13 ms·

Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API

446 points by LaSombra 12y ago

kovrik 12y ago
Awesome work, sdegutis! I love your Zephyros and Phoenix projects. Keep working! I really miss good tiling wm on MacOS X.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  <3
kovrik 12y ago
Is it possible to move windows from one desktop to another?
- Nemcue 12y ago
  It probably is. I used Phoenix (the JS predecessor to Hydra) and that exact functionality is one of my most used hotkeys: Capslock + E = Swap currently selected window to other desktop, make that window fullscreen and center the mouse cursor on it
colinramsay 12y ago
This looks great, but my favourite thing might be the Principles section: > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash > Hydra must be lightweight... never use more than 10 MB of memory > API should be completely transparent > API must not be bloated I think these principles should be the standard to which we all hold our software. Looking forward to testing this out! Edit to say: it would be really great to see some more complete code samples but I'm sure that'll come in time.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Can you give an example of the kinds of samples you would like to see, and where you would look for them? (I presume under the Examples section on the README page?) That will help me know what to put there.
  - colinramsay 12y ago
    You have a link to your own config and some screenshots of it in action, maybe it would be good to pull out the relevant sections of your config so people can replicate what they see in the screenshots?
    - sdegutis 12y ago
      Not a bad idea, will do. Thanks.
- cheepin 12y ago
  Hail Hydra!
  - Vanayad 12y ago
    Came here for this. Didn't leave disappointed.
- chc 12y ago
  I don't think "Must never use more than 10 MB of memory" is a reasonable standard to hold all software to.
  - kennywinker 12y ago
    Nope, but I would venture to guess that most software would be improved by sticking to that.
    - chc 12y ago
      I don't even feel confident in that claim. If keeping memory usage under 10 MB requires a significant amount of developer effort, that is effort that isn't going into something else that I might value a lot more than, say, 20 MB of RAM.
      - georgemcbay 12y ago
        Not just developer effort, but also sometimes program runtime efficiency. RAM is cheap, RAM is pretty fast (compared to disk or network); cache shit there when it makes sense to do so for overall efficiency. 10MB is a fairly ridiculous modern standard to limit yourself to, IMO (and I started on the C64 and generally do dislike and try to avoid bloat).
  - TD-Linux 12y ago
    To put this in perspective, a full screen application running on a Retina display needs at least 40MB total for its front and back buffers.
- euank 12y ago
  I do not like the "API should be completely transparent" and "API must not be bloated". I personally think APIs exist to hide complexity. They should make sense, they should be usable, but they need not be transparent. Let's have a rather contrived example. In SDL, you can call SDL_Init(). That does a lot of things, and what it does differs on windows, linux, and OSX. I absolutely don't want the more transparent API of SDL_Init_Windows_Video(), SDL_Init_Windows_Audio(), SDL_Init_Linux_Video() .... And so on. Realistically, for absolute transparency, you'd just do away with the API and write every line of code SDL currently hides (Reductio ad absurdum I know) The entire point of having that one SDL_Init() call that's identical on all platforms, even though it does many opaque things underneath (and different things per platforms) is that it's easier to understand and use. The goal of an API is to be usable and useful, nothing else. Transparency can often get in the way of usability. As for the "bloated" bit. Well, I'd rather be able to do too many things than too few. It's a great goal to have a purely orthogonal (no method may be accomplished with another combination of methods) API, but it should not be done at the expense of usability. > Nothing should be put into it except what's impossible or impractical to do in pure Lua, and what's extremely common and likely to be used in everyone's configs. The entire quote makes it seem even more damning to me. Why would you cater to what's "likely to be used in everyone's configs"? That's another way of saying "Let's support only the least common denominator" which to me seems like a bad philosophy. This philosophy would lead to twitter not having a friendship API because the only thing practically every api user does is login and (arguably) tweet, only a few deal with friendships or account settings. It would lead to linux not having a configuration option for running more than one physical CPU or hotswapping ram because the wide majority of people will never use these options. I'm happy that the author of this software decided to make it simple and it seems to be working here, but in the majority of cases of API design, I'd much rather the API be usable, not transparent, and large, not minimalistic. I'd rather be able to call a method that does some common activity for me which I could technically do myself in a 1000 lines of code than not have such a method because it's "bloat".
  - geon 12y ago
    You can't really compare a platform speciffic "window manager" to a multiplatform 3D/2D rendering api.
- prof_hobart 12y ago
  I'm not sure I fully agree. For example > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash It's clearly better to have an app that never crashes than an equivalent one that crashes all the time. However, making sure that your app is 100% crash-free isn't a zero cost thing. It takes time and effort to (often, a lot of both) to get to a completely crash-free app, meaning that the app either costs more, takes longer, or has to compromise on features - or possibly all three. In some case, that trade off is clearly going to be worth it - I'd rather a self-driving car took 10 years longer to develop than have one that rebooted itself twice a day, but in others I'm fine living with the occasional crash if it means cheaper or more feature-rich applications.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    For a window manager, crashing is kinda a pain depending how it restarts. Maybe another way to state the implicit goal would be > Hydra must gracefully and rapidly restart should it crash w/o losing any user data. And then maybe it could do this be serializing state into a sqlite or redis instance. We always to be careful of muddling the goal and the mechanism.
    - prof_hobart 12y ago
      I agree. Like I say, there are some instances where zero crashes is absolutely the right goal. It may not be absolutely mandatory for a window manager (in the way it would be for a self-driving car), but I can understand why someone would want this as a goal for this app. My point was more that I don't think it's a sensible standard for all software. I hear this kind of thing quite regularly, usually by non-technical managers, often in a way that seems to suggest they think bugs are either the result of pure sloppiness, incompetence or downright malice.
- rossjudson 12y ago
  "Bloat" is emotional, not factual. It's meaningless without well-justified examples and alternatives.
xbryanx 12y ago
This looks great, and reminds me of AutoIt on Windows in some ways.
weavie 12y ago
This looks great. Will try it out. It has always surprised me how OS X has such a poor window placement story given how much emphasis apple seems to place on User Experience.
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  It doesn't shock me. Apple is all about the UE, but isn't at all about User Choice. Apple would prefer to tell you where the windows are best positioned for optimal usage rather than letting you tell them. Plus for the majority of average users they'll never need side by side windows anyway, that is a "power user" feature (like multiple desktops, or similar).
