7 ms·

Vim-like “jump” cursor for Mac OS Window Management

187 points by pyinstallwoes 4y ago

spark3k 4y ago
I use the UHK keyboard which has butter smooth home row keys mouse movement so I never need a mouse anyway. https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/
johncoltrane 4y ago
The feature this app mimics has never been part of Vim proper, so I am not sure what is "Vim-like" about this.
- absoluteunit1 4y ago
  They probably meant “Vimium-like”
- aikinai 4y ago
  You can use f, F, b, B, /, etc to quickly jump around native Vim and act on distant text, so makes sense to me.
  - johncoltrane 4y ago
    That app doesn't provide those features, though.
- aliceryhl 4y ago
  Most browsers have a vim emulation plugin that provide a feature like this when you press `f`. So really, it's "browser-vim-emulator-like".
  - johncoltrane 4y ago
    EasyMotion-like would be more accurate.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  Seems more avy-like.
absoluteunit1 4y ago
Cool app; does it use the same MacOS api as the Voice Control feature? (If you’re in voice control and ask for it to “Show Number”, it will append a number to every clickable element currently in view
- systoll 4y ago
  Yes.
bilekas 4y ago
This is cool, after only recently discovering Vimium which is a game changer for me, I'll definitely be checking this out. Can't say I'm too keen on the pricing though.
- masukomi 4y ago
  I feel like $29 for "use it forever" is pretty reasonable for something that would likely qualify as a "game changer". How many sales would they have to make at say $5 to pay for all the time they spent developing it + all the time they will spend maintaining it as apple changes things out from under them? If we assume a $5 price, and a standard US contract rate of ~$100hr (cheap for US contracting actually) and we ignore the cut taken by credit card companies and such (ha!), then we're talking 20 sales to pay for 1hr of development. I don't think they made this plus the site with < 20 hrs and I assume they'll be spending at least 1hr doing email support so 400 sales just to cover their time making it. Or 420 sales to break even... for an extremely niche product. Still think $29 is too expensive?
  - bilekas 4y ago
    > Still think $29 is too expensive? For only one machine, yeah.. the 29 is fine but I need a new license for every machine? This also suggests the app needs be online too .. Will be getting it but it feels strange to me. That's all.
  - nomilk 4y ago
    For clarity $29 is "use it forever" but with updates for only 1 year. If only for security patches, best to keep software updated, so for most it becomes $29 annually. Also: > you can use Homerow without a license. An unintrusive prompt will show every 50 activations. So you can try before you buy.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    It's a bit surprising how consistently the amount of work that goes into developing an app and then maintaining it is underestimated, particularly with how there doesn't seem to be any price point other than free that won't prompt reactions of "that's too expensive". As someone who's more inclined towards developing little desktop utilities than some kind of SaaS it's dissuading.
hs86 4y ago
Alternative: https://shortcat.app/ https://shortcat.app/
- aikinai 4y ago
  Have you tried both? Any tips on which might be better?
  - tincanner 4y ago
    just tried both, homerow seemed noticeably faster to me.
- ChrisLTD 4y ago
  Shortcat is my favorite of these sorts of apps. I just wish there was a way to make all of them faster. The delay between requesting the link hints and then actually displaying on screen is painful enough that I haven’t been able to incorporate it into my workflow. Most of these apps seem to tie into MacOS’s accessibility framework for the hinting, and I’m guessing the delay is being caused by waiting for and then acting on these response from that framework.
  - chris_st 4y ago
    There's a customizable delay in Shortcat that you may have set. Otherwise, buy an M2 Air like mine and see it fly :-)
    - ChrisLTD 4y ago
      I have it set to immediate, and I'm using it on a M1 Pro machine :-D
  - brentm 4y ago
    Just tried this one, works great on M1 Max. No delays.
    - 4y ago
afry1 4y ago
For my emacs friends, here's a wonderful package that provides the same functionality: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy https://github.com/abo-abo/avy And, if you're interested in some historical context for this "type characters and jump to point" functionality, the Canon Cat: https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c
meatjuice 4y ago
I found an app named “Scoot” recently and it works just as I wanted. It works in literally any situation by its grid-based navigation feature. https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  This looks cool. Thanks.
squeegee_scream 4y ago
I’d love to use an app like this but I’ve tried a few and they are too slow for me and they only work about 90-95% of the time which is enough to start relying on it but when it doesn’t work it’s jarring and then I have to use the mouse, which makes the entire interaction slower than just using the mouse in the first place.
- rochak 4y ago
  You just perfectly described what my experience with these apps has been as well
phil294 4y ago
I made this for Linux recently too: https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere (X11, Wayland coming soon)
tincanner 4y ago
anyone aware of a quick switcher like this but for open windows/tabs on Mac? AltTab which seems to be the popular options doesn't seem to have a quick switch/fuzzy finder.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I do this with hammerspoon, it's built in to the hints module with the "vimperator" style setting. https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.hints.html#windowHints https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.hints.html#windowHints
