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Disclaimer: I run OS X at work and Linux on all of my personal machines. > The reasonable solution is to use one of the many native tiling applications for OSX

Disclaimer: I run OS X at work and Linux on all of my personal machines. > The reasonable solution is to use one of the many native tiling applications for OSX. As an i3 user (and former wmii user, and former xmonad user), I find it really frustrating to use tiling window management that doesn't support focus-follows-mouse. This rules out things like Spectacle, Divvy, etc. At a second level, I find that all of OS X's tiling applications have inferior support for workspaces on dual-monitor setups compared to i3/wmii[0] and xmonad. Unfortunately, on Aqua (OS X), there's basically no way to do proper focus-follows-mouse support. There is one app that fakes it (I think Amethyst), but the latency is annoyingly high. [0] heck, wmii has better support for workspaces on dual-monitor setups, which is saying something, because it literally doesn't have support for dual monitors at all - you can only run dual-head X11, which is a terrible hack.

mariusmg 11y ago
Sadly all the tiling window managers i've tried suck on multi monitors though. When i switched to 3 monitors i gave up on tiling wm (for once with 3 monitors i had A LOT more space).
- Filligree 11y ago
  XMonad has the feature that you can freely swap workspaces between screens. For example, you can show workspace 1 on screen 1, 2 on screen 2, and then switch them around to 3->1, 1->2, or any other combination you prefer. This is a killer feature for me, and I've never found any other WM capable of doing that.
  - mikepurvis 11y ago
    That's amazing, I would love if OS X did that natively.
- jbombadil 11y ago
  Are you talking about tiling window managers on OS X or in general? If it's the general case, I have to disagree. XMonad is absolutely fantastic on multi monitors. The two things I liked to most were Mod+e or Mod+w to change focus to the previous and next monitor, and the ability to actually move an entire workspace to another monitor with the press of a button. This is obviously just my opinion. In the end, it's a mere matter of personal choice.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Sadly all the tiling window managers i've tried suck on multi monitors though. When i switched to 3 monitors i gave up on tiling wm (for once with 3 monitors i had A LOT more space). Even i3? I've only ever used i3 on two monitors[0], but it's been great for that. I'd also be a little surprised, just because multi-monitor support was quite literally the reason that i3 was created (wmii does not support dual monitors). [0] I'd love to hook up my third monitor, but I much prefer having 2 4K screens at 60Hz to having 3 4K screens at 30Hz
  - simlevesque 11y ago
    i3 works great with three monitor. It's my work setup.
- zeveb 11y ago
  I've found stumpwm to be a real joy to use on multiple monitors. It feels like the future of human-computer interaction, today.
- Tiksi 11y ago
  Try awesomeWM, the multi monitor support is great, it works with pretty much every setup I've tried from xinerama to multiple xorg servers/screens. The config is all lua and can be a bit annoying but overall I've found it to be the best setup for multiple monitors.
- pvdebbe 11y ago
  I had the exact opposite experience. I coped with stacking WMs until I got a third monitor -- then it became virtually impossible not to use a tiling WM. :) How on earth do you throw windows from the leftmost monitor to the rightmost easily?!
ptomato 11y ago
fairly early stages, but kwm (https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm) is an OS X tiling WM that supports focus-follows-mouse.
masukomi 11y ago
just a nitpick: I'm pretty sure Aqua hasn't been a thing for years now.
- ams6110 11y ago
  It's in reference to the native OS X window manager. AFAIK it's still called Aqua.
  - chipotle_coyote 11y ago
    I'm fairly sure it's never been called Aqua; "Aqua" is the name of the standard UI look (cf. the NSAppearance class). But the window manager is Quartz: "Quartz Compositor is the display server (and at the same time the compositing window manager) in OS X." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor (Hence the name "XQuartz" for the X11 display server.)
compactmani 11y ago
I figure I'll just ask this here. Why can't you use something other than Aqua?
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > I figure I'll just ask this here. Why can't you use something other than Aqua? Aqua is the default window manager[0] for OS X, so any default OS X applications will be using Aqua-based windows. When I say "focus follows mouse doesn't work in Aqua", I'm saying that you can't get (proper) focus follows mouse behavior on "regular" OS X application windows, no matter what other user-level program you install to handle window management. You can decide to use something that only manages X11 windows (which is what XMonad does), but then you're stuck using only X11 applications. (Back when I tried it, even getting an up-to-date X11 build of Firefox on OS X was a pain). [0] I don't think the term "window manager" is quite correct here, but since OS X divides things up differently from how Linux/X11 work, it's the most analogous concept.
nextos 11y ago
Off-topic, why did you switch from xmonad to i3?
- virtualwhys 11y ago
  Not a deal breaker but Xmonad brings a large dependency (1GB+ is the price of Haskell) where most TWMs on Linux are in comparison laughably lightweight and blazing fast. For me i3 strikes the sweetspot of dead simple config, incredible feature set, and performance. This after coming from Awesome WM where I found myself spending way too much time tweaking Lua script to get things pixel perfect, which you basically get out of the box for free with i3.
  - gkya 11y ago
    > This after coming from Awesome WM where I found myself spending way too much time tweaking Lua script to get things pixel perfect, [...] This is why I use dwm, because I don't know C and thus I can't configure it, and thus I use what I have and use the time I'd spend to configure it to do other things. Another reason is that I can just check it in to my dotfiles.
  - xdc55 11y ago
    This gives the false impression that xmonad is not as fast as other twms. Xmonad is very lightweight, the package is below 500kb, which is below i3 and awesome. It has a very minimal and clean interface. The configuration file IS the twm (similar to DWM) xmonad is just a library. You write your WM which might be a turnoff for users that don't want to spend the time doing so. Since xmonad is a Haskell library, you need the compiler. There's a reason why ghc is so big compared to other compilers, but just because it is a big dependency, it doesn't make xmonad any less lightweight
    - nextos 11y ago
      Yes, it only a really major inconvenient if you have very very limited HD space, which is a rare thing these days. And you can always uninstall ghc after configuring xmonad.
makecheck 11y ago
Focus-follows-mouse in what sense...system-wide? I've certainly implemented it on OS X within a single application (for my terminal). And latency is not an issue.
- riquito 11y ago
  AFAIK there is only one sense: you move the mouse over a window and that window gain focus