- omaranto 12y ago
  I don't there is anything too surprising about this. "User Experience" isn't something you can measure on a single line, there are different aspects to it. I'm not an expert but I think the following are some of the things that users can appreciate: 1. That things work smoothly. 2. That things look pretty. 3. That it's easy to figure out what a program does when you first use it. 4. That it's possible to control the program efficiently, i.e., that you can quickly activate a program's different functions. 5. That a program is powerful, in that it enables you to customize it to work exactly as you need and automate it's use. I've heard people claim Apple focuses on 1-3, I've never heard people say Apple focuses on 4 and 5. For windows placement in particular, Mac OS (as practically all window managers) has a method that covers 1-3: move and resize with the mouse.
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    > I've heard people claim Apple focuses on 1-3, I've never heard people say Apple focuses on 4 and 5 I think 4 applies to an extent; MacOS has very good (albeit stolen from Emacs) universal text navigation shortcuts, for instance. Funnily enough, they used to be quite keen on 5, with Services and Applescript. Services are still around, but have faded into obscurity, with surprisingly few users even being aware they exist; to an extent, they may be replaced by action extensions.
  - 12y ago
btown 12y ago
For the "closed-source-but-non-programming-power-user" alternative to this, I'm a huge advocate of BetterTouchTool (http://www.boastr.net/ http://www.boastr.net/). You can easily bind window snaps to everything from keypresses, to four-finger-sweeps on the trackpad, to dragging window titlebars to the screen corners. Also it's so much fun to infuriate friends when they try to use my trackpad and it moves windows all over the place.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Oh nice! Custom swipes is an excellent idea, I am totally going to have to look into seeing if I can add that to the API.
- BozeWolf 12y ago
  I Quickly had a look on all the window manager alternatives mentioned here. Currently I use flexiglass, but I use it for one reason only. It allows me to move windows like in linux. When holding Mouse button 1 + alt anywhere in the window I can move it. I really like this feature, I never use the titlebar to move windows. Do any of the alternatives (or hydra it self) allow me to do this? I'd like to try them out. See if it has advantages over flexiglass.
  - sikhnerd 12y ago
    For me, the bigger idea to tiling wm, or these psuedo tiling wm is that I never have to use mouse to move/resize/shuffle windows. I too initially missed that feature when I first started using a tiling wm, but that quickly went away as soon as I had the keyboard shortcuts memorized.
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    The 1.1 milestone has plans for "mouse-moved" and "modifiers-changed" events that you can register for, which would let you create a feature very similar to this, where if you hold down option and move the mouse, it will move the window under the mouse with it. I'll file an issue to investigate if it's possible to register for "mouse-clicked" events and override them to be no-ops (so that you don't actually click into the window). That sounds like a fun feature :)
sergiotapia 12y ago
If you're looking for a window manager for OSX without having to actually configure anything, you can try using Spectacle: http://spectacleapp.com/ http://spectacleapp.com/ For instance on my imac 27'' I have Option+Command+Left|Right keys mapped to side (similar to windows 7. And I can also have 4 windows open at once using Shift+Option+Command+Up|Down|Left|Right to move them to the different corners. Works really well with less than 2 minutes of setting the hotkey on a simple GUI configuration window.
- RoryH 12y ago
  Thanks!
- m_t 12y ago
  I can't find the minimum OSX version on the Spectacle site or github. Do you have any idea which one it is?
  - sergiotapia 12y ago
    Sorry I'm not sure either, I know it works with latest OSX and the one before that.
  - chriskelley 12y ago
    ShiftIt is extremely similar to Spectacle (I use both on different machines) and should be functional back to 10.6. https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt
  - mikehotel 12y ago
    Spectacle should work on 10.6+ according to it's Info.plist: <key>LSMinimumSystemVersion</key> <string>10.6</string>
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    I haven't tried Spectacle, but I'm happily running Divvy and Cinch on my 10.5 PPC Mac. :)
  - Cowicide 12y ago
cik 12y ago
I've been using IrradiateSoftware's sizeup for years, and have never looked back.... until I came back to a Linux desktop.
mgrouchy 12y ago
Interesting. I use Moom for this http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/, but I will give this a try.
tnorthcutt 12y ago
I've been using Slate[1] for a while which may be worth considering as an alternative. Hydra does look pretty slick, though! [0] https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate
- enen 12y ago
  Been using Slate as well but it's not maintained anymore. I wanted to switch to Phoenix - https://github.com/sdegutis/Phoenix/ https://github.com/sdegutis/Phoenix/ which is from the same guy that this Hydra. I think the idea of Hydra was the rewrite it in Lua but I can't speak for him. Will definitely try it out asap!
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    Hydra is indeed my successor to Phoenix. Phoenix and Zephyros (and AppGrid if you can find it) are deprecated in favor of Hydra. But I can't just delete those projects, as existing users may not want to port their configs to Lua. Oh how I wish I could though.
    - Slackwise 12y ago
      I find it great that you've opted for Lua over JS. I see far too many projects with JS shoveled in where Lua would be a better, cleaner, and simpler fit.
      - sdegutis 12y ago
        I'm very glad to hear that. I was expecting a lot of people to be disappointed that it's not JS, but honestly I think Lua is a lot cleaner and simpler, and it is just so small and easy to integrate with in C, it's really hard not to use it in a project!
        sleepybrett 12y ago
        Put me on the list of disappointed that it's not JS.
tsenkov 12y ago
Looks awesome. But I have some issues I can't seem to resolve - I saved the sample config in the specified path (it should be correct since on reload the app says "Hydra sample config loaded"), but I can't open the repl (Hydra Error: "Attempt to call a nil value"). And using the Cmd+Ctrl+Alt+J doesn't make the window shorter, only moves it to the right (going out of the screen). I am sure this is just a beta release hiccup.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Yep, that was indeed an error. Tried fixing it, released beta5. Actually fixed it, released beta6. Nothing like being on the front page of HN to make me rush enough to mess that up one-line-fix on the first try. :)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - tsenkov 12y ago
    Unfortunately, I still get the same errors.
tylermac1 12y ago
Definitely going to give this a try. Looks great.
typicalbender 12y ago
I miss my days on Ubuntu with i3 tiling window manager. I currently use an app called Amethyst[1] but find it to be a bit buggy at times and just doesn't live up to i3 or awesome. I wonder if hydra can be used as a launch point to create a better tiling window manager for OSX. I'm not familiar with the APIs that OSX exposes, if any, to do things like window management but it would be awesome to see some more control over workspaces and not just the windows within a workspace. [1] https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
- peatmoss 12y ago
