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Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

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Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#191

Post by imawizard »

girvo wrote: post #167
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…

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst This is what I used for years . Sadly I'm back in Windows land these days due to work.

I‘m using Windows again as well (just loving the crap-/bloatware for corporate vpn, syncing powerpoint templates, group policies etc.) which is why I made a small window manager in AutoHotkey:

https://github.com/imawizard/MiguruWM

The wiki also contains a list of other window managers for Windows one might want to check out.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#193

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#194

Post by wilsonnb3 »

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 used to use i3 on a ThinkPad x220 and agree that they are less useful on small screens.

My experience is that they are also just productivity theater. You feel more productive with the snazzy shortcuts but its very rare for the bottleneck in a workflow to be window management. Most people probably lose more time overall managing their config files and looking up the shortcuts they forgot.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#195

Post by darthrupert »

darkteflon wrote: post #180
chaxor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. Asahilinux >> MacOS It's wonderful to use the M2 with incredible battery life and performance without having to have a subpar OS.

Can I ask: is setting up dual-boot trivial? I’d love to check it out but can’t ditch MacOS entirely.

The installation process sets it up to you. You'd have to do more work to not have dual-boot (unless there was a setting in the installer that I forgot).

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#196

Post by stefandesu »

darkteflon wrote: post #180
chaxor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. Asahilinux >> MacOS It's wonderful to use the M2 with incredible battery life and performance without having to have a subpar OS.

Can I ask: is setting up dual-boot trivial? I’d love to check it out but can’t ditch MacOS entirely.

AFAIK dual boot is currently the only way to use Asahi on Apple Silicon Macs.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#197

Post by darthrupert »

rufugee wrote: post #190
chaxor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. Asahilinux >> MacOS It's wonderful to use the M2 with incredible battery life and performance without having to have a subpar OS.

Is there anything that doesn't work for you?

I'm not parent, but from my quick foray into (Fedora) Asahi on a Macbook Air M2, I at least noticed USB-C connection to my monitor and USB router behind it not working at all. There's something Mac-specific going on there, because from my x86-based linux laptop, this usually works fine.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#198

Post by beautron »

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.

For me, it's less that I want to "tile" windows, than that I want whichever one I'm using to be fullscreen and distraction-free.

I don't like visual clutter. If I'm using a program, I want it to be the only thing on my monitor. But sometimes I want to keep more than one program open, or even be switching between them. Tiling window managers let me give each program its own full screen, and quickly switch between them with a keyboard command. I love it.

And then there's the exception that proves the rule: Sometimes I do want to have two programs on the same screen, side-by-side. An example would be Vim in the left 2/3rds of my screen (where I am programming), and then a browser with some documentation on the right 1/3rd. Obviously tiling managers also support this case, and I prefer them here too vs. mousing around windows into place (which still tends to leave behind windowing chrome and other visual clutter).

That reminds me of another reason: I prefer keyboard to mouse. I've learned good form and technique for keyboard use, which let me use it frequently and for long periods while avoiding injury. But I just can't figure out a way to use a mouse or trackpad that isn't harmful, were it repeated enough (a vertical mouse goes a long way though).

Tiling managers let me do everything using keyboard (unless the "tiled" programs themselves require mouse), whereas traditional windowing managers pretty much require mouse. I find it both more ergonomic and much faster using the keyboard.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#199

Post by Bombinator »

rufugee wrote: post #154
koiueo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

It's usable if you can live with some small annoying inconveniences last I tried. I can't remember if there were more inconveniences but what bugged me the most was that the touchpad was too sensitive compared to MacOS, it seemed to register accidental touches on the edges more and accidental taps were easier. I tried figuring out if this is fixable with libinput or hwdb but eventually gave up. Also the shortcuts with Command key are way more convenient than the ctrl ones but this probably is configurable somehow. Some Java programs had scaling issues but that can be configured to work properly. Battery life was a bit worse I think, this is with the GPU drivers and no video playback, just regular browsing. Oh and external monitor support isn't there, I do use this sometimes on MacOS.

Re: Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS

#200

Post by thelazyoxymoron »

nbobko wrote: post #168
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…

> I'd be more than willing to try another tiling window manager on Mac if there's one out there that truly works Hello, AeroSpace author speaking :) I'd be happy if you could try AeroSpace (it's and i3-like window manager for macOS) and report me back if it loses track of windows. https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace The architecture of AeroSpace is that on every user input that may change window configuration (n…

The demo looks pretty nice! I'll be trying this out over the weekend and report any issues. Thanks for building this!
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