6 ms·

Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful keyboard controls

69 points by dbranes 9y ago

adrianpike 9y ago
Every time I see something awesome like this I have to rethink my dedication to OS X. I might have to dual-boot my next laptop.
- wmf 9y ago
  Moom can/could do this on OS X.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- RodericDay 9y ago
  The extra level of multi nested grids etc is cool, but honestly I get by just fine with Spectacle.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  An actual tiling window manager is actually far more useful because it automatically places new windows in the layout and doesn't require you to manually mess with much.
mharrison 9y ago
This is pretty cool. Is there anything similar for OSX? The corner specification would come in handy on 40inch 4K monitor (Currently using Hammerspoon, but use qtile on Linux)
- samratjp 9y ago
  I have loved using Divvy for ages - http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://mizage.com/divvy/
  - mharrison 9y ago
    Seen Divvy, never tried it. I'll have to look into it. This might be what I'm looking for http://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.grid.html http://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.grid.html
  - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
    i used divvy for one thing: making a window take up the full screen. on my laptop, i dont ever want to use half a screen... or at least i dont think i do. so dumb that i need to use divvy for this one thing. or maybe i dont? havent checked in forever.
  - goerz 9y ago
    I like Divvy, too. I wonder how hard it would be to snap Divvy's GUI overlay onto these Linux tools. I frequently want to arrange windows not just in halves of the screen, but in thirds. I find that gets cumbersome with keyboard shortcuts alone.
- to3m 9y ago
  ShiftIt is alright: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt It's rather limited - make window fill quarter/half screen, make window fill whole screen, move window to next monitor - but it's very easy to configure, and supports XQuartz windows.
_JamesA_ 9y ago
> Merge branch 'shit'
emilsedgh 9y ago
I have a workflow that I believe is far superior to all these window managers. Quake-style terminals have always been popular. I used to use Yakuake on KDE which was very convenient. The convenience its not that those terminals open up with an animation (which is quite annoying). It was because there was a dedicated keyboard shortcut for them. You memorized that and you never ever think about managing the window of that application again. So for years I have keyboard shortcuts assigned to my applications. F1 opens Browser F2 opens File manager F3 opens Text Editor F4 opens Chat App (Telegram) F6 opens Email client F7 opens ICR Client F9 opens Terminal F10 opens Music Player (Although Spotify on Linux has a bug that doesn't allow this to work) Ever since I adopted this scheme I simply have a better quality of life during the time I'm using my computer. If there was a CPU usage for my brain, I'm sure its dropped. I strongly suggest you to try it out. Because the shortcuts become muscle memory and you don't even think about them anymore. You know what you want and your fingers just know how to open it up. I'm not quite sure which window managers allow this, but I'm using KWin and it allows me to arrange these shortcuts.
- mmozeiko 9y ago
  So this is pretty much like Windows Win+Number shortcut, when you have apps pinned to taskbar.
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    And this is pretty much the same as the i3 window manager's Mod1+Number to switch workspaces, when you have one app per workspace. This is of course customizable to use other keystrokes if you prefer.
- dbranes 9y ago
  Not seeing how this is relevant. The tool linked here just helps you manage how much space different windows take up on your screen, it doesn't really care about how you open these windows.
  - emilsedgh 9y ago
vortico 9y ago
This is a great idea. But it seems like a job for C, since it'll be running in the background all the time and will bind to Xlib. Shouldn't be more than 200 lines of code, right? Someone should attempt this!
sillysaurus3 9y ago
For OS X, I use Optimal Layout: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ Here's a screenshot of it in action: http://i.imgur.com/2N8czFR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2N8czFR.jpg It took about five keystrokes to get the windows arranged like this. No mouse. It's a product which has gotten far too little love financially compared to the value it produces. It's become an integral part of my OS X usage, and I can't imagine spending a day without it. I have it set up like this: Alt-1: Stretch the current window as wide and tall as possible. (Fill all available space.) Alt-2: Make the current window occupy the left-half of the screen. Press Alt-2 again to occupy the right half. Alt-3: Make the current window occupy the top-half of the screen. Press Alt-3 again to occupy the bottom half. Alt-4: Occupy the top-right quarter of the screen. Pressing Alt-4 multiple times moves the window clockwise: bottom-right, bottom-left, upper-left, upper-right. Alt-5: Center the current window, fill all vertical space, and fill 75% of total horizontal space. Alt-Tab: http://i.imgur.com/SRFb16t.png http://i.imgur.com/SRFb16t.png Better version of Cmd-Tab. Pressing Alt-Tab once will go to the most recently active window. Twice goes to the second-most-recently active, and so on. Note that this is by window, not application. This alone is a massive improvement. Alt-F: Search for a window whose title contains the specified string. Remarkably, these hotkeys have never conflicted with any apps I use, and I've been using it for like two or three years. The free version works just fine, but pops up a nag screen every day or so. I wish it defaulted to these shortcuts, because it takes some work to set it up as I've described above. There's also no easy way for me to export and share my configuration with you. But once you've set it up this way, you'll never want to go back. OS X's maximize button is very inconsistent and it's remarkable that there's no hotkey to make the current window fill all available space.