  Amethyst is the first tiling window manager I've used for any substantial length of time. I made my desktop transition from NetBSD -> OSX before tiling window managers were really much used. Amethyst gets props from me in being the first that has worked intuitively and stabily such that I've actually stuck with it for any length of time. As for Linux, I realize that I'm personally in a place where leaving OSX would cause me no grief whatsoever. I catalogued everything I run on my Mac these days, and was pleasantly surprised to find I have zero local commercial software that I depend on, or indeed any Mac-only software. Generally, when I've used recent Linux desktops, I've discovered that the experience is at least on par with my Mac, with the added bonus that Emacs doesn't have so many quirks. Battery life on my MacBook Air is really the only thing keeping me from moving back. I have to wonder if there is any movement to achieve power management parity with OSX in Linux.
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    Having emacs-like keybindings by default in all native text fields and text boxes (including this one) is a huge plus for OS X. In Linux, I had to write everything in emacs and copy/paste it into the field in question. Fine for emails, not so great for address bars, impossible for dmenu, etc.
    - nextos 12y ago
      I have emacs-like keybindings in most Linux apps, including dmenu. For some apps that don't support this by default, you can configure it via their gtk backend.
voltagex_ 12y ago
Is there anything like this for Windows?
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  The window management capabilities are built into Windows. You use the Windows Key + Arrow Key to move windows around like that. To get the dictionary hot key and the other scripting abilities in Windows you would use AutoHotKey.
- foresterh 12y ago
  I've been using WinSplit Revolution for years and love it. It's not extensible, but lets you do things like toggle between 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 of the space, which I use a lot.
athenot 12y ago
Wouldn't F-Script[1] achieve the same? I'm not sure how much love it's received for Mavericks but it's a great way to peek into any Cocoa app and call methods. [1] http://www.fscript.org http://www.fscript.org
dbailey5 12y ago
Any idea what his require grid is referring to in his own config file? link - https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/init.lua https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/in...
- sdegutis 12y ago
  It refers to the grid.lua[1] file in the same directory as that init.lua. It's also found in the wiki[2]. [1]: https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/grid.lua https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/gr... [2]: https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki/Useful-Hydra-libraries https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki/Useful-Hydra-librarie...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
sdegutis 12y ago
Welp, my sample config's REPL command was broken in the beta that everyone downloaded. And my first attempt at fixing it didn't actually work. It works on Beta 6. Nothing like my project being #2 on HN to make me rush enough to need two tries to fix a 1-line bug, heh.
- marcuskaz 12y ago
  good fast work! REPL is working for me now :-)
- dbailey5 12y ago
  Hey I'm checking out your config file now, Where can I get the grid package you are using?
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki
hamburg 12y ago
I wrote my own window manager a few weeks ago: http://zonesformac.com http://zonesformac.com Emphasis is on support for multiple screens, ease of use and snappiness. (which doesn't come across in my video I guess...) I know my download page sucks, but if anyone wants to try and give me feedback, I'd be happy to read it. Send an email.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Looks pretty neat. Reminds me of Moom, and the defaults Windows 7 drag-to-position features.
Cacti 12y ago
Looks promising but how is multi monitor support? And how easy would it be to detect whether I am on my 1 screen laptop or 3 screen desktop, and use different setups accordingly?
- sdegutis 12y ago
  I believe `screen.allscreens()[1]` always represents the current "primary screen". So yeah it should be possible.
mu_killnine 12y ago
Hail Hydra! ...sorry, just saw Winter Soldier this week.
Dirlewanger 12y ago
Another amazing OS X WM: Sizeup (https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) No config, all shortcuts bound to Ctrl + Option + Command + arrows and a few others. They have an unlimited free trial, but pay for it if you really use it.
- Synergyse 12y ago
  +1 for SizeUp, tried most of them and prefer this app.
  - mahmoudimus 12y ago
    I use SizeUp, but I miss the extensibility of xmonad.
  - kirklove 12y ago
    +2. Can't live without it. I'm paralyzed on a machine without it (or Alfred)
joshka 12y ago
Cool tool. Would be a good idea to get it on homebrew for one liner install. I noticed when checking whether it was on homebrew that there's another piece of software already by that name that could be worth avoiding (despite being an almost perfect name for what this does).
- sdegutis 12y ago
  I think GUI apps only go in cask[1] not homebrew. But yeah, totally a good idea to put it in there. Thanks! Can you file an issue for this in Hydra? [1]: http://caskroom.io/ http://caskroom.io/
adouzzy 12y ago
All I ask for is an awesome wm.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Well played.
bradbatt 12y ago
I have used Divvy in the past, but now use Keyboard Maestro for window management. (http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/ http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/) You do have to configure things and set them up a bit, but it can do SO much more than just window management. Just throwing another option out there…For me, Keyboard Maestro is one of those must-have programs like Alfred or Hazel—totally changes how you do things.
Justsignedup 12y ago
I've been using slate, but I must admit the API for it is not that incredible (certain math operations are not very elegant) -- https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate
andylei 12y ago
cool! one thing that kind of bugs me is that when you reload the config file, if there's something wrong with it, it just loads the fallback config. i don't see any error messages, so its hard to figure out what i did wrong in the config.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  It should be showing error messages as a notification, found in notification center. Also, error messages should be automatically appended to `logger.lines`, which you can browse in a textgrid using `logger.show()`.
chrisdevereux 12y ago
Looks great! Have been looking for a Slate replacement for a while... Have you considered adding Lua calls for accessing and modifying window contents, selections, etc? OS X has a rich collection of APIs for doing this via Scripting Bridge and AXAccessibility.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Hmm yeah, that would be pretty cool! Can you file an issue for this feature request?
philsnow 12y ago
sdegutis: would it be possible to get spaces / mission control into the API? That is, if it's not already there; I looked in every module and couldn't find anything that looked applicable. Farthest I got was screen.mainscreen()["__screen"], which is a userdata.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Probably. I think Amethyst does this, so we should be able to too. Can you file an issue for this feature request? Thanks.
  - philsnow 12y ago
    https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/116 https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/116
- zdrummond 12y ago
  Spaces control would be great. I rely on SizeUp for that today, but would be nice to have programmatic control.
sdegutis 12y ago
Project Author here: Thanks everyone for making Hydra bypass Zephyros as my most starred project! (Especially considering Zephyros is deprecated in favor of Hydra, and I can't really delete Zephyros since people might still be using it.)