mariusmg 11y ago

Sadly all the tiling window managers i've tried suck on multi monitors though. When i switched to 3 monitors i gave up on tiling wm (for once with 3 monitors i had A LOT more space).

Filligree 11y ago
XMonad has the feature that you can freely swap workspaces between screens. For example, you can show workspace 1 on screen 1, 2 on screen 2, and then switch them around to 3->1, 1->2, or any other combination you prefer. This is a killer feature for me, and I've never found any other WM capable of doing that.
- mikepurvis 11y ago
  That's amazing, I would love if OS X did that natively.
jbombadil 11y ago
Are you talking about tiling window managers on OS X or in general? If it's the general case, I have to disagree. XMonad is absolutely fantastic on multi monitors. The two things I liked to most were Mod+e or Mod+w to change focus to the previous and next monitor, and the ability to actually move an entire workspace to another monitor with the press of a button. This is obviously just my opinion. In the end, it's a mere matter of personal choice.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> Sadly all the tiling window managers i've tried suck on multi monitors though. When i switched to 3 monitors i gave up on tiling wm (for once with 3 monitors i had A LOT more space). Even i3? I've only ever used i3 on two monitors[0], but it's been great for that. I'd also be a little surprised, just because multi-monitor support was quite literally the reason that i3 was created (wmii does not support dual monitors). [0] I'd love to hook up my third monitor, but I much prefer having 2 4K screens at 60Hz to having 3 4K screens at 30Hz
- simlevesque 11y ago
  i3 works great with three monitor. It's my work setup.
zeveb 11y ago
I've found stumpwm to be a real joy to use on multiple monitors. It feels like the future of human-computer interaction, today.
Tiksi 11y ago
Try awesomeWM, the multi monitor support is great, it works with pretty much every setup I've tried from xinerama to multiple xorg servers/screens. The config is all lua and can be a bit annoying but overall I've found it to be the best setup for multiple monitors.
pvdebbe 11y ago
I had the exact opposite experience. I coped with stacking WMs until I got a third monitor -- then it became virtually impossible not to use a tiling WM. :) How on earth do you throw windows from the leftmost monitor to the rightmost easily?!