  - tincanner 4y ago
    kicked the tires with Hammerspoon, seems quite powerful, thanks for sharing! the windowHints are quite slow to load but it's a start! what i do at the moment, which is fairly fast, is launch Finder and type the first couple letters of the window i want to switch to—99% hit rate.
    - philsnow 4y ago
      By Finder do you mean Spotlight? My gripe with Spotlight is the instability of the pre-selected item after you type a few characters. On my mac, if I'm trying to go to Finder, I get cmd+space (Spotlight Search) f F(inder.app) i Fi(nd My.app) n Fin(d My.app) d Find( My.app) e Finde(r.app) so quite often I'll see Finder.app show up as the result, but I've already told my fingers to type the 'ind', so there's a race between "type these keys", "see Finder", "type return", and "see Find My".
  - philsnow 4y ago
    I didn't like the default cmd-tab behavior or expose so I also used hammerspoon to "fix" it: https://gist.github.com/philsnow/d6ba054f57e2d304f0d4d18f247cf344 https://gist.github.com/philsnow/d6ba054f57e2d304f0d4d18f247... This is off-topic because this thing is about cmd-tab switching instead of typing a couple keys to switch to a particular window, but I just wanted to second the mention for hammerspoon as a "can probably solve your issues with macOS interface" multitool. Since you write in lua (or anything that compiles to lua, like fennel) it's incredibly easy to iterate on.
curious145454 4y ago
Are there any alternatives for KDE/Wayland?
AlexErrant 4y ago
A source-available alternative for Windows: https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck
- zsims 4y ago
  I haven't been maintaining this much lately. Suffers from the same problems as other tools - the accessibility APIs are slow
freeCandy 4y ago
Not really the same thing, but I found warpd to be the most usable keyboard navigation solution for Linux https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd
- xept 4y ago
  Great app, thank you for the recommendation. There's only one problem I've encountered so far. I use `maim -s` to take screenshots, and I've tried to combine it with the dragging mode in warpd, but it doesn't work. As soon as I activate warpd, the maim seems to exit. Or if I enter warpd first, I can't launch main anymore. It would be nice to take screenshots from keyboard only. Otherwise, warpd is awesome. History mode is interesting in particular.
- p2hari 4y ago
  Yes, I agree. I use it and love it. Occasionally it keeps falling to move down on pressing 'j'.
- plmpsu 4y ago
  Doesn't seem to work with XFCE.
anamexis 4y ago
Looks like the app download is broken. I get taken to a page at install.appcenter.ms that says "Our services aren't available right now"
lelandfe 4y ago
Having tried in vain to automate apps' interfaces in the past, I'm confident Homerow can not work with a lot of the applications I use. > Homerow works with most native macOS apps and a growing set of non-native web-based apps Yeah, that tracks - thankfully Electron does make that a breeze. I wonder if this at least supports Catalyst apps, like Messages or Weather.
piskov 4y ago
I knew I’ve seen it before :-) This is Vimac that gone commercial https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac
- Nezteb 4y ago
  I've used vimac for a few years and like it; I'm willing to throw the dev some money for a successor!
blakedietz 4y ago
If you haven't used leap or its alternatives in vim, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the closest thing to a direct brain to computer interface that I've used. Love the other comments in here. I'll have to check out shortcat.
likeclockwork 4y ago
I've been looking for a utility that will let me look at a window on another monitor, see a hint, focus it. It seems as though this utility only works within windows rather than between them though, if I have understood the sales pitch correctly. I'm coming to MacOS from a Linux tiling WM. I'm so used to being able to jump between monitors and switch windows directionally without having to grab the mouse. Alt-tab / window search workflows are a non-starter: I can see the window I want to focus, I shouldn't have to pick it out of a menu or have to type the window title. Does anyone know of any utilities that might fit the bill?
- sixhobbits 4y ago
  not exactly what you want but I use alfred hotkeys tied to "open" actions for specific applications. If the app is already open it activates it instead so I have shortcuts for safari, firefox, slack etc.
- galoisscobi 4y ago
  I also came from a TWM (i3) to macOS. It took a while to get to a good solution but I have it down now with yabai and skhd for window management. For launching apps, I wrote something around the launchAppOrFocus API in hammerspoon, assigning hot keys to my commonly used apps. I also have a rule set in yabai that launches certain apps in set desktop spaces. I use spotlight search for the apps I don’t open so frequently but having something closer to dmenu (or a fuzzy find app picker) would be nice.
- sleepybrett 4y ago
  I have used phoenix for some functionality in the general area https://github.com/kasper/phoenix https://github.com/kasper/phoenix
- rifty 4y ago
  Yabai[1] looks like it supports directional focus movement.[2] You could also check out hammerspoon[3] and see if there are any sample configurations that could do directional focus.[4] [1]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Commands#focus-window https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Commands#focus-win... [3]: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon [4]: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/wiki/Sample-Configurations https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/wiki/Sample-Confi...
cipher_system 4y ago
Pretty cool app that could be useful. Works quite like Vimium in Chrome. Only annoying thing is that you have to press shift to enter uppercase letters.

