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Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

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Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#11

Post by ebiester »

daggersandscars wrote: post #4
xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

This may not be what you’re looking for, but I use Mizage’s Divvy on Mac & Windows and configure Gnome to match on Linux. It can be keyboard or mouse driven — I exclusively use custom keyboard shortcuts.

I used to use Divvy (and have a paid copy), but I've moved to Rectangle which also does everything I need and is open source. It doesn't have the same "drag" mouse capabilities that Divvy does, but I don't end up using that too often.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#13

Post by extr »

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

Have you heard of Phoenix [1]? It seems relatively unknown but I actually found it to work better than Yabai in some ways. The gist is that it basically simulates a tiling wm and virtual desktops by internally tracking state. This also means it doesn't suffer from window animation delays when you switch "desktops" (since "desktops" are just hiding/unhiding windows). It's also highly hackable/extensible being written in JS. Spin2Win [2] is a config that's worked well for me.

[1] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix

[2] https://github.com/nik3daz/spin2win

That said, it seems there are no perfect solutions. At work where I can't really be futzing around with window management config I basically just use Raycast + hotkeys and try to keep everything inside maximized application windows. This means using Arc browser (tabbed), iTerm (tabbed), VS Code (with native tabs), etc mapped to cmd+1, cmd+2, cmd+3...Not much "tiling" going on but at least everything is pretty keyboard friendly.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#14

Post by twp »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #7

https://www.hammerspoon.org/ is amazing. Not quite the same as Yabai but I cant live without it!

You can configure Hammerspoon so a hot key combination puts a window in a defined section of the screen. For example, I use Ctrl+Alt+H to put the current window in the left half of the screen, Ctrl+Alt+L for the right half, Ctrl+Alt+Enter for full screen, etc. This makes arranging your windows very fast.

Full config: https://github.com/twpayne/dotfiles/blob/21d0edcebaeebf0d90e...

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#15

Post by emoII »

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

Rectangle is absolutely great

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#16

Post by onelesd »

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

try hammerspoon. it isn't a tiling window manager, per se - it's more of an all-purpose desktop extension framework. it is fully customizable, has a well-documented API, and a large community.

for window arrangement the hs.grid component is plenty for me. see an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRJ0477KFp8

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#18

Post by CSSer »

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

You might try Magnet. It's $10 on the mac app store. I've had zero issues with it, and it has some problems sorted that other tools don't or haven't always, namely correctly tiling across monitors. I used to use Rectangle, which is open source and frankly pretty good but at the time I was using it had some warts. macOS' window management seems to not be entirely transparent. I don't know all the details, but this is my workstation. I need(ed) this to work now, and if it's a system that might change a bit over time or has some weird idiosyncrasies then I'm happily willing to pay a low one-time fee for a tool like this.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#19

Post by xwowsersx »

extr wrote: post #13
xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

Have you heard of Phoenix [1]? It seems relatively unknown but I actually found it to work better than Yabai in some ways. The gist is that it basically simulates a tiling wm and virtual desktops by internally tracking state. This also means it doesn't suffer from window animation delays when you switch "desktops" (since "desktops" are just hiding/unhiding windows). It's also highly hackable/extensible being written…

I think I had come across Phoenix briefly, but never took it for a spin. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely take a look.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#20

Post by TimTheTinker »

CSSer wrote: post #18
xwowsersx wrote: post #2

Funny to see this at the top of HN after just having uninstalled Yabai. I used Yabai for about 6 weeks. I was so thrilled about having a proper tiling window manager for Mac. I invested a lot of time setting up skhd and fine-tuning my configuration for the most intuitive hotkeys. The problem ultimately, however, is that Yabai just doesn't work well enough. It'll regularly just lose track of windows altogether, which…

You might try Magnet. It's $10 on the mac app store. I've had zero issues with it, and it has some problems sorted that other tools don't or haven't always, namely correctly tiling across monitors. I used to use Rectangle, which is open source and frankly pretty good but at the time I was using it had some warts. macOS' window management seems to not be entirely transparent. I don't know all the details, but this is…

I've been using Magnet for years. It's simple and reliable.
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