peterhajas 12y ago
Looks really cool! I was using [slate](https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate), but it seems to be abandonware. I have a couple of things I'd like: - A [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/)-style http://mizage.com/divvy/)-style grid. When I used Divvy, this really made a dramatic difference in my window management - Rich Spaces/Mission Control support. It'd be great to send windows to certain spaces, make spaces for windows, etc. I'm excited to write a Hydra config for myself, it seems great!
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Walkman 12y ago
I tried a ton of window managers (Divvy [1], Spectacle [2], Alfred worflows, scripts) over the years, but the most advanced, most easy to use and fastest solution is Moom [3]. It's extremely flexible, configurable, have nice design and clever tricks. It has far more features that all of the above. I'm not searching the perfect window manager anymore. [1]: https://mizage.com/divvy/ https://mizage.com/divvy/ [2]: http://spectacleapp.com/ http://spectacleapp.com/ [3]: http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/
- saidajigumi 12y ago
  I'll second the motion for Moom. Great app, but I'm really glad to see some viable OSS solutions in this space. Environment hacking FTW. I'll also mention a feature I adore from FlexiGlass[1]: the ability to map <modifier>-<1/2/3 finger move> to move the window under the mouse. For example, I use <option>-<2 finger move> for this mapping. No mouse click & hold required, and the entire window is the "hit zone". FlexiGlass can also resize similarly, but I tend to just use my Moom bindings to snap windows where I want them. I find this to be incredibly pleasant to use for window moves because it's a very immediate experience, more like arranging paper on your desk. Even better, the window being moved doesn't have to be in the frontmost application. This makes it even faster to move background windows. The usual window movement via titlebar or window snapping app requires the moved window be frontmost/focused, so there's a switching back and forth required. Between the giant, whole window, hit area and less focus switching, FlexiGlass' approach is a huge win IMO. I still feel a bit self-conscious about having this app installed for one feature, but it's really that good. [1] http://nulana.com/flexiglass/ http://nulana.com/flexiglass/
  - jdechko 12y ago
    I started with the moom trial, but when it came time for me to make a purchase, I ended up going with BetterSnapTool. It might not be quite as flexible as Moom, but a) it fit my personal needs and b) it was less than half the price.
paultannenbaum 12y ago
I have a somewhat related question for anyone with chrome devtools experience. Is it possible to control the size (width and height) of the chrome debugger panel using the devtools api? I want to build a chrome extension that provides window management like Hydra or spectacle, but for the developer tools window. Building hot keys that could do things like send the console window exactly half screen in any direction or full screen, and also the same controls for the second console window. I spend a lot of time in the developer panel (as I'm sure many people do) and think a window manager could be a huge help. I read the api docs fairly thoroughly and also posted this same question to the google group and the stack overflow group with no response to either. Anyone out there know?
- r-cid 12y ago
  Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be possible. See https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-dev/lKzLtlRZXrM https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...
  - paultannenbaum 12y ago
    Thank you! I searched google groups but was unable to find something like this. I did try and code up a simple prototype and ran into the same scope issues as the author of the linked thread.
pepijndevos 12y ago
I actually rolled my own WM with some AppleScript. Here is one of my scripts that divides the screen between the two frontmost applications. https://www.refheap.com/87844 https://www.refheap.com/87844
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Wow, that is really neat!
shoyer 12y ago
Is there support for saving/restoring window layouts? I find that feature very handy in Slate when removing/adding external monitors.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  There's an issue in the 1.1 milestone for adding the event that an external monitor was added/removed. Once you have that, I don't see what's stopping you from creating this feature :)
halayli 12y ago
I am pretty happy with zooom2. It gave my wmaker features back. http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/index.html http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/index.html
c141charlie 12y ago
Can we stop naming software "Hydra"? At my company alone there are several tools and libraries that go by the name of Hydra. Each time someone refers to Hydra, you have to clarify which tool/library they are talking about.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Naming things is the hardest part of writing software. Really it is.
  - Yetanfou 12y ago
    Nah, not really. Just get yourself a Swahili dictionary and you're set for a whole bunch of projects. They'll have similar names to mine (Rafiki, Nena, Chombo, Sanduku, Ramani, ...) but they'll be easily pronounceable, well-sounding and with a bit of luck even still available in .com/.net/.org/.two-letter-country-code-du-jour.
    - coreyja 12y ago
      That's actually really good advice, thanks.
calgaryeng 12y ago
I've had a ton of success with Slate, FWIW.
zzygan 12y ago
Is there a way to do XMonad style layouts with this system? Since moving to OSX, I've missed Xmonad badly. The big thing that has been lacking is the ability for newly opened windows to automatically be placed into a grid, according to the layout that is currently defined, and then have the ability to shuffle windows around within that layout.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  That should be a really easy config, especially after events are added in 1.1; I'll see what I can do it create it and add it to the wiki, unless someone beats me to it :)
D4AHNGM 12y ago
This thread really does show the best of Hacker News. I wandered in here intrigued by Hydra and ended up checking out 3 or 4 open-source pieces of software that do similar things thanks to recommendations here. The choice is absolutely brilliant. I love seeing so many open-source recommendations. I went for Spectacle in the end, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Hydra and seeing how it progresses.
- tiles 12y ago
  I agree that this discussion has been enormously helpful. On first glance, I'm was very disappointed that this thread seems only to be about alternatives, not discussing the product at hand. If this were an announcement of a product, it would be disappointing to only have people discuss how excited they were about other software that isn't mine. But your comment made me realize it's just about ego—I'm definitely benefitting from this discussion and should admit as much!
signa11 12y ago
please do mention that this is available on releases >=10.9
stuaxo 12y ago
Can one of these window managers support focus follows mouse on OSX ?
cksachdev 12y ago
Works like a charm. Can think of an enhancement: https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/134 https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/134 What do you think? No voting system in github :(
afarrell 12y ago
I've been using https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst for a couple weeks and have been pretty happy with it.
cmsj 12y ago
Note: beta7 is out as of 90 minutes ago, everyone update!
tjl 12y ago
I find this quite intriguing, but Optimal Layout, http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ basically has most of my needs covered.