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  This is neat but I have a hard time seeing it being worth money since it seems like it could on linux be recreated with shell scripts in aprox 20 minutes. I don't know much about os x but I don't imagine it would be that much harder to resize windows and calculate the size of the screen real estate. Kwin has a similar functionality. When I used that I prefered to bind super+numbers to these operations. I used the numbers on the num pad that corresponded with the desired location. Example 8 toggled between top half top third and Top 2/3. 7 used the top left quarter etc. I think having some mapping between the physical layout and the layout on screen is useful.
pmoriarty 9y ago
What's the advantage of this over a tiling window manager like i3?
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  None its somewhat less work than manually arranging windows but a lot more work than having them tiled in either manual or automatic tiling. In fact with tiling wm the most useful arrangements are incredibly simple and involve 1-4 windows on a single monitor/workspace. People only make complicated arrangements for screenshots.
  - okbake 9y ago
    I use a tiling window manager (spectrwm) and I am almost always using a single window in fullscreen. Apart from the browser most of my workspace exists inside the terminal where I'm very liberal with using multiple panes/windows/sessions in tmux. This fills a similiar role for me with regards to tiling, but for almost everything else I prefer having only a single application front-and-center at a time, with tiling available for rare occasions. What I like about the tiling wm is that I can launch an application and have it immediately fill the entire screen (without annoying decorations). Then opening and closing windows, changing windows, moving workspaces, etc, is all just a hotkey away. This same setup would be possible with openbox I think, but it all comes "out of the box" with most tiling window managers.
to3m 9y ago
I use my align_window3 utility on Windows: https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3 https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3 It divides the screen into halves and thirds horizontally and vertically, with one keypress setting size and position on one dimension. (The recommended key settings are vaguely mnemonic, but of course you can pick pretty much anything and then get used to it through practice.) I can't remember the last time I felt the need for a finer grid, but the 4x3 grid here has got me thinking that maybe it could do with an update...
infinisil 9y ago
I believe it should be easy to integrate this into xmonad by creating a few functions for that, which is the real beauty of it. The xmonad-contrib package [1] is a collection of such extensions, this one could very much join them. [1]: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib
lacampbell 9y ago
This is a pretty cool idea that would really help make use of huge monitors, without the hassle of dual monitors. How much would would it be to let the user custom define their grid? Ie, it's 4 * 3 by default, could we have 3 * 2 for laptop users?, or 4 * 2 for monitors turned sideways?
- dbranes 9y ago
  Great suggestion & definitely something I was thinking about, will put on the roadmap. I hacked this up for my own use on my 3840 x 2160 display, and the philosophy is will add fancier features & customizations only if there is interest.
- goerz 9y ago
  Strongly second being able to customize the grid. I'd actually like 6*4, spanning keys 1-6 at the top to z-n at the bottom
rufugee 9y ago
I've been using quicktile (https://github.com/ssokolow/quicktile https://github.com/ssokolow/quicktile) for years to add tiling to desktop environments which don't provide it ootb. Also in python, and works very well.
- ice109 9y ago
  yea i discovered this a couple of months ago and though i've never used a tiling window manager i can't imagine what value one would add over quicktile
osmala 9y ago
Wow. This is amazing, perfect keybindings. Lots of keys combined with Meta(alt)+Control key, the optimum keybinding for window manager, those two keys are always unused in user programs. Its really perfect for emacs, no-one has imagined to use those two keys with some random key, on any of emacs packages or modes. Poor me have binded my windowmanager commands with Super(windows) + (what ever command key I use for it.
cyberjunkie 9y ago
Why isn't there a good, non-bloated, free one for Windows? I try to use Windows 10's tiling, but it'll only do 4 quadrants (with variable sizes)
- nafest 9y ago
  I wrote a little tool that uses the Ctrl plus the numeric Keyboard to subdivide the desktop into 3x3 quadrants: https://github.com/nafest/winpad_layout https://github.com/nafest/winpad_layout Its basically a ripoff of the macOS tool https://github.com/janten/keypad-layout https://github.com/janten/keypad-layout
- executesorder66 9y ago
  I guess it's because people who care about customizing their OS generally don't want anything to do with Windows.
kapauldo 9y ago
This is awesome!