187 points by pyinstallwoes 4y ago

I use the UHK keyboard which has butter smooth home row keys mouse movement so I never need a mouse anyway. https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/

johncoltrane 4y ago

The feature this app mimics has never been part of Vim proper, so I am not sure what is "Vim-like" about this.

absoluteunit1 4y ago
They probably meant “Vimium-like”
aikinai 4y ago
You can use f, F, b, B, /, etc to quickly jump around native Vim and act on distant text, so makes sense to me.
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  That app doesn't provide those features, though.
aliceryhl 4y ago
Most browsers have a vim emulation plugin that provide a feature like this when you press `f`. So really, it's "browser-vim-emulator-like".
- johncoltrane 4y ago
  EasyMotion-like would be more accurate.
tmtvl 4y ago
Seems more avy-like.

absoluteunit1 4y ago

Cool app; does it use the same MacOS api as the Voice Control feature? (If you’re in voice control and ask for it to “Show Number”, it will append a number to every clickable element currently in view

systoll 4y ago
Yes.

bilekas 4y ago

This is cool, after only recently discovering Vimium which is a game changer for me, I'll definitely be checking this out. Can't say I'm too keen on the pricing though.

masukomi 4y ago
I feel like $29 for "use it forever" is pretty reasonable for something that would likely qualify as a "game changer". How many sales would they have to make at say $5 to pay for all the time they spent developing it + all the time they will spend maintaining it as apple changes things out from under them? If we assume a $5 price, and a standard US contract rate of ~$100hr (cheap for US contracting actually) and we ignore the cut taken by credit card companies and such (ha!), then we're talking 20 sales to pay for 1hr of development. I don't think they made this plus the site with < 20 hrs and I assume they'll be spending at least 1hr doing email support so 400 sales just to cover their time making it. Or 420 sales to break even... for an extremely niche product. Still think $29 is too expensive?
- bilekas 4y ago
  > Still think $29 is too expensive? For only one machine, yeah.. the 29 is fine but I need a new license for every machine? This also suggests the app needs be online too .. Will be getting it but it feels strange to me. That's all.
- nomilk 4y ago
  For clarity $29 is "use it forever" but with updates for only 1 year. If only for security patches, best to keep software updated, so for most it becomes $29 annually. Also: > you can use Homerow without a license. An unintrusive prompt will show every 50 activations. So you can try before you buy.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  It's a bit surprising how consistently the amount of work that goes into developing an app and then maintaining it is underestimated, particularly with how there doesn't seem to be any price point other than free that won't prompt reactions of "that's too expensive". As someone who's more inclined towards developing little desktop utilities than some kind of SaaS it's dissuading.

