Weekend hack: A little tiled window manager for OS X | Hacker News Reader

Weekend hack: A little tiled window manager for OS X

github.com

76 pointsfyolnish34 comments

I've been using Spectacle for a while and I am working on a port of Xmonad to OSX:

So I was really interested in trying out this fork. A couple of problems:

* Doesn't look like tiling is automatic, you still have to tell each window which side of the screen to tile on (by using Command+Option)

* I was using it for a minute before it crashed - which I didn't even notice

If those two little problems were fixed I think I could definitely use this until I get my version of Xmonad working properly.

* I'm not planning to make it automatically manage all windows. That would never work correctly on os x, unless you have a huge display. One thing I'm adding is to make it keep windows that have been tiled already, at their correct size (so if you move a window from the left to the right, the remaining windows on the left will also be resized correctly)

* The crash, I will obviously have to fix :)

> That would never work correctly on os x, unless you have a huge display.

That seems like a non sequitur. The whole point of a tiling window manager is that you can map windows in and out of the grid -- they don't all have to be on screen at once.

There's no way for me to know the min/max size of a window in order to verify it can be automatically inserted into the grid. A lot of mac apps set their minimum window sizes to an annoyingly large value, making tiling those windows impossible on my 11" macbook air.

Also keeping track of individual windows through the accessibility api is not a trivial task

Why didn't you ever tell us that osxmonad was online already! :)

Looks great; been looking for something like this. I've really enjoyed using Slate[1] for OSX window management - it has great file based configuration and lots of options - often wish it had something a bit more straightforward like automatic tiling window layouts.

[1] https://github.com/jigish/slate

I submitted Slate separately after seeing this post ;)

Looks similar to [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/), which I bought a while ago and now use about every 30 seconds ;)

I use Divvy also, which I love and couldn't imagine not having it anymore. Any advantage to this one?

..well, it tiles your windows

Tyler came so close to Xmonad on OS X but for some reason there is a stall in development. The explicit nature of this doesn't quite make it a tiling window manager; however, it is definitely one of the best options I have found for the Mac platform so far. Kudos for the fork and I hope it grows!

"This is a fork that turns Spectacles into a tiled window manager, that means that if you move a window to the left/right and one already occupies that space, both are resized to fit."

Is this the new definition of a tiling window manager?

I could see this behavoir "if you move a window to the left/right and one already occupies that space, both are resized to fit". What happens exactly?

I am not sure what you are asking. If you "could see" the behavior what is it that you do not understand about what happens?

Not trying to be a nitpicky jerk, genuinely interested in answering your question if I can.

Sorry. I meant "I couldn't see".

When I move a second window to left-half of the screen with Cmd+opt+Left, it just resizes and moves there on top of the previous window, the 2 windows aren't tiled one at the top, one at the bottom of the left-half of the screen. I assumed that's what it should do.

Maybe you downloaded from spectacleapp.com rather than https://github.com/fjolnir/spectacle/downloads which is the binary for this fork.

This is embarrassing. Yes, that's that I did. Thanks :)

I assume that the limitations of OSX's actual window manager is the reason that a proper tiling WM like those on X11 are practically "impossible". This might be the next closest definition?

I've been using xmonad on arch linux for five months now and it's been amazing. Rock solid stability and no wasted space on the screen, no wasted time arranging windows. Multi-monitor support is second to none. I can't go back.

My tools of choice for over two years now. I've had a very similar experience, xmonad is simply the most stable (read: consistent) window manger I've used.

At work I need to use a mac, however, and SizeUp has been good to me. Can't wait to try this one.

This is my biggest frustration with being an iOS developer at work, no more Xmonad :(

I've been trying to find a good window management tool for OS X since I switched in January. This is the first free tool I've found.

I installed the binary but have a really weird issue. It takes 10-15 seconds from the time I press a key to the time that the action is taken. During this time period, the Spectacle icon on the menu bar has a spinning cursor.

Maybe I'll try the original Spectacle app to see if there's a difference and I'll report the issue.

Please do, it's happened once on this machine as well. And didn't go away until I restarted the computer. Seems like the accessibility system gets thrown in some sort of weird state.

Is there a binary available? App store?

edit: Ah, just saw the link to http://spectacleapp.com/

Actually dont see much advantage of the many features of moom. (http://manytricks.com/moom/) Which I have been using now for quite a while and am very happy with.

For some people, free is an advantage.

No, that's the project I forked. I've added a binary at: https://github.com/fjolnir/spectacle/downloads

I played around with Safari, Chrome, Terminal, MacVim and iTerm. It works for Safari, Chrome and Terminal, but moving MacVim and iTerm to the left doesn't tile them, they just occupy the left of the screen entirely.

MacVim and iTerm also are slightly wider when at the left and slightly narrower when at the right (their left + right width fills the entire screen).

Anyone else experience this too?

Exactly what I've been needing! Downloading it.

I've felt so useless on OSX after having started using a dynamic tiling wm at work.

I use SizeUp http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Dude, you keep churning out awesome things. I was just looking at the tiny lua cocoa bridge, really well done.

As an avid Spectacle user, I look forward to giving this fork a try!

port search shiftit

ShiftIt @1.5 (aqua) Managing windows size and position in OS X

I don't think ShiftIt has been updated since 10.6

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