69 points by dbranes 9y ago

Every time I see something awesome like this I have to rethink my dedication to OS X. I might have to dual-boot my next laptop.

wmf 9y ago
Moom can/could do this on OS X.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
RodericDay 9y ago
The extra level of multi nested grids etc is cool, but honestly I get by just fine with Spectacle.
michaelmrose 9y ago
An actual tiling window manager is actually far more useful because it automatically places new windows in the layout and doesn't require you to manually mess with much.

mharrison 9y ago

This is pretty cool. Is there anything similar for OSX? The corner specification would come in handy on 40inch 4K monitor (Currently using Hammerspoon, but use qtile on Linux)

samratjp 9y ago
I have loved using Divvy for ages - http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://mizage.com/divvy/
- mharrison 9y ago
  Seen Divvy, never tried it. I'll have to look into it. This might be what I'm looking for http://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.grid.html http://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.grid.html
- the_cat_kittles 9y ago
  i used divvy for one thing: making a window take up the full screen. on my laptop, i dont ever want to use half a screen... or at least i dont think i do. so dumb that i need to use divvy for this one thing. or maybe i dont? havent checked in forever.
- goerz 9y ago
  I like Divvy, too. I wonder how hard it would be to snap Divvy's GUI overlay onto these Linux tools. I frequently want to arrange windows not just in halves of the screen, but in thirds. I find that gets cumbersome with keyboard shortcuts alone.
to3m 9y ago
ShiftIt is alright: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt It's rather limited - make window fill quarter/half screen, make window fill whole screen, move window to next monitor - but it's very easy to configure, and supports XQuartz windows.

_JamesA_ 9y ago

> Merge branch 'shit'

emilsedgh 9y ago

I have a workflow that I believe is far superior to all these window managers. Quake-style terminals have always been popular. I used to use Yakuake on KDE which was very convenient. The convenience its not that those terminals open up with an animation (which is quite annoying). It was because there was a dedicated keyboard shortcut for them. You memorized that and you never ever think about managing the window of that application again. So for years I have keyboard shortcuts assigned to my applications. F1 opens Browser F2 opens File manager F3 opens Text Editor F4 opens Chat App (Telegram) F6 opens Email client F7 opens ICR Client F9 opens Terminal F10 opens Music Player (Although Spotify on Linux has a bug that doesn't allow this to work) Ever since I adopted this scheme I simply have a better quality of life during the time I'm using my computer. If there was a CPU usage for my brain, I'm sure its dropped. I strongly suggest you to try it out. Because the shortcuts become muscle memory and you don't even think about them anymore. You know what you want and your fingers just know how to open it up. I'm not quite sure which window managers allow this, but I'm using KWin and it allows me to arrange these shortcuts.

mmozeiko 9y ago
So this is pretty much like Windows Win+Number shortcut, when you have apps pinned to taskbar.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  And this is pretty much the same as the i3 window manager's Mod1+Number to switch workspaces, when you have one app per workspace. This is of course customizable to use other keystrokes if you prefer.
dbranes 9y ago
Not seeing how this is relevant. The tool linked here just helps you manage how much space different windows take up on your screen, it doesn't really care about how you open these windows.
- emilsedgh 9y ago

vortico 9y ago

This is a great idea. But it seems like a job for C, since it'll be running in the background all the time and will bind to Xlib. Shouldn't be more than 200 lines of code, right? Someone should attempt this!

sillysaurus3 9y ago

For OS X, I use Optimal Layout: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ Here's a screenshot of it in action: http://i.imgur.com/2N8czFR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2N8czFR.jpg It took about five keystrokes to get the windows arranged like this. No mouse. It's a product which has gotten far too little love financially compared to the value it produces. It's become an integral part of my OS X usage, and I can't imagine spending a day without it. I have it set up like this: Alt-1: Stretch the current window as wide and tall as possible. (Fill all available space.) Alt-2: Make the current window occupy the left-half of the screen. Press Alt-2 again to occupy the right half. Alt-3: Make the current window occupy the top-half of the screen. Press Alt-3 again to occupy the bottom half. Alt-4: Occupy the top-right quarter of the screen. Pressing Alt-4 multiple times moves the window clockwise: bottom-right, bottom-left, upper-left, upper-right. Alt-5: Center the current window, fill all vertical space, and fill 75% of total horizontal space. Alt-Tab: http://i.imgur.com/SRFb16t.png http://i.imgur.com/SRFb16t.png Better version of Cmd-Tab. Pressing Alt-Tab once will go to the most recently active window. Twice goes to the second-most-recently active, and so on. Note that this is by window, not application. This alone is a massive improvement. Alt-F: Search for a window whose title contains the specified string. Remarkably, these hotkeys have never conflicted with any apps I use, and I've been using it for like two or three years. The free version works just fine, but pops up a nag screen every day or so. I wish it defaulted to these shortcuts, because it takes some work to set it up as I've described above. There's also no easy way for me to export and share my configuration with you. But once you've set it up this way, you'll never want to go back. OS X's maximize button is very inconsistent and it's remarkable that there's no hotkey to make the current window fill all available space.