ptomato 11y ago

fairly early stages, but kwm (https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm) is an OS X tiling WM that supports focus-follows-mouse.

masukomi 11y ago

just a nitpick: I'm pretty sure Aqua hasn't been a thing for years now.

ams6110 11y ago
It's in reference to the native OS X window manager. AFAIK it's still called Aqua.
- chipotle_coyote 11y ago
  I'm fairly sure it's never been called Aqua; "Aqua" is the name of the standard UI look (cf. the NSAppearance class). But the window manager is Quartz: "Quartz Compositor is the display server (and at the same time the compositing window manager) in OS X." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor (Hence the name "XQuartz" for the X11 display server.)

compactmani 11y ago

I figure I'll just ask this here. Why can't you use something other than Aqua?

chimeracoder 11y ago
> I figure I'll just ask this here. Why can't you use something other than Aqua? Aqua is the default window manager[0] for OS X, so any default OS X applications will be using Aqua-based windows. When I say "focus follows mouse doesn't work in Aqua", I'm saying that you can't get (proper) focus follows mouse behavior on "regular" OS X application windows, no matter what other user-level program you install to handle window management. You can decide to use something that only manages X11 windows (which is what XMonad does), but then you're stuck using only X11 applications. (Back when I tried it, even getting an up-to-date X11 build of Firefox on OS X was a pain). [0] I don't think the term "window manager" is quite correct here, but since OS X divides things up differently from how Linux/X11 work, it's the most analogous concept.

nextos 11y ago

Off-topic, why did you switch from xmonad to i3?

virtualwhys 11y ago
Not a deal breaker but Xmonad brings a large dependency (1GB+ is the price of Haskell) where most TWMs on Linux are in comparison laughably lightweight and blazing fast. For me i3 strikes the sweetspot of dead simple config, incredible feature set, and performance. This after coming from Awesome WM where I found myself spending way too much time tweaking Lua script to get things pixel perfect, which you basically get out of the box for free with i3.
- gkya 11y ago
  > This after coming from Awesome WM where I found myself spending way too much time tweaking Lua script to get things pixel perfect, [...] This is why I use dwm, because I don't know C and thus I can't configure it, and thus I use what I have and use the time I'd spend to configure it to do other things. Another reason is that I can just check it in to my dotfiles.
- xdc55 11y ago
  This gives the false impression that xmonad is not as fast as other twms. Xmonad is very lightweight, the package is below 500kb, which is below i3 and awesome. It has a very minimal and clean interface. The configuration file IS the twm (similar to DWM) xmonad is just a library. You write your WM which might be a turnoff for users that don't want to spend the time doing so. Since xmonad is a Haskell library, you need the compiler. There's a reason why ghc is so big compared to other compilers, but just because it is a big dependency, it doesn't make xmonad any less lightweight
  - nextos 11y ago
    Yes, it only a really major inconvenient if you have very very limited HD space, which is a rare thing these days. And you can always uninstall ghc after configuring xmonad.

makecheck 11y ago

Focus-follows-mouse in what sense...system-wide? I've certainly implemented it on OS X within a single application (for my terminal). And latency is not an issue.

riquito 11y ago
AFAIK there is only one sense: you move the mouse over a window and that window gain focus