446 points by LaSombra 12y ago

Awesome work, sdegutis! I love your Zephyros and Phoenix projects. Keep working! I really miss good tiling wm on MacOS X.

sdegutis 12y ago
<3

kovrik 12y ago

Is it possible to move windows from one desktop to another?

Nemcue 12y ago
It probably is. I used Phoenix (the JS predecessor to Hydra) and that exact functionality is one of my most used hotkeys: Capslock + E = Swap currently selected window to other desktop, make that window fullscreen and center the mouse cursor on it

colinramsay 12y ago

This looks great, but my favourite thing might be the Principles section: > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash > Hydra must be lightweight... never use more than 10 MB of memory > API should be completely transparent > API must not be bloated I think these principles should be the standard to which we all hold our software. Looking forward to testing this out! Edit to say: it would be really great to see some more complete code samples but I'm sure that'll come in time.

sdegutis 12y ago
Can you give an example of the kinds of samples you would like to see, and where you would look for them? (I presume under the Examples section on the README page?) That will help me know what to put there.
- colinramsay 12y ago
  You have a link to your own config and some screenshots of it in action, maybe it would be good to pull out the relevant sections of your config so people can replicate what they see in the screenshots?
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    Not a bad idea, will do. Thanks.
cheepin 12y ago
Hail Hydra!
- Vanayad 12y ago
  Came here for this. Didn't leave disappointed.
chc 12y ago
I don't think "Must never use more than 10 MB of memory" is a reasonable standard to hold all software to.
- kennywinker 12y ago
  Nope, but I would venture to guess that most software would be improved by sticking to that.
  - chc 12y ago
    I don't even feel confident in that claim. If keeping memory usage under 10 MB requires a significant amount of developer effort, that is effort that isn't going into something else that I might value a lot more than, say, 20 MB of RAM.
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      Not just developer effort, but also sometimes program runtime efficiency. RAM is cheap, RAM is pretty fast (compared to disk or network); cache shit there when it makes sense to do so for overall efficiency. 10MB is a fairly ridiculous modern standard to limit yourself to, IMO (and I started on the C64 and generally do dislike and try to avoid bloat).
- TD-Linux 12y ago
  To put this in perspective, a full screen application running on a Retina display needs at least 40MB total for its front and back buffers.
euank 12y ago
I do not like the "API should be completely transparent" and "API must not be bloated". I personally think APIs exist to hide complexity. They should make sense, they should be usable, but they need not be transparent. Let's have a rather contrived example. In SDL, you can call SDL_Init(). That does a lot of things, and what it does differs on windows, linux, and OSX. I absolutely don't want the more transparent API of SDL_Init_Windows_Video(), SDL_Init_Windows_Audio(), SDL_Init_Linux_Video() .... And so on. Realistically, for absolute transparency, you'd just do away with the API and write every line of code SDL currently hides (Reductio ad absurdum I know) The entire point of having that one SDL_Init() call that's identical on all platforms, even though it does many opaque things underneath (and different things per platforms) is that it's easier to understand and use. The goal of an API is to be usable and useful, nothing else. Transparency can often get in the way of usability. As for the "bloated" bit. Well, I'd rather be able to do too many things than too few. It's a great goal to have a purely orthogonal (no method may be accomplished with another combination of methods) API, but it should not be done at the expense of usability. > Nothing should be put into it except what's impossible or impractical to do in pure Lua, and what's extremely common and likely to be used in everyone's configs. The entire quote makes it seem even more damning to me. Why would you cater to what's "likely to be used in everyone's configs"? That's another way of saying "Let's support only the least common denominator" which to me seems like a bad philosophy. This philosophy would lead to twitter not having a friendship API because the only thing practically every api user does is login and (arguably) tweet, only a few deal with friendships or account settings. It would lead to linux not having a configuration option for running more than one physical CPU or hotswapping ram because the wide majority of people will never use these options. I'm happy that the author of this software decided to make it simple and it seems to be working here, but in the majority of cases of API design, I'd much rather the API be usable, not transparent, and large, not minimalistic. I'd rather be able to call a method that does some common activity for me which I could technically do myself in a 1000 lines of code than not have such a method because it's "bloat".
- geon 12y ago
  You can't really compare a platform speciffic "window manager" to a multiplatform 3D/2D rendering api.
prof_hobart 12y ago
I'm not sure I fully agree. For example > Hydra must be stable. It should never crash It's clearly better to have an app that never crashes than an equivalent one that crashes all the time. However, making sure that your app is 100% crash-free isn't a zero cost thing. It takes time and effort to (often, a lot of both) to get to a completely crash-free app, meaning that the app either costs more, takes longer, or has to compromise on features - or possibly all three. In some case, that trade off is clearly going to be worth it - I'd rather a self-driving car took 10 years longer to develop than have one that rebooted itself twice a day, but in others I'm fine living with the occasional crash if it means cheaper or more feature-rich applications.
- sitkack 12y ago
  For a window manager, crashing is kinda a pain depending how it restarts. Maybe another way to state the implicit goal would be > Hydra must gracefully and rapidly restart should it crash w/o losing any user data. And then maybe it could do this be serializing state into a sqlite or redis instance. We always to be careful of muddling the goal and the mechanism.
  - prof_hobart 12y ago
    I agree. Like I say, there are some instances where zero crashes is absolutely the right goal. It may not be absolutely mandatory for a window manager (in the way it would be for a self-driving car), but I can understand why someone would want this as a goal for this app. My point was more that I don't think it's a sensible standard for all software. I hear this kind of thing quite regularly, usually by non-technical managers, often in a way that seems to suggest they think bugs are either the result of pure sloppiness, incompetence or downright malice.
rossjudson 12y ago
"Bloat" is emotional, not factual. It's meaningless without well-justified examples and alternatives.

xbryanx 12y ago

This looks great, and reminds me of AutoIt on Windows in some ways.