michaelmrose 9y ago
This is neat but I have a hard time seeing it being worth money since it seems like it could on linux be recreated with shell scripts in aprox 20 minutes. I don't know much about os x but I don't imagine it would be that much harder to resize windows and calculate the size of the screen real estate. Kwin has a similar functionality. When I used that I prefered to bind super+numbers to these operations. I used the numbers on the num pad that corresponded with the desired location. Example 8 toggled between top half top third and Top 2/3. 7 used the top left quarter etc. I think having some mapping between the physical layout and the layout on screen is useful.

pmoriarty 9y ago

What's the advantage of this over a tiling window manager like i3?

michaelmrose 9y ago
None its somewhat less work than manually arranging windows but a lot more work than having them tiled in either manual or automatic tiling. In fact with tiling wm the most useful arrangements are incredibly simple and involve 1-4 windows on a single monitor/workspace. People only make complicated arrangements for screenshots.
- okbake 9y ago
  I use a tiling window manager (spectrwm) and I am almost always using a single window in fullscreen. Apart from the browser most of my workspace exists inside the terminal where I'm very liberal with using multiple panes/windows/sessions in tmux. This fills a similiar role for me with regards to tiling, but for almost everything else I prefer having only a single application front-and-center at a time, with tiling available for rare occasions. What I like about the tiling wm is that I can launch an application and have it immediately fill the entire screen (without annoying decorations). Then opening and closing windows, changing windows, moving workspaces, etc, is all just a hotkey away. This same setup would be possible with openbox I think, but it all comes "out of the box" with most tiling window managers.

to3m 9y ago

I use my align_window3 utility on Windows: https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3 https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window3 It divides the screen into halves and thirds horizontally and vertically, with one keypress setting size and position on one dimension. (The recommended key settings are vaguely mnemonic, but of course you can pick pretty much anything and then get used to it through practice.) I can't remember the last time I felt the need for a finer grid, but the 4x3 grid here has got me thinking that maybe it could do with an update...

infinisil 9y ago

I believe it should be easy to integrate this into xmonad by creating a few functions for that, which is the real beauty of it. The xmonad-contrib package [1] is a collection of such extensions, this one could very much join them. [1]: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib

lacampbell 9y ago

This is a pretty cool idea that would really help make use of huge monitors, without the hassle of dual monitors. How much would would it be to let the user custom define their grid? Ie, it's 4 * 3 by default, could we have 3 * 2 for laptop users?, or 4 * 2 for monitors turned sideways?

dbranes 9y ago
Great suggestion & definitely something I was thinking about, will put on the roadmap. I hacked this up for my own use on my 3840 x 2160 display, and the philosophy is will add fancier features & customizations only if there is interest.
goerz 9y ago
Strongly second being able to customize the grid. I'd actually like 6*4, spanning keys 1-6 at the top to z-n at the bottom

rufugee 9y ago

I've been using quicktile (https://github.com/ssokolow/quicktile https://github.com/ssokolow/quicktile) for years to add tiling to desktop environments which don't provide it ootb. Also in python, and works very well.

ice109 9y ago
yea i discovered this a couple of months ago and though i've never used a tiling window manager i can't imagine what value one would add over quicktile

osmala 9y ago

Wow. This is amazing, perfect keybindings. Lots of keys combined with Meta(alt)+Control key, the optimum keybinding for window manager, those two keys are always unused in user programs. Its really perfect for emacs, no-one has imagined to use those two keys with some random key, on any of emacs packages or modes. Poor me have binded my windowmanager commands with Super(windows) + (what ever command key I use for it.

cyberjunkie 9y ago

Why isn't there a good, non-bloated, free one for Windows? I try to use Windows 10's tiling, but it'll only do 4 quadrants (with variable sizes)

nafest 9y ago
I wrote a little tool that uses the Ctrl plus the numeric Keyboard to subdivide the desktop into 3x3 quadrants: https://github.com/nafest/winpad_layout https://github.com/nafest/winpad_layout Its basically a ripoff of the macOS tool https://github.com/janten/keypad-layout https://github.com/janten/keypad-layout
executesorder66 9y ago
I guess it's because people who care about customizing their OS generally don't want anything to do with Windows.

kapauldo 9y ago

This is awesome!