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Looks super interesting. Has anyone here tried a keyboard-first tiling window manager on macOS? Any recommendations?

by neebz 1y ago

cadamsdotcom 1y ago
Give Rectangle a go. I’ve used it for years and love it. Thirds, quarters, sixths. Move windows to the next screen. Increase and decrease size.. so many nice things you can do with just the keyboard. Its keyboard shortcuts are so deeply in my brain I could rattle them off while operating heavy machinery :)
astr0n0mer 1y ago
Check out AeroSpace (https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace). I've been a happy user for the last 8 months or so.
- jnsaff2 1y ago
  +1 for AeroSpace. I have been i3/sway user for about a decade and was really missing similar experience on Mac. All the previous ones came with gotchas or were nowhere near the usability of i3/sway. AeroSpace is almost there, it has a few quirks and annoyances and is missing some features but it's close enough that it's now my daily driver for client work requiring being on a Mac. Highly recommended and hopefully it continues to evolve. Also hoping that the churn in macOS is not going to kill it for some unexpected reason. As far as Hyprland, I tried it and when I got to a setup that I felt comfortable I realized that I had basically replicated my Sway setup with no added benefits so I just switched back to Sway. I'm not much into ricing anyway. I mostly want the chrome to stay out of my way. That said, for people unfamiliar with i3/Sway, Hyprland could be a great way of getting into tiling so I'm definitely rooting for them!
- Jnr 1y ago
  As a "Linux at home - macOS at work" user, I can't stand Window management on macOS. It is so inefficient and hard to manage. AeroSpace tiling window manager finally changed my work day from constant struggle to only occasional struggle with macOS. I use it with sketchybar which is not yet perfect, but it could become quite good and performant with some work on it. I currently use Gnome on Linux, not a tiling window manager, and I would gladly go with Hyprland, but about a year ago while I was trying it out, it crashed quite a few times so it clearly was not ready for production use back then. Will give it a shot again.
sgt 1y ago
Can anyone explain why tiling managers are useful? Seems like a waste of space to me. I prefer having my various windows all over the place and just alt-tabbing between (or using other means of opening the right app). I highly prefer having the app I am working on to be in the center of the screen, so that is what makes sense for me.
- jamiejquinn 1y ago
  If you've tried it and it doesn't fit, that seems fine, it's all just personal workflow. For me it's pure speed at getting to where I need to go. My notes live on workspace 1, my main workspace on 2 and browser on 3, so I'm just a single key combination away from most of what I need. Can still alt+tab if I like.
- vidarh 1y ago
  They're useful to let you not have to think about positioning windows with precision. If that doesn't feel useful to you, then maybe a tiling wm isn't right for you. That's entirely fine. My wm has an "escape" in that I can define floating desktops, and by default I have one, mostly used for file management, because there are things where I agree it's better to have floating/overlapping windows. It doesn't really matter if it's a "waste of space" - I have two large monitors, and 10 virtual desktops to spread windows between (I'd add more, but I haven't felt the need). To the point where my setup, by default, centers the window with large margins when I have just one window open on a screen because it's more comfortable (and I'm just one keypress away from fullscreening the app anyway). Most of the time I use tiling because I like not having to care about the layout beyond those defaults. But I can also configure specific layouts. E.g. I have desktop dedicated to my todo list, a list of done items, and notes, and it has a fixed layout that ensures those windows are always in the same placement, on the same desktop.
  - sgt 1y ago
    Maybe it's also due to differences in personality. I like to focus on one or two things at a time. And on second though, my argument about wasting space probably doesn't make sense. Perhaps I'm thinking more about "information overload". In my day to day I have a couple terminals (each with 4-5 tabs, some are running screen sessions), two browsers (with max 3-4 tabs open), music player, at least 2-3 IDE's open (JetBrains), Notes, mail client, Slack. This is across two monitors.

Looks super interesting. Has anyone here tried a keyboard-first tiling window manager on macOS? Any recommendations?

by neebz 1y ago

Looks super interesting. Has anyone here tried a keyboard-first tiling window manager on macOS? Any recommendations?

Give Rectangle a go. I’ve used it for years and love it. Thirds, quarters, sixths. Move windows to the next screen. Increase and decrease size.. so many nice things you can do with just the keyboard. Its keyboard shortcuts are so deeply in my brain I could rattle them off while operating heavy machinery :)

astr0n0mer 1y ago

Check out AeroSpace (https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace). I've been a happy user for the last 8 months or so.

jnsaff2 1y ago
+1 for AeroSpace. I have been i3/sway user for about a decade and was really missing similar experience on Mac. All the previous ones came with gotchas or were nowhere near the usability of i3/sway. AeroSpace is almost there, it has a few quirks and annoyances and is missing some features but it's close enough that it's now my daily driver for client work requiring being on a Mac. Highly recommended and hopefully it continues to evolve. Also hoping that the churn in macOS is not going to kill it for some unexpected reason. As far as Hyprland, I tried it and when I got to a setup that I felt comfortable I realized that I had basically replicated my Sway setup with no added benefits so I just switched back to Sway. I'm not much into ricing anyway. I mostly want the chrome to stay out of my way. That said, for people unfamiliar with i3/Sway, Hyprland could be a great way of getting into tiling so I'm definitely rooting for them!
Jnr 1y ago
As a "Linux at home - macOS at work" user, I can't stand Window management on macOS. It is so inefficient and hard to manage. AeroSpace tiling window manager finally changed my work day from constant struggle to only occasional struggle with macOS. I use it with sketchybar which is not yet perfect, but it could become quite good and performant with some work on it. I currently use Gnome on Linux, not a tiling window manager, and I would gladly go with Hyprland, but about a year ago while I was trying it out, it crashed quite a few times so it clearly was not ready for production use back then. Will give it a shot again.

sgt 1y ago

Can anyone explain why tiling managers are useful? Seems like a waste of space to me. I prefer having my various windows all over the place and just alt-tabbing between (or using other means of opening the right app). I highly prefer having the app I am working on to be in the center of the screen, so that is what makes sense for me.

jamiejquinn 1y ago
If you've tried it and it doesn't fit, that seems fine, it's all just personal workflow. For me it's pure speed at getting to where I need to go. My notes live on workspace 1, my main workspace on 2 and browser on 3, so I'm just a single key combination away from most of what I need. Can still alt+tab if I like.
vidarh 1y ago
They're useful to let you not have to think about positioning windows with precision. If that doesn't feel useful to you, then maybe a tiling wm isn't right for you. That's entirely fine. My wm has an "escape" in that I can define floating desktops, and by default I have one, mostly used for file management, because there are things where I agree it's better to have floating/overlapping windows. It doesn't really matter if it's a "waste of space" - I have two large monitors, and 10 virtual desktops to spread windows between (I'd add more, but I haven't felt the need). To the point where my setup, by default, centers the window with large margins when I have just one window open on a screen because it's more comfortable (and I'm just one keypress away from fullscreening the app anyway). Most of the time I use tiling because I like not having to care about the layout beyond those defaults. But I can also configure specific layouts. E.g. I have desktop dedicated to my todo list, a list of done items, and notes, and it has a fixed layout that ensures those windows are always in the same placement, on the same desktop.
- sgt 1y ago
  Maybe it's also due to differences in personality. I like to focus on one or two things at a time. And on second though, my argument about wasting space probably doesn't make sense. Perhaps I'm thinking more about "information overload". In my day to day I have a couple terminals (each with 4-5 tabs, some are running screen sessions), two browsers (with max 3-4 tabs open), music player, at least 2-3 IDE's open (JetBrains), Notes, mail client, Slack. This is across two monitors.