weavie 12y ago

This looks great. Will try it out. It has always surprised me how OS X has such a poor window placement story given how much emphasis apple seems to place on User Experience.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
It doesn't shock me. Apple is all about the UE, but isn't at all about User Choice. Apple would prefer to tell you where the windows are best positioned for optimal usage rather than letting you tell them. Plus for the majority of average users they'll never need side by side windows anyway, that is a "power user" feature (like multiple desktops, or similar).
omaranto 12y ago
I don't there is anything too surprising about this. "User Experience" isn't something you can measure on a single line, there are different aspects to it. I'm not an expert but I think the following are some of the things that users can appreciate: 1. That things work smoothly. 2. That things look pretty. 3. That it's easy to figure out what a program does when you first use it. 4. That it's possible to control the program efficiently, i.e., that you can quickly activate a program's different functions. 5. That a program is powerful, in that it enables you to customize it to work exactly as you need and automate it's use. I've heard people claim Apple focuses on 1-3, I've never heard people say Apple focuses on 4 and 5. For windows placement in particular, Mac OS (as practically all window managers) has a method that covers 1-3: move and resize with the mouse.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  > I've heard people claim Apple focuses on 1-3, I've never heard people say Apple focuses on 4 and 5 I think 4 applies to an extent; MacOS has very good (albeit stolen from Emacs) universal text navigation shortcuts, for instance. Funnily enough, they used to be quite keen on 5, with Services and Applescript. Services are still around, but have faded into obscurity, with surprisingly few users even being aware they exist; to an extent, they may be replaced by action extensions.
- 12y ago

btown 12y ago

For the "closed-source-but-non-programming-power-user" alternative to this, I'm a huge advocate of BetterTouchTool (http://www.boastr.net/ http://www.boastr.net/). You can easily bind window snaps to everything from keypresses, to four-finger-sweeps on the trackpad, to dragging window titlebars to the screen corners. Also it's so much fun to infuriate friends when they try to use my trackpad and it moves windows all over the place.

sdegutis 12y ago
Oh nice! Custom swipes is an excellent idea, I am totally going to have to look into seeing if I can add that to the API.
BozeWolf 12y ago
I Quickly had a look on all the window manager alternatives mentioned here. Currently I use flexiglass, but I use it for one reason only. It allows me to move windows like in linux. When holding Mouse button 1 + alt anywhere in the window I can move it. I really like this feature, I never use the titlebar to move windows. Do any of the alternatives (or hydra it self) allow me to do this? I'd like to try them out. See if it has advantages over flexiglass.
- sikhnerd 12y ago
  For me, the bigger idea to tiling wm, or these psuedo tiling wm is that I never have to use mouse to move/resize/shuffle windows. I too initially missed that feature when I first started using a tiling wm, but that quickly went away as soon as I had the keyboard shortcuts memorized.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  The 1.1 milestone has plans for "mouse-moved" and "modifiers-changed" events that you can register for, which would let you create a feature very similar to this, where if you hold down option and move the mouse, it will move the window under the mouse with it. I'll file an issue to investigate if it's possible to register for "mouse-clicked" events and override them to be no-ops (so that you don't actually click into the window). That sounds like a fun feature :)

sergiotapia 12y ago

If you're looking for a window manager for OSX without having to actually configure anything, you can try using Spectacle: http://spectacleapp.com/ http://spectacleapp.com/ For instance on my imac 27'' I have Option+Command+Left|Right keys mapped to side (similar to windows 7. And I can also have 4 windows open at once using Shift+Option+Command+Up|Down|Left|Right to move them to the different corners. Works really well with less than 2 minutes of setting the hotkey on a simple GUI configuration window.

RoryH 12y ago
Thanks!
m_t 12y ago
I can't find the minimum OSX version on the Spectacle site or github. Do you have any idea which one it is?
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  Sorry I'm not sure either, I know it works with latest OSX and the one before that.
- chriskelley 12y ago
  ShiftIt is extremely similar to Spectacle (I use both on different machines) and should be functional back to 10.6. https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt
- mikehotel 12y ago
  Spectacle should work on 10.6+ according to it's Info.plist: <key>LSMinimumSystemVersion</key> <string>10.6</string>
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  I haven't tried Spectacle, but I'm happily running Divvy and Cinch on my 10.5 PPC Mac. :)
- Cowicide 12y ago

cik 12y ago

I've been using IrradiateSoftware's sizeup for years, and have never looked back.... until I came back to a Linux desktop.

mgrouchy 12y ago

Interesting. I use Moom for this http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/, but I will give this a try.

tnorthcutt 12y ago

I've been using Slate[1] for a while which may be worth considering as an alternative. Hydra does look pretty slick, though! [0] https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate

enen 12y ago
Been using Slate as well but it's not maintained anymore. I wanted to switch to Phoenix - https://github.com/sdegutis/Phoenix/ https://github.com/sdegutis/Phoenix/ which is from the same guy that this Hydra. I think the idea of Hydra was the rewrite it in Lua but I can't speak for him. Will definitely try it out asap!
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Hydra is indeed my successor to Phoenix. Phoenix and Zephyros (and AppGrid if you can find it) are deprecated in favor of Hydra. But I can't just delete those projects, as existing users may not want to port their configs to Lua. Oh how I wish I could though.
  - Slackwise 12y ago
    I find it great that you've opted for Lua over JS. I see far too many projects with JS shoveled in where Lua would be a better, cleaner, and simpler fit.
    - sdegutis 12y ago
      I'm very glad to hear that. I was expecting a lot of people to be disappointed that it's not JS, but honestly I think Lua is a lot cleaner and simpler, and it is just so small and easy to integrate with in C, it's really hard not to use it in a project!
      - sleepybrett 12y ago
        Put me on the list of disappointed that it's not JS.

tsenkov 12y ago

Looks awesome. But I have some issues I can't seem to resolve - I saved the sample config in the specified path (it should be correct since on reload the app says "Hydra sample config loaded"), but I can't open the repl (Hydra Error: "Attempt to call a nil value"). And using the Cmd+Ctrl+Alt+J doesn't make the window shorter, only moves it to the right (going out of the screen). I am sure this is just a beta release hiccup.

sdegutis 12y ago
Yep, that was indeed an error. Tried fixing it, released beta5. Actually fixed it, released beta6. Nothing like being on the front page of HN to make me rush enough to mess that up one-line-fix on the first try. :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- tsenkov 12y ago
  Unfortunately, I still get the same errors.

tylermac1 12y ago

Definitely going to give this a try. Looks great.

