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Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

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Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#111

Post by voisin »

sgt wrote: post #110

I've always wondered why people enjoy tiling window managers. Personally I don't really grasp it. If I work with a lot of papers and documents on a desk, I don't "tile" them, I keep them sort of organically in front of me. And whatever app I need to use should ideally be straight in front of me. But that's just me, maybe I haven't had a proper tiling experience yet and thus I haven't seen the light.

If you need to work on 2+ apps simultaneously it makes sense, just like if you were copying text from one document to another on your desktop you would put them next to each other.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#112

Post by deafpolygon »

voisin wrote: post #111
sgt wrote: post #110

I've always wondered why people enjoy tiling window managers. Personally I don't really grasp it. If I work with a lot of papers and documents on a desk, I don't "tile" them, I keep them sort of organically in front of me. And whatever app I need to use should ideally be straight in front of me. But that's just me, maybe I haven't had a proper tiling experience yet and thus I haven't seen the light.

If you need to work on 2+ apps simultaneously it makes sense, just like if you were copying text from one document to another on your desktop you would put them next to each other.

macOS has the ability to put windows side-by-side.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#113

Post by Casteil »

poidos wrote: post #28

I like rectangle [0]. It fits my needs well enough without requiring disabling SIP. I especially like the “repeated key presses resize a window on the same side” feature, so I can get cycle the size of the window on the right side of the screen from 1/2->1/3->2/3 easily. I miss i3 sometimes and this ain’t an identical replacement but it gets the job done! Turns out I don’t move my windows all that often anyways. [0]:…

Been using Rectangle pretty much as long as I've had my 14" M1 Pro - excellent FOSS that holds up extremely well against paid alternatives! Little to no customization necessary for a very well-executed window management experience. I did change one or two of the shortcuts to be one-handed (namely Restore window, to CTRL+OPT+R), but overall the shortcuts seem really well thought out.

I might have to grab the Pro version because they really deserve the support.

I like it so much that I wish I had the same muscle-memory for similar shortcuts on Windows (I believe PowerToys FancyZones can be set up to snap a window to a given zone or zones with hotkeys, but it's not something I've dug into yet).

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#114

Post by extr »

poidos wrote: post #28

I like rectangle [0]. It fits my needs well enough without requiring disabling SIP. I especially like the “repeated key presses resize a window on the same side” feature, so I can get cycle the size of the window on the right side of the screen from 1/2->1/3->2/3 easily. I miss i3 sometimes and this ain’t an identical replacement but it gets the job done! Turns out I don’t move my windows all that often anyways. [0]:…

One thing I really don't like about rectangle (and maybe MacOS in general) is that you can't easily multi-key hotkeys with regular keys. So for example CMD + Right Arrow + Up Arrow for upper-right tiling. This is simple/trivial with PowerToys on windows. But you can use Karabiner Elements to create a simulation of this using keypress delays. I use Karabiner + BetterTouchTools to accomplish the same functionality since I'm already running it for other reasons.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#115

Post by caeruleus »

I have been using Yabai for two years now and am very happy. For me, it's stable and you can script almost anything by using event reactors.

Yabai also makes working with a 15" display much more productive imho. For example, I can effortlessly and nearly instantaneously switch between browser and coding spaces by pressing hyper + w / hyper + c (I'm using Karabiner Elements to map capslock to hyper).

Since it's a common misconception, you do NOT need to disable SIP if you don't care about some features (noticeably, disabling those nasty space switch animations). For an overview of features that require SIP to be partially disabled:

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/1863

Also in general, the wiki on GitHub is very well-written.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#117

Post by dev_tty01 »

extr wrote: post #114
poidos wrote: post #28

I like rectangle [0]. It fits my needs well enough without requiring disabling SIP. I especially like the “repeated key presses resize a window on the same side” feature, so I can get cycle the size of the window on the right side of the screen from 1/2->1/3->2/3 easily. I miss i3 sometimes and this ain’t an identical replacement but it gets the job done! Turns out I don’t move my windows all that often anyways. [0]:…

One thing I really don't like about rectangle (and maybe MacOS in general) is that you can't easily multi-key hotkeys with regular keys. So for example CMD + Right Arrow + Up Arrow for upper-right tiling. This is simple/trivial with PowerToys on windows. But you can use Karabiner Elements to create a simulation of this using keypress delays. I use Karabiner + BetterTouchTools to accomplish the same functionality sinc…

Doesn't this always force delays? If I have CMD + Right Arrow assigned to some other function, the system will have to wait to make sure the Up Arrow isn't coming soon before dispatching the Right Arrow function. Of course we want the delay short, but that makes the multi-key shortcut less reliable.

I haven't tried it, but the tradeoffs don't sound great to me. Only allowing multiple modifier keys avoids all of these timing issues. You seem to be comfortable with it, but I think most users would trigger a lot of spurious inputs.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#118

Post by ckolkey »

rcarmo wrote: post #106

This still requires disabling SIP, I see. That's just not an option for me. (I have done quite a bit of research and testing on these, and keep using a mixture of Moom and Phoenix - here's my full list: https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers )

Only for a limited subset of features. All the window management works with SIP.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#119

Post by certifiedloud »

sgt wrote: post #110

I've always wondered why people enjoy tiling window managers. Personally I don't really grasp it. If I work with a lot of papers and documents on a desk, I don't "tile" them, I keep them sort of organically in front of me. And whatever app I need to use should ideally be straight in front of me. But that's just me, maybe I haven't had a proper tiling experience yet and thus I haven't seen the light.

I switched to i3 years ago for the workspace management. I can spread different workspaces across my monitors with easy commands and full control. Every OS and linux distro I've tried has inferior workspace management compared to i3. Tiling is secondary for me.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#120

Post by sgt »

voisin wrote: post #111
sgt wrote: post #110

I've always wondered why people enjoy tiling window managers. Personally I don't really grasp it. If I work with a lot of papers and documents on a desk, I don't "tile" them, I keep them sort of organically in front of me. And whatever app I need to use should ideally be straight in front of me. But that's just me, maybe I haven't had a proper tiling experience yet and thus I haven't seen the light.

If you need to work on 2+ apps simultaneously it makes sense, just like if you were copying text from one document to another on your desktop you would put them next to each other.

I find your argument strange. Any windowing system can put two windows next to each other.
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