[guessmyname]

The API [1] is an interesting read, as well as this thread from two years ago [2].

I have used Spectacle [3] for years and recently switched to Rectangle [4].

These two are quite simple in comparison but I barely use all their features.

I have seen people using HammerSpoon [5] as well for these type of things.

Out of curiosity, what kind of things do people script in a window manager?

[1] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/blob/bfcb684/docs/API.md

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16787836

[3] https://www.spectacleapp.com/

[4] https://rectangleapp.com/

[5] https://www.hammerspoon.org/

[fit2rule]

I'm using Hammerspoon on MaOS to give me a semi-tileable windows interface. Here is my config:

    local hyper = {"ctrl", "alt", "cmd"}

    hs.loadSpoon("MiroWindowsManager")

    hs.window.animationDuration = 0.3
    spoon.MiroWindowsManager:bindHotkeys({
      up = {hyper, "up"},
      right = {hyper, "right"},
      down = {hyper, "down"},
      left = {hyper, "left"},
      fullscreen = {hyper, "f"}
    })

    -- https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager

This allows me to place any MacOS window in either a horizontal or vertical third, or a quadrant, or a half, perfectly divided in such a way that I can maximise use of my screen while running multiple apps. My most common work environment is to have a terminal on one half of the screen, docs on the other - or two terms on top of each other on one side, docs on the other.

This is so useful for me that I yearn to make the same hotkeys work on my Linux machine, but I haven't worked out what window manager I want to use to do it .. probably Awesome of course, but I'd love to be able to use the same Hammerspoon scripts (Lua) somehow ..

[mtrpcic]

I've been using Hammerspoon for years, and have been incredibly happy with it. It is still actively maintained, has a large userbase, and has a lot of pre-built solutions for things. Importantly, it's not just for window management. You can do a lot of powerful things with it.

[heavyset_go]

> Out of curiosity, what kind of things do people script in a window manager?

KWin is scriptable, and I use it to change window shading behavior and to do some tiling. At one point I had it send SIGSTOP to processes that I minimized, and SIGCONT when they were raised, to save battery life.

[gigatexal]

Oh man that is a nice little life hack!

[gingerlime]

Pretty happy with spectacle overall. One thing I sorely miss from i3 however is the ability to switch focus to panes/windows/apps with the keyboard. Even something as next/prev window seems impossible on Mac (or I couldn’t work out a solution). I think you can cycle through apps(?), but not windows/panes in a logical order as far as I’m aware.

[greyskull]

Cmd+Backtick (next to 1 key) lets you swap between windows of the same application. Is that what you're looking for?

[gingerlime]

That's as close as it gets, but it's not enough.

I mapped it to cmd-shift-right so it does go to the next window. But there's no way that I could find to map going to the previous window... So for example I might have two windows tiled side by side. I want to go cmd-shift-right to focus on the right one, and cmd-shift-left to focus on the left...

[htfu]

Hammerspoon can change focus by relative direction. Can be a bit iffy sometimes but between that and HyperSwitch I'm never really at a loss.

[gingerlime]

Thanks. I'm going to try Hammerspoon (and maybe HyperSwitch).

From other comments, it seems like yabai can also handle it, but it seems like a very "hard-core" way, including disabling some Mac security features, and I'm not sure I feel comfortable going that far yet :)

[filleokus]

It's not exactly what you want, but have you tried binding "Move focus to next window" to alt+tab? Then you can use alt-tab-shift to cycle focus backwards, at least something. (I always forget where that setting is, it's in Keyboard->Shortcuts->Keyboard).

[unfunco]

If you have two windows the order shouldn't matter?

Also, Cmd+` goes to the next window, Cmd+Shift+` goes to the previous window, your mappings having a shift in them might be the issue.

[gingerlime]

> If you have two windows the order shouldn't matter?

No. But I don't think it's too much to ask to cycle through more than two, now, is it? :)

> Also, Cmd+` goes to the next window, Cmd+Shift+` goes to the previous window, your mappings having a shift in them might be the issue.

I'm not sure I understand how having a shift in my mapping affects this, but cmd-shift-` isn't ergonomic at all. To me the arrows are far more logical way to go in a certain direction. Why can I map next window to any key, but there's no way to map another key to the previous window? I find it very strange.

For the sake of comparison, i3 makes all those things trivial.