typicalbender 12y ago

I miss my days on Ubuntu with i3 tiling window manager. I currently use an app called Amethyst[1] but find it to be a bit buggy at times and just doesn't live up to i3 or awesome. I wonder if hydra can be used as a launch point to create a better tiling window manager for OSX. I'm not familiar with the APIs that OSX exposes, if any, to do things like window management but it would be awesome to see some more control over workspaces and not just the windows within a workspace. [1] https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

peatmoss 12y ago
Amethyst is the first tiling window manager I've used for any substantial length of time. I made my desktop transition from NetBSD -> OSX before tiling window managers were really much used. Amethyst gets props from me in being the first that has worked intuitively and stabily such that I've actually stuck with it for any length of time. As for Linux, I realize that I'm personally in a place where leaving OSX would cause me no grief whatsoever. I catalogued everything I run on my Mac these days, and was pleasantly surprised to find I have zero local commercial software that I depend on, or indeed any Mac-only software. Generally, when I've used recent Linux desktops, I've discovered that the experience is at least on par with my Mac, with the added bonus that Emacs doesn't have so many quirks. Battery life on my MacBook Air is really the only thing keeping me from moving back. I have to wonder if there is any movement to achieve power management parity with OSX in Linux.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  Having emacs-like keybindings by default in all native text fields and text boxes (including this one) is a huge plus for OS X. In Linux, I had to write everything in emacs and copy/paste it into the field in question. Fine for emails, not so great for address bars, impossible for dmenu, etc.
  - nextos 12y ago
    I have emacs-like keybindings in most Linux apps, including dmenu. For some apps that don't support this by default, you can configure it via their gtk backend.

voltagex_ 12y ago

Is there anything like this for Windows?

WorldWideWayne 12y ago
The window management capabilities are built into Windows. You use the Windows Key + Arrow Key to move windows around like that. To get the dictionary hot key and the other scripting abilities in Windows you would use AutoHotKey.
foresterh 12y ago
I've been using WinSplit Revolution for years and love it. It's not extensible, but lets you do things like toggle between 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 of the space, which I use a lot.

athenot 12y ago

Wouldn't F-Script[1] achieve the same? I'm not sure how much love it's received for Mavericks but it's a great way to peek into any Cocoa app and call methods. [1] http://www.fscript.org http://www.fscript.org

dbailey5 12y ago

Any idea what his require grid is referring to in his own config file? link - https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/init.lua https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/in...

sdegutis 12y ago
It refers to the grid.lua[1] file in the same directory as that init.lua. It's also found in the wiki[2]. [1]: https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/grid.lua https://github.com/sdegutis/dotfiles/blob/osx/home/.hydra/gr... [2]: https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki/Useful-Hydra-libraries https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki/Useful-Hydra-librarie...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

sdegutis 12y ago

Welp, my sample config's REPL command was broken in the beta that everyone downloaded. And my first attempt at fixing it didn't actually work. It works on Beta 6. Nothing like my project being #2 on HN to make me rush enough to need two tries to fix a 1-line bug, heh.

marcuskaz 12y ago
good fast work! REPL is working for me now :-)
dbailey5 12y ago
Hey I'm checking out your config file now, Where can I get the grid package you are using?
- sdegutis 12y ago
  https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/wiki

hamburg 12y ago

I wrote my own window manager a few weeks ago: http://zonesformac.com http://zonesformac.com Emphasis is on support for multiple screens, ease of use and snappiness. (which doesn't come across in my video I guess...) I know my download page sucks, but if anyone wants to try and give me feedback, I'd be happy to read it. Send an email.

sdegutis 12y ago
Looks pretty neat. Reminds me of Moom, and the defaults Windows 7 drag-to-position features.

Cacti 12y ago

Looks promising but how is multi monitor support? And how easy would it be to detect whether I am on my 1 screen laptop or 3 screen desktop, and use different setups accordingly?

sdegutis 12y ago
I believe `screen.allscreens()[1]` always represents the current "primary screen". So yeah it should be possible.

mu_killnine 12y ago

Hail Hydra! ...sorry, just saw Winter Soldier this week.

Dirlewanger 12y ago

Another amazing OS X WM: Sizeup (https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) No config, all shortcuts bound to Ctrl + Option + Command + arrows and a few others. They have an unlimited free trial, but pay for it if you really use it.

Synergyse 12y ago
+1 for SizeUp, tried most of them and prefer this app.
- mahmoudimus 12y ago
  I use SizeUp, but I miss the extensibility of xmonad.
- kirklove 12y ago
  +2. Can't live without it. I'm paralyzed on a machine without it (or Alfred)

joshka 12y ago

Cool tool. Would be a good idea to get it on homebrew for one liner install. I noticed when checking whether it was on homebrew that there's another piece of software already by that name that could be worth avoiding (despite being an almost perfect name for what this does).

sdegutis 12y ago
I think GUI apps only go in cask[1] not homebrew. But yeah, totally a good idea to put it in there. Thanks! Can you file an issue for this in Hydra? [1]: http://caskroom.io/ http://caskroom.io/

adouzzy 12y ago

All I ask for is an awesome wm.

sdegutis 12y ago
Well played.

bradbatt 12y ago

I have used Divvy in the past, but now use Keyboard Maestro for window management. (http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/ http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/) You do have to configure things and set them up a bit, but it can do SO much more than just window management. Just throwing another option out there…For me, Keyboard Maestro is one of those must-have programs like Alfred or Hazel—totally changes how you do things.

Justsignedup 12y ago

I've been using slate, but I must admit the API for it is not that incredible (certain math operations are not very elegant) -- https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate

andylei 12y ago

cool! one thing that kind of bugs me is that when you reload the config file, if there's something wrong with it, it just loads the fallback config. i don't see any error messages, so its hard to figure out what i did wrong in the config.

sdegutis 12y ago
It should be showing error messages as a notification, found in notification center. Also, error messages should be automatically appended to `logger.lines`, which you can browse in a textgrid using `logger.show()`.

chrisdevereux 12y ago

Looks great! Have been looking for a Slate replacement for a while... Have you considered adding Lua calls for accessing and modifying window contents, selections, etc? OS X has a rich collection of APIs for doing this via Scripting Bridge and AXAccessibility.

sdegutis 12y ago
Hmm yeah, that would be pretty cool! Can you file an issue for this feature request?

philsnow 12y ago

sdegutis: would it be possible to get spaces / mission control into the API? That is, if it's not already there; I looked in every module and couldn't find anything that looked applicable. Farthest I got was screen.mainscreen()["__screen"], which is a userdata.

sdegutis 12y ago
Probably. I think Amethyst does this, so we should be able to too. Can you file an issue for this feature request? Thanks.
- philsnow 12y ago
  https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/116 https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/116
zdrummond 12y ago
Spaces control would be great. I rely on SizeUp for that today, but would be nice to have programmatic control.

