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Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

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Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#151

Post by hobofan »

Nevin1901 wrote: post #6

In my personal experience, tiling window managers only work when you have a lot of screen real estate. I tried using yabai on a 13 inch m2 air, but I ended up going back to my normal workflow of just alt tabbing between windows. Most apps don’t let you see enough content when they are tiled (because of gui elements such as sidebar etc). I do love the “focus on hover” feature of yabai though. I wish macOS had that nat…

I've been using Amethyst for multiple years on only the builtin display as well.

I think the key here is to use multiple desktops (or are they called workspaces?). If I'm working on a single screen I constantly have 10 desktops open, with a quite consistent setup between them (e.g. first desktop is fullscreen browser, second screen is 3-5 tiled terminals, ...). All the applications I'm "actively" using are usually on the first 2-4 desktops with a lot of screen real estate for each of them.

What really helps here is assigning one of the screen corners as a hot corner that goes to Expose mode where you can switch between screens, as well as assigning shortcuts for switching between desktops and moving windows between them (the moving windows shortcuts are usually part of your window manager). Selecting "Reduced Motion" in the accessibility settings also helps by speeding up the desktop switching animations.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#152

Post by rufugee »

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…

After trying yabai, Amethyst, and many others, I landed on hammerspoon.org + https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager a few years ago and haven't looked back. I couldn't live on a Mac without hammerspoon tbh.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#153

Post by chaxor »

koiueo wrote: post #131
chaxor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried amethyst but it was essentially useless to emulate an awesomewm or sway like experience. Switching to asahilinux was a *far* better solution. Not really sure what the use of macOS for me is when asahi exists now.

Is Asahi your daily driver on MBP?

Yes, absolutely.

Asahilinux >> MacOS

It's wonderful to use the M2 with incredible battery life and performance without having to have a subpar OS.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#154

Post by rufugee »

koiueo wrote: post #131
chaxor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried amethyst but it was essentially useless to emulate an awesomewm or sway like experience. Switching to asahilinux was a *far* better solution. Not really sure what the use of macOS for me is when asahi exists now.

Is Asahi your daily driver on MBP?

Curious about this as well...I thought it wasn't quite there as a daily driver OS, but would be happy to be wrong ;-)

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#155

Post by rufugee »

onelesd wrote: post #16
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

I use hammerspoon with https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager...it's a great tiling experience.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#156

Post by freeqaz »

urxvtcd wrote: post #95
freeqaz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to echo this as well. I use a 2nd tool to help me add additional i3-like keyboard shortcuts as well (I have the ability to "stack" windows with Alt-S and rotate through them with Alt-J and Alt-K). It's called skhd https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd I forgot where the script for the stacking is. I can look that up separately, but I'm on mobile atm.

Please post it if possible. I couldn’t figure out the stacking API, and I miss that feature from i3.

Here it is. There is no visualization of the stack, which apparently Stackline in the other comment supports, but I don't tend to need that. Just being able to move between the windows is good enough for me.

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/203#issuecomment...

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#158

Post by saagarjha »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #117
extr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not really an issue. I have one of these hot keys set up and what it does is when I hit ⌘→ it will tile in the right half and when I go to hit ↑ it will then shrink to the upper quarter.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#159

Post by saagarjha »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #66
datameta wrote: post #64

Yabai is an interesting japanese word with several distinct composite meanings. https://www.alexrockinjapanese.com/what-does-yabai-mean-in-j... Here it is being used in one context at a beatbox battle between then World Beatbox champion Alexinho and the super innovative Soso. https://youtu.be/OjbYK4rujB0?si=SIn-uNHlh2KexsXc Yabai shout is at 3m23s

It also seems wholly unrelated to anything about this app though, which is a shame, because as someone who knows Japanese, I'm not likely to install something called "yabai" in the same vein that I'm not going to install something called "whoa" or "ohshit". Hopefully that puts me in the minority.

What is it with Mac app developers and bad Japanese names, I wonder?

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#160

Post by xwowsersx »

rufugee wrote: post #152
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…

After trying yabai, Amethyst, and many others, I landed on hammerspoon.org + https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager a few years ago and haven't looked back. I couldn't live on a Mac without hammerspoon tbh.

Can you share your config please? Trying to get a better idea of what's possible and how to get started. Thanks
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