Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hultner 3320 days ago
I can highly recommend kvm[1] for those of you who are interested in tiling window managers for macOS. Another pearl is Amethyst[2]. I've used both of them (and others such as xnomad) extensively for the past 5 years or so and must say that I'm very pleased.

[1] https://koekeishiya.github.io/kwm/

[2] https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

3 comments

Been using kwm for the past 6 months or so. Amethyst never really clicked for me, and it didn't work very well with multiple spaces, which I am a big user of.

Kwm and khd (kwm does layouting, khd sets up keyboard shortcuts) are not the easiest to configure, and kwm can be extremely complex, but for me it's been the best window manager for Mac OS I've been able to find. I just wish that performance was better, and that it handled corner cases like small dialogs better.

Doesn't hold a candle to the ones available for Linux, but I blame Apple for that more than I blame the developers.

mind sharing your config?
2nd for https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

This tool reduces my cognitive load.

Another vote for Amethyst. Also tried kwm but it doesn't work as well as Amethyst. However, kwm potential is huge.
I've used Amethyst day-to-day on my work laptop for several months and overall I'm happy with it. It's a bit idiosyncratic, but that's more the fault of Apple for not making it easy to develop such a plugin.

It's strange that a company focused on good design and ease of use is beholden to ancient window management traditions such as manually dragging every single window into the dimensions you want. When you open and close terminal windows to various servers dozens of times a day, need a window open on the side with a site showing documentation on this or that, it just doesn't make sense to waste time doing something that could be automated.

Funny that you mention 'ancient window management'. Tiling window managers are basically a continuation of terminal muxing and are thus more ancient than stacking window managers. Personally, I think going hybrid (stacking window management + spectacle/magnet.me) is the way to go. Best of both worlds :)
Fair point about my word choice. I just think we can do better is what I mean. I think I agree with you, but I'd need to see it in action. Currently I just use workspaces for whatever I'd use stacking for.