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Ask HN: One macOS desktop computer, stand-up desk and sit-down desk

2 points by petecooper 9y ago

[This might be more appropriate for Stack Exchange or Reddit, but I wanted to try here first.] I have a macOS desktop computer. During the day, it's a work-work computer and my stand-up desk is where I use it from. In the evenings, I do side gig work, project stuff and other things that invariably happen when I'm at a second (sit-down) desk, which has a comfortable chair and that helps my mind think. I have 4x screens, each is a different model. Two on the stand-up desk, two on the sit-down desk. I have macOS set up to recognise them individually in a horizontal 4x1 array. I have one user account because sometimes side gig stuff becomes work-work stuff and it's more convenient to have it all in one place. When I start my evening stuff, I log in and move all my windows to the screens on the sit-down desk. When I'm done, I shut down. In the morning I log in and move the windows back to the stand-up desk. There's a lot of moving stuff around, and my morning peak of motivation and focus is offset by rearranging screen furniture. Every. Single. Time. I'm looking out for a way to harness two working environments/zones/etc on a single-user, multiple-desk macOS system and save myself some of the repetitive work. Re-reading this, I hope I'm not coming across as some sort of lazy or entitled tool (I'm not). I am very grateful for input and ideas, and thanks for reading.

brudgers 9y ago
I don't know about the options for Apple's operating system, but this is the sort of task that tiling windows managers (such as Xmonad or i3 on Linux) make short work of with a few keystrokes. [1] Tiling window managers provide extensive control in exchange for a brief learning curve and the very occasional corner case where manual pixel perfect window alignment has enormous benefit -- I can't remember any. I recall reading that Xmonad will run on Macs if the display manager is changed from Apple's proprietary code to X11. Good luck. [1] I have been using Xmonad for several years and I will never go back to a non-tiling manager (large piles of cash might create an exception).

2 points by petecooper 9y ago

brudgers 9y ago

I don't know about the options for Apple's operating system, but this is the sort of task that tiling windows managers (such as Xmonad or i3 on Linux) make short work of with a few keystrokes. [1] Tiling window managers provide extensive control in exchange for a brief learning curve and the very occasional corner case where manual pixel perfect window alignment has enormous benefit -- I can't remember any. I recall reading that Xmonad will run on Macs if the display manager is changed from Apple's proprietary code to X11. Good luck. [1] I have been using Xmonad for several years and I will never go back to a non-tiling manager (large piles of cash might create an exception).