I used to be a big user of tiling window managers but, more recently, I’ve discovered that the workflow of something like Moom is nicer in more situations.
Is there an equivalent for Linux?
Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
31–40 of 131 posts
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#32I used to be a heavy user of i3. It's very flexible and configurable, and you can do much more than just moving windows. But after I switched to Mac, I couldn't find a tiling window manager that was both feature-rich and stable. After trying several options, I just use Rectangle[1]. It's not a window manager; it only provides shortcuts for window placements like simply moving windows to left/right/top/bottom or split…
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Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#33Having just gone through really yak shaving Aerospace into a spot that I'm happy with, I'm curious how folks on here manage having so many overlapping keyboard shortcuts? Maybe it's just me, but I want to map to many things to some combination of hjkl just for the ergonomics... Aerospace's modal feature sort helps solve that shortcut conflict... How are others dealing with this?
I did something similar. I use Karabiner and I mapped the right Option key on my external keyboard to Option+Shift (A1), and right Control key to Control+Option+Shift (A2). I've configured Aerospace such that if I want to change focus, I use `A1 + hjkl` to move the focus around, and if I want to move windows around, I use `A2 + hjkl`. I use `A1 + ui` to switch workspaces, and `A2+ui` to move windows between workspaces. For shifting focus between monitors its `A1+m,` and moving between them `A2 + m,`
By far these are the shortcuts I use most often and if there are apps with conflicting shortcuts, I change those to something else. I haven't thought about it much but I'm sure I can extend this pattern further for better ergonomics. It works great so far.
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#34There got a lot of tiling window manager for macOS. People create another and another and another new ones.
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#35This might not be sufficient for a lot of folks and I do notice sometimes a bit of struggle here and there, but for someone like me who mostly uses one widnow at a time on the Mac, or two screens when I have a external monitor setup along wiht my laptop, this thing kinda does it for me (but then I have never been a heavy "tiling" user at all) – https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mchl9674d0b0/...
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#36Having just gone through really yak shaving Aerospace into a spot that I'm happy with, I'm curious how folks on here manage having so many overlapping keyboard shortcuts? Maybe it's just me, but I want to map to many things to some combination of hjkl just for the ergonomics... Aerospace's modal feature sort helps solve that shortcut conflict... How are others dealing with this?
I tried Aerospace but the default was to map all alt keys to 26 different workspaces, eradicating all the built in emacs-like key shortcuts available in every app.
That plus there's zero tutorial on the basic key mapping, just a bunch commands and no hints about where to look for how to use it...
It is the most hostile piece of software I have encountered in years and I just spend the past few weeks mucking with sway and hyprland on Linux, and mucking in Linux bootloaders so that I can enter the disk encryption password both by serial port and the physical keyboard.
So I solved it by deleting aerospace and waiting to try a different rolling window manager, which will be Rift. I suspect in the end I'll just write my own tiling window manager. It certainly seems like there's one for every person who has ever had the whim to do so...
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#37I wanted to build my own window manager at some point, but was quickly scared away by the lack of a proper API on MacOS. You basically need to hack your way around it by using the accessibility API instead. I see this project uses Objective C bindings and the accessibility API and am wondering how easy it was to debug, write features and what kind of tooling was used for this.
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#38I have been using aerospace which provides very similar window managing to i3 and so far I have had no issues. I personally don't like the animations or the typical "ricing". Installing random, unmaintained software just for the looks sounds extremely reckless to me
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#39Having just gone through really yak shaving Aerospace into a spot that I'm happy with, I'm curious how folks on here manage having so many overlapping keyboard shortcuts? Maybe it's just me, but I want to map to many things to some combination of hjkl just for the ergonomics... Aerospace's modal feature sort helps solve that shortcut conflict... How are others dealing with this?
They’re not, is the impression I get. I usually run into a shortcut conflict within the first few minutes of actual day-to-day use.
I switched to Aerospace about a year ago. I hide everything behind a leader key: alt+space. That brings me into Aerospace’s normal mode. I have a few alt-shortcuts there for quick access: e.g. alt-{hjkl} for moving between panes. But most things are in a dedicated mode. I have a ‘go-to’ mode and a ‘move-to’ mode. Once in either mode, pressing any letter or number will go to/move a pane to space corresponding to the letter/number. So for instance, if I want to move my terminal to space ‘t’ then I type `alt+space g t`. To move to the space I type `alt+space m t`.
I’ve been enjoying this setup because it feels like a natural extension of my terminal setup: zellij/tmux with leader key ctrl+space and helix (also modal) inside.
One thing I constantly struggle with in Aerospace, though, is its tendency to keep windows hidden after switching screens. You have to hunt for them in the bottom-right corner and just hope you can drag them back into view.
Re: Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also I am wondering if you could estimate how difficult it would be to implement something like Niri? I much prefer the scrolling style tiling, but none of the MacOS WMs seem to be going that route (other than PaperWM.spoon which is not for me).
to answer both comments: i've been working on a way to handle tabs but it's hard to find a solution that isn't half-baked due to the lack of info on tabs given by the os (there are no events or anything, just on a11y attribute that give info on tabs) as for a scrolling layout, its possible, but does not fit that well with rifts layout, even thought you can get something similar using trackpad swipes to switch between…
Aerospace readme says they have a solution for tabs in mind based on their big refactor.
Haven’t looked into what this looks like, but understandable that it hasn’t made its way to rift yet. I will be trying out rift and report any issues on Github.