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Kind of sideways rant about tiling window managers on Marcos in general.. I mostly use Linux + dwm as my daily driver, recently added a mac into the mix (mostl

by aleqs 1mo ago

Kind of sideways rant about tiling window managers on Marcos in general.. I mostly use Linux + dwm as my daily driver, recently added a mac into the mix (mostly for testing personal cross-platform stuff, I use macs for work mostly), and not being a fan of the macos UI in general decided to set up a tiling window manager - googling showed me AeroSpace and Yabai as the most popular options. The experience with both of these has been quite terrible, and I don't think the problem is with these projects themselves but with macos and how it's UI/desktops work. Full screen windows seemingly break both completely. Doc hiding/showing is completely inconsistent - sometimes it just renders on top of all windows and doesn't hide other times it stays hidden even on mouse hover. Windows just disappear and can't be switched to. Fullscreen tiling seems completely unsupport(ed/able) - you must waste screen space on pointless title/status bars for some reason . After googling it turns out many of these issues exist in a fresh/bare macos and have been know unfixed issues for like 5+ years. I can't believe there are people claiming macos has a consistent, elegant and high quality UI... it is so terribly shitty and broken

skupig 1mo ago
>you must waste screen space on pointless title/status bars for some reason There is macwmfx: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/macwmfx https://github.com/aspauldingcode/macwmfx I use it on a couple specific apps to remove title bars. You can inject it with DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES.
- paulsp 1mo ago
  this is really cool perhaps I could integrate it or get some inspiration from it to declutter the tiling view
- paulsp 1mo ago
  Just had some time to look at this, it needs SIP disabled which opens up some risk. That was the reason for me to choose AeroSpace as a foundation instead of yabai.
paulsp 1mo ago
Yeah its a bit painful on mac. You cant have floating windows constantly in front on mac like you have on hyprland. In my implementation I added a super + s shortcut to pull any floating windows I lost to the front again. But its definitly not the nicest solution. For fullscreen windows I also added a custom implementation with super + f that works in the workspaces setting. Just making videos fullscreen or clicking the green fullscreen button still exits the setup to macos fullscreen. The system is still kinda usable with mac fullscreen in parallel but its not a clean experience.
iLemming 1mo ago
> rant about tiling window managers MacOS is so absolutely terrible for programming work. The only coder-favorable unit on Mac that I wish Linux had a similar alternative for is the OSA layer. Nothing else is justifiable there from a software engineering standpoint. Nothing. Apple keeps insisting on Jony Ive's influence and keeps making "an operating system for florists". Well, I'm a damn programmer - I need the utility, I don't care about stupid animations, widgets, jumping icons in the Dock, etc. If my enterprise overlords didn't push it so hard down my throat, I would be so much happier just using Linux.
- cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
  Programmers are not a monolith. The minimal tiling keyboard driven thing works great for some, but it drives me up a wall as much as the standard macOS arrangement seems to irritate you. Actually one of my peeves with Linux is that as of yet, there’s no WM or DE for Linux that gets even 80% of the broad strokes right for people who find a traditional Mac style desktop productive. Most options either lean Windows-style or minimal tiling style, with the only outliers (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC) representing the odd niche of a small handful of macOS fundamentals hybridized with conventions from the tiling things and Windows.
  - iLemming 1mo ago
    I'm not talking only about WMs on Mac - just in general. The restrictions they put around things get to ridiculous level of hassle experience. All those "you're holding it wrong" and "customers don't know what they want" vibes are just super annoying and unproductive. I hate when the software on the hardware you own treats you like a baby. What's the point of calling yourself a "software programmer" when you can't even control the damn software? It feels like making you helpless was the point.
    - cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
      I mean it's all subjective. The relative rigidity of the macOS UI just means that it isn't for people who don't like it. For those of us who do enjoy it, it's great because a stock install is already 80% of the way to a productive setup. I can have a new Mac ready for work in 15-20m without copying dotfiles or anything like that. Not that there isn't a place for tinkering and customizing, but it's not the computer(s) that I get work done on. It's for leisure time machines. When I try to work under Linux I end up on side quests trying to fine-tune everything to perfection (which is for practical purposes impossible, unless I write an entire desktop environment for myself) and can't get any work done. On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like and the things I can't I shrug and then focus on my work.

by aleqs 1mo ago

skupig 1mo ago

>you must waste screen space on pointless title/status bars for some reason There is macwmfx: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/macwmfx https://github.com/aspauldingcode/macwmfx I use it on a couple specific apps to remove title bars. You can inject it with DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES.

paulsp 1mo ago
this is really cool perhaps I could integrate it or get some inspiration from it to declutter the tiling view
paulsp 1mo ago
Just had some time to look at this, it needs SIP disabled which opens up some risk. That was the reason for me to choose AeroSpace as a foundation instead of yabai.

paulsp 1mo ago

Yeah its a bit painful on mac. You cant have floating windows constantly in front on mac like you have on hyprland. In my implementation I added a super + s shortcut to pull any floating windows I lost to the front again. But its definitly not the nicest solution. For fullscreen windows I also added a custom implementation with super + f that works in the workspaces setting. Just making videos fullscreen or clicking the green fullscreen button still exits the setup to macos fullscreen. The system is still kinda usable with mac fullscreen in parallel but its not a clean experience.

iLemming 1mo ago

> rant about tiling window managers MacOS is so absolutely terrible for programming work. The only coder-favorable unit on Mac that I wish Linux had a similar alternative for is the OSA layer. Nothing else is justifiable there from a software engineering standpoint. Nothing. Apple keeps insisting on Jony Ive's influence and keeps making "an operating system for florists". Well, I'm a damn programmer - I need the utility, I don't care about stupid animations, widgets, jumping icons in the Dock, etc. If my enterprise overlords didn't push it so hard down my throat, I would be so much happier just using Linux.

cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
Programmers are not a monolith. The minimal tiling keyboard driven thing works great for some, but it drives me up a wall as much as the standard macOS arrangement seems to irritate you. Actually one of my peeves with Linux is that as of yet, there’s no WM or DE for Linux that gets even 80% of the broad strokes right for people who find a traditional Mac style desktop productive. Most options either lean Windows-style or minimal tiling style, with the only outliers (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC) representing the odd niche of a small handful of macOS fundamentals hybridized with conventions from the tiling things and Windows.
- iLemming 1mo ago
  I'm not talking only about WMs on Mac - just in general. The restrictions they put around things get to ridiculous level of hassle experience. All those "you're holding it wrong" and "customers don't know what they want" vibes are just super annoying and unproductive. I hate when the software on the hardware you own treats you like a baby. What's the point of calling yourself a "software programmer" when you can't even control the damn software? It feels like making you helpless was the point.
  - cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
    I mean it's all subjective. The relative rigidity of the macOS UI just means that it isn't for people who don't like it. For those of us who do enjoy it, it's great because a stock install is already 80% of the way to a productive setup. I can have a new Mac ready for work in 15-20m without copying dotfiles or anything like that. Not that there isn't a place for tinkering and customizing, but it's not the computer(s) that I get work done on. It's for leisure time machines. When I try to work under Linux I end up on side quests trying to fine-tune everything to perfection (which is for practical purposes impossible, unless I write an entire desktop environment for myself) and can't get any work done. On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like and the things I can't I shrug and then focus on my work.