hs86 4y ago

Alternative: https://shortcat.app/ https://shortcat.app/

aikinai 4y ago
Have you tried both? Any tips on which might be better?
- tincanner 4y ago
  just tried both, homerow seemed noticeably faster to me.
ChrisLTD 4y ago
Shortcat is my favorite of these sorts of apps. I just wish there was a way to make all of them faster. The delay between requesting the link hints and then actually displaying on screen is painful enough that I haven’t been able to incorporate it into my workflow. Most of these apps seem to tie into MacOS’s accessibility framework for the hinting, and I’m guessing the delay is being caused by waiting for and then acting on these response from that framework.
- chris_st 4y ago
  There's a customizable delay in Shortcat that you may have set. Otherwise, buy an M2 Air like mine and see it fly :-)
  - ChrisLTD 4y ago
    I have it set to immediate, and I'm using it on a M1 Pro machine :-D
- brentm 4y ago
  Just tried this one, works great on M1 Max. No delays.
  - 4y ago

afry1 4y ago

For my emacs friends, here's a wonderful package that provides the same functionality: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy https://github.com/abo-abo/avy And, if you're interested in some historical context for this "type characters and jump to point" functionality, the Canon Cat: https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c

meatjuice 4y ago

I found an app named “Scoot” recently and it works just as I wanted. It works in literally any situation by its grid-based navigation feature. https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
This looks cool. Thanks.

squeegee_scream 4y ago

I’d love to use an app like this but I’ve tried a few and they are too slow for me and they only work about 90-95% of the time which is enough to start relying on it but when it doesn’t work it’s jarring and then I have to use the mouse, which makes the entire interaction slower than just using the mouse in the first place.

rochak 4y ago
You just perfectly described what my experience with these apps has been as well

phil294 4y ago

I made this for Linux recently too: https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere (X11, Wayland coming soon)

tincanner 4y ago

anyone aware of a quick switcher like this but for open windows/tabs on Mac? AltTab which seems to be the popular options doesn't seem to have a quick switch/fuzzy finder.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
I do this with hammerspoon, it's built in to the hints module with the "vimperator" style setting. https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.hints.html#windowHints https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.hints.html#windowHints
- tincanner 4y ago
  kicked the tires with Hammerspoon, seems quite powerful, thanks for sharing! the windowHints are quite slow to load but it's a start! what i do at the moment, which is fairly fast, is launch Finder and type the first couple letters of the window i want to switch to—99% hit rate.
  - philsnow 4y ago
    By Finder do you mean Spotlight? My gripe with Spotlight is the instability of the pre-selected item after you type a few characters. On my mac, if I'm trying to go to Finder, I get cmd+space (Spotlight Search) f F(inder.app) i Fi(nd My.app) n Fin(d My.app) d Find( My.app) e Finde(r.app) so quite often I'll see Finder.app show up as the result, but I've already told my fingers to type the 'ind', so there's a race between "type these keys", "see Finder", "type return", and "see Find My".
- philsnow 4y ago
  I didn't like the default cmd-tab behavior or expose so I also used hammerspoon to "fix" it: https://gist.github.com/philsnow/d6ba054f57e2d304f0d4d18f247cf344 https://gist.github.com/philsnow/d6ba054f57e2d304f0d4d18f247... This is off-topic because this thing is about cmd-tab switching instead of typing a couple keys to switch to a particular window, but I just wanted to second the mention for hammerspoon as a "can probably solve your issues with macOS interface" multitool. Since you write in lua (or anything that compiles to lua, like fennel) it's incredibly easy to iterate on.

curious145454 4y ago

Are there any alternatives for KDE/Wayland?

