handed BIM tools to SketchUp, which I absolutely am falling in love with SketchUp, but thought this thread was fun to read and resonated a ton.
The palettes and windows and chaos that happens with SketchUp is unbelievable for my brain, no other professional or normal program on my Mac has works this way.
Hoping they figure out what’s going on and make it so you dock palettes.
My trick for now is just CMD+H to Hide SketchUp instead of quitting the program, that way everything stays where I’ve left it and this seems to be making things more calm and predictable on my side 