sdegutis 12y ago

Project Author here: Thanks everyone for making Hydra bypass Zephyros as my most starred project! (Especially considering Zephyros is deprecated in favor of Hydra, and I can't really delete Zephyros since people might still be using it.)

peterhajas 12y ago

Looks really cool! I was using [slate](https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate), but it seems to be abandonware. I have a couple of things I'd like: - A [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/)-style http://mizage.com/divvy/)-style grid. When I used Divvy, this really made a dramatic difference in my window management - Rich Spaces/Mission Control support. It'd be great to send windows to certain spaces, make spaces for windows, etc. I'm excited to write a Hydra config for myself, it seems great!

deleted 12y ago

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deleted 12y ago

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Walkman 12y ago

I tried a ton of window managers (Divvy [1], Spectacle [2], Alfred worflows, scripts) over the years, but the most advanced, most easy to use and fastest solution is Moom [3]. It's extremely flexible, configurable, have nice design and clever tricks. It has far more features that all of the above. I'm not searching the perfect window manager anymore. [1]: https://mizage.com/divvy/ https://mizage.com/divvy/ [2]: http://spectacleapp.com/ http://spectacleapp.com/ [3]: http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/

saidajigumi 12y ago
I'll second the motion for Moom. Great app, but I'm really glad to see some viable OSS solutions in this space. Environment hacking FTW. I'll also mention a feature I adore from FlexiGlass[1]: the ability to map <modifier>-<1/2/3 finger move> to move the window under the mouse. For example, I use <option>-<2 finger move> for this mapping. No mouse click & hold required, and the entire window is the "hit zone". FlexiGlass can also resize similarly, but I tend to just use my Moom bindings to snap windows where I want them. I find this to be incredibly pleasant to use for window moves because it's a very immediate experience, more like arranging paper on your desk. Even better, the window being moved doesn't have to be in the frontmost application. This makes it even faster to move background windows. The usual window movement via titlebar or window snapping app requires the moved window be frontmost/focused, so there's a switching back and forth required. Between the giant, whole window, hit area and less focus switching, FlexiGlass' approach is a huge win IMO. I still feel a bit self-conscious about having this app installed for one feature, but it's really that good. [1] http://nulana.com/flexiglass/ http://nulana.com/flexiglass/
- jdechko 12y ago
  I started with the moom trial, but when it came time for me to make a purchase, I ended up going with BetterSnapTool. It might not be quite as flexible as Moom, but a) it fit my personal needs and b) it was less than half the price.

paultannenbaum 12y ago

I have a somewhat related question for anyone with chrome devtools experience. Is it possible to control the size (width and height) of the chrome debugger panel using the devtools api? I want to build a chrome extension that provides window management like Hydra or spectacle, but for the developer tools window. Building hot keys that could do things like send the console window exactly half screen in any direction or full screen, and also the same controls for the second console window. I spend a lot of time in the developer panel (as I'm sure many people do) and think a window manager could be a huge help. I read the api docs fairly thoroughly and also posted this same question to the google group and the stack overflow group with no response to either. Anyone out there know?

r-cid 12y ago
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be possible. See https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-dev/lKzLtlRZXrM https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...
- paultannenbaum 12y ago
  Thank you! I searched google groups but was unable to find something like this. I did try and code up a simple prototype and ran into the same scope issues as the author of the linked thread.

pepijndevos 12y ago

I actually rolled my own WM with some AppleScript. Here is one of my scripts that divides the screen between the two frontmost applications. https://www.refheap.com/87844 https://www.refheap.com/87844

sdegutis 12y ago
Wow, that is really neat!

shoyer 12y ago

Is there support for saving/restoring window layouts? I find that feature very handy in Slate when removing/adding external monitors.

sdegutis 12y ago
There's an issue in the 1.1 milestone for adding the event that an external monitor was added/removed. Once you have that, I don't see what's stopping you from creating this feature :)

halayli 12y ago

I am pretty happy with zooom2. It gave my wmaker features back. http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/index.html http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/index.html

c141charlie 12y ago

Can we stop naming software "Hydra"? At my company alone there are several tools and libraries that go by the name of Hydra. Each time someone refers to Hydra, you have to clarify which tool/library they are talking about.

sdegutis 12y ago
Naming things is the hardest part of writing software. Really it is.
- Yetanfou 12y ago
  Nah, not really. Just get yourself a Swahili dictionary and you're set for a whole bunch of projects. They'll have similar names to mine (Rafiki, Nena, Chombo, Sanduku, Ramani, ...) but they'll be easily pronounceable, well-sounding and with a bit of luck even still available in .com/.net/.org/.two-letter-country-code-du-jour.
  - coreyja 12y ago
    That's actually really good advice, thanks.

calgaryeng 12y ago

I've had a ton of success with Slate, FWIW.

zzygan 12y ago

Is there a way to do XMonad style layouts with this system? Since moving to OSX, I've missed Xmonad badly. The big thing that has been lacking is the ability for newly opened windows to automatically be placed into a grid, according to the layout that is currently defined, and then have the ability to shuffle windows around within that layout.

sdegutis 12y ago
That should be a really easy config, especially after events are added in 1.1; I'll see what I can do it create it and add it to the wiki, unless someone beats me to it :)

D4AHNGM 12y ago

This thread really does show the best of Hacker News. I wandered in here intrigued by Hydra and ended up checking out 3 or 4 open-source pieces of software that do similar things thanks to recommendations here. The choice is absolutely brilliant. I love seeing so many open-source recommendations. I went for Spectacle in the end, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Hydra and seeing how it progresses.

tiles 12y ago
I agree that this discussion has been enormously helpful. On first glance, I'm was very disappointed that this thread seems only to be about alternatives, not discussing the product at hand. If this were an announcement of a product, it would be disappointing to only have people discuss how excited they were about other software that isn't mine. But your comment made me realize it's just about ego—I'm definitely benefitting from this discussion and should admit as much!

signa11 12y ago

please do mention that this is available on releases >=10.9

stuaxo 12y ago

Can one of these window managers support focus follows mouse on OSX ?

cksachdev 12y ago

Works like a charm. Can think of an enhancement: https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/134 https://github.com/sdegutis/hydra/issues/134 What do you think? No voting system in github :(

afarrell 12y ago

I've been using https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst for a couple weeks and have been pretty happy with it.

cmsj 12y ago

Note: beta7 is out as of 90 minutes ago, everyone update!

tjl 12y ago

I find this quite intriguing, but Optimal Layout, http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ basically has most of my needs covered.