I'm the Amethyst developer. I'm happy to answer any questions people have. I'm hopping on a cross-country plane flight in about an hour, but I have a layover. I'll try get back to people as soon as I can.
Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
31–40 of 108 posts
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#32I posted this yesterday in the thread about the Rust-written window manager, but it's relevant here as well. There are plenty of apps that provide varying levels of window-manager functionality to OS X. I would try a couple out and see which feels right to you. I have tried most of them, and personally prefer Moom. http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://ianyh.com/amethyst/ http://spectacleapp.com…
Minus Mjolnir, I've tried the rest and still prefer Slate[1] but it hasn't been updated since Feb 2013. Actually I had never heard of Mjolnir before now. I like Slate's ability to define a config file that is just a little more powerful than the competition, plus it's easy to sync across machines. I haven't updated to Yosemite, but Slate works wonderfully on Mavericks. [1]: https://github.com/jigish/slate
Mjolnir might still be worth trying. I'm not sure how you got Slate to work with Mavericks, but Mjolnir is very similar, under active development, and has Lua instead of JS as its scripting language.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#33Am I the only weirdo who just uses multiple workspaces with ctrl-arrow and cmd-tab like a mad man? I genuinely enjoy it, especially with a second monitor. I, maybe, have one or two apps sharing a single workspace. Most apps are in full screen.
You are not. :) I don't usually use full screen mode for apps when my Macbook Pro is docked, but when I'm just using the laptop screen it's ended up being surprisingly useful. (At least I was surprised.) Docked I'm usually only using two virtual desktops, sometimes three.
Mission Control gets slagged on more than it deserves -- it's fast and functional. On point for the actual link to Amethyst: I use Moom for window resizing/control from the keyboard, but in practice the mouse is actually pretty darn efficient when what I want is to make a window this big and put it over there.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who told you that? You could do it with just applescript if you wanted to, just need to enable accessibility so you can control windows and the mouse.
I've seen this "limitation" mentioned in various online forums, such as the following. "Mac OS X interface and ergonomy is (as said by apple) not 'compatible' with the focus-follow mouse mode. Why ? Because a single application interface is split into lots of different elements. For exemple, you use an application like photoshop or word, you'll have different panels floating around the main window. With sloppy focus…
One trick I use to get around the "move mouse over another application in the direction of the menu bar and loose focus" problem is to use MondoMouse, it also adds focus follows mouse but with a configurable timeout. You can also configure a shortcut to focus the application menu, i think the default is F2.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#35I've been using Amethyst as my WM for a couple months now, and have used XMonad for significant stretches in the past. Amethyst tries to bring the XMonad experience to OSX. I think it does an admirable job, but there are some distinctions. Amethyst is simpler to set up, and is more forgiving to newcomers. It has a GUI for configuration, and an easily accessible list of commands. It also works on top of OSX's WM, so i…
It is also very buggy around fullscreen apps, enough so that I stopped using it after a week. Slate et al worked much better for me (still slower than TWMs on linux) but forced or at least tempted more setup which is definitely the benefit of Amethyst.
It is super buggy for fullscreen apps. Unfortunately, I have this superpower (or curse) of not being able to reproduce bugs. Every time I get near a coworker's computer, whatever they were talking to me about starts working.
There's a long thread on github about this (https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst/issues/254). I'd love to know more about your set up. I've been trying for weeks to make it work for people, but Apple's APIs for this are kind of crap. And by crap I mean non-existent. I've started using private APIs to do things like figuring out whether or not the current desktop is a fullscreen app.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#36I really just want a window manager that allows windows to snap to each other and the edges of the screen when resizing or moving them. Does something like that exist? I don't care for the pre-defined layouts or hotkeys, I just want to be able to visually drag/resize my windows and have them take up the most optimal amount of space.
I've been using Zooom/2 for this for a year or two, and haven't had any complaints. http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index.html
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#37I posted this yesterday in the thread about the Rust-written window manager, but it's relevant here as well. There are plenty of apps that provide varying levels of window-manager functionality to OS X. I would try a couple out and see which feels right to you. I have tried most of them, and personally prefer Moom. http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://ianyh.com/amethyst/ http://spectacleapp.com…
Minus Mjolnir, I've tried the rest and still prefer Slate[1] but it hasn't been updated since Feb 2013. Actually I had never heard of Mjolnir before now. I like Slate's ability to define a config file that is just a little more powerful than the competition, plus it's easy to sync across machines. I haven't updated to Yosemite, but Slate works wonderfully on Mavericks. [1]: https://github.com/jigish/slate
I would 100% recommend Mjolnir as an actively-developed Slate alternative. sdegutis has a solid history of writing great window management stuff.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#38I use a window manager, but really only to have a hotkey that fullscreens a window (three, actually: one for current, one for left and one for right display). With 2 displays, I find that I have all I need with just an editor window and a documentation browser window. I guess I have smaller displays than most people because if I resize a window (browser windows mostly) beyond about 2/3 its layout gets messed up or a horizontal scrollbar appears.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#39I like tiling managers, but dislike having predefined layouts. Being able to split any tile horizontally or vertically arbitrarily many times is the way to go (i.e. i3-style). Would like to see tiling wm authors to consider this option when starting new projects.
It's on the list of things I want to do. I should have used a tree structure off the bat and done something like binary space partitioning.
Re: Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
#40Wow. This has focus follows mouse! (though they call it "mouse-follows-focus", for some reason) I've been told focus follows mouse was impossible on OS X.
This is a woefully confusing decision on my part. There are actually two features: mouse-follows-focus and focus-follows-mouse.
The former just means the cursor moves along with window focus. So if you cycle to the next window clockwise, the cursor moves to the center of that window. Or if you focus a window on another display, the cursor moves to the center of that window. This makes it really convenient to do things like navigating between spaces on multiple displays as the display with the cursor is the one who responds to space switching.
The latter is probably what you're thinking of. You move the cursor and the window underneath it comes into focus. It's kind of experimental and still seems to be fairly buggy, though.
The "impossible" thing is that in OS X there is no distinction between the window that is focused and the window that is the keyboard responder, so the classic idea of focus-follows-mouse doesn't work. I haven't found the distinction personally very meaningful.