AlexErrant 4y ago

A source-available alternative for Windows: https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck https://github.com/zsims/hunt-and-peck

zsims 4y ago
I haven't been maintaining this much lately. Suffers from the same problems as other tools - the accessibility APIs are slow

freeCandy 4y ago

Not really the same thing, but I found warpd to be the most usable keyboard navigation solution for Linux https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd

xept 4y ago
Great app, thank you for the recommendation. There's only one problem I've encountered so far. I use `maim -s` to take screenshots, and I've tried to combine it with the dragging mode in warpd, but it doesn't work. As soon as I activate warpd, the maim seems to exit. Or if I enter warpd first, I can't launch main anymore. It would be nice to take screenshots from keyboard only. Otherwise, warpd is awesome. History mode is interesting in particular.
p2hari 4y ago
Yes, I agree. I use it and love it. Occasionally it keeps falling to move down on pressing 'j'.
plmpsu 4y ago
Doesn't seem to work with XFCE.

anamexis 4y ago

Looks like the app download is broken. I get taken to a page at install.appcenter.ms that says "Our services aren't available right now"

lelandfe 4y ago

Having tried in vain to automate apps' interfaces in the past, I'm confident Homerow can not work with a lot of the applications I use. > Homerow works with most native macOS apps and a growing set of non-native web-based apps Yeah, that tracks - thankfully Electron does make that a breeze. I wonder if this at least supports Catalyst apps, like Messages or Weather.

piskov 4y ago

I knew I’ve seen it before :-) This is Vimac that gone commercial https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac

Nezteb 4y ago
I've used vimac for a few years and like it; I'm willing to throw the dev some money for a successor!

blakedietz 4y ago

If you haven't used leap or its alternatives in vim, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's the closest thing to a direct brain to computer interface that I've used. Love the other comments in here. I'll have to check out shortcat.

likeclockwork 4y ago

I've been looking for a utility that will let me look at a window on another monitor, see a hint, focus it. It seems as though this utility only works within windows rather than between them though, if I have understood the sales pitch correctly. I'm coming to MacOS from a Linux tiling WM. I'm so used to being able to jump between monitors and switch windows directionally without having to grab the mouse. Alt-tab / window search workflows are a non-starter: I can see the window I want to focus, I shouldn't have to pick it out of a menu or have to type the window title. Does anyone know of any utilities that might fit the bill?

sixhobbits 4y ago
not exactly what you want but I use alfred hotkeys tied to "open" actions for specific applications. If the app is already open it activates it instead so I have shortcuts for safari, firefox, slack etc.
galoisscobi 4y ago
I also came from a TWM (i3) to macOS. It took a while to get to a good solution but I have it down now with yabai and skhd for window management. For launching apps, I wrote something around the launchAppOrFocus API in hammerspoon, assigning hot keys to my commonly used apps. I also have a rule set in yabai that launches certain apps in set desktop spaces. I use spotlight search for the apps I don’t open so frequently but having something closer to dmenu (or a fuzzy find app picker) would be nice.
sleepybrett 4y ago
I have used phoenix for some functionality in the general area https://github.com/kasper/phoenix https://github.com/kasper/phoenix
rifty 4y ago
Yabai[1] looks like it supports directional focus movement.[2] You could also check out hammerspoon[3] and see if there are any sample configurations that could do directional focus.[4] [1]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Commands#focus-window https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Commands#focus-win... [3]: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon [4]: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/wiki/Sample-Configurations https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/wiki/Sample-Confi...

cipher_system 4y ago

Pretty cool app that could be useful. Works quite like Vimium in Chrome. Only annoying thing is that you have to press shift to enter uppercase letters.