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Comment by wwwkieran | Hacker News Reader

We're working on Drawers (https://drawers.computer), a macOS app to give each of your projects its own dock, space, and windows.

We integrate with macOS spaces to switch out a project-specific dock on each space, containing only the resources you need for that project. We made it possible to add granular resources instead of full apps to the dock (think specific slack channels instead of the whole slack app), to keep the dock hyper focused on what you need.

We built this to stay focused while working on the computer, and we thought that the native interface mixed all our projects together, causing us to get distracted.

Looking for beta testers! Free download from https://drawers.computer

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All I really deeply want on this front is for the ability to have my IDE and CLI apps specific colors for specific projects. On mac, being able to 3-finger swipe up to mission control and then swipe down on the app I want has been by far my favorite way to navigate windows. The main problem I have is that the color of the app itself is the main way of telling them apart. I wish I could use a particular VS Code or Terminal theme for just one instance

Since 2022 I have coded something similar for myself, only for Linux for each of my notes, e.g. each and each every small or big task gets its own bundle of things that are attached to its 'task note'.

Each note gets a wholesome 'virtual desktop' "space":

- A markdown file (in a Git repo for all my notes)

- A working directory for project files

- Virtual desktop in hyprland that opens up as a terminal/browser split

- The terminal spawn a restorable tmux session where I edit the markdown file and open related terminals, where the note's workdir has its own `bin` directory in $PATH.

- Also, an ironbar widget showing the name of the current note at the bottom of the screen.

- Time tracking app to remember how much time I worked on each note.

And they are all bundled up together with save/restore capability, kinda like a VM, but on the application level. The idea is to support multitasking and never lose focus.

That's epic. Will try it ASAP.

Was look for exactly that (but for Features). currently I'm using superset.sh which works great. But the problem is that such tools need to re-implement everything (browser, terminal, etc.) while a "VM-like" approach doesn't.

It is possible to "clone" a drawer that auto starts server, browser, etc. So I can start new PRs quickly and jump between them while the agents run in the background?

Nice!! been wanting ti build something like this since I got a mac - never did - glad you did.

Does it have project context within apps (like default folders and settings)?

Yep! Each Drawer (project) has its own folder path. We have integrated apps like Figma, WhatsApp, Messages, and Slack to keep them focused on one project.

Would love to hear what you think we should add next!

This is really neat. Is there a way to handle the one app, with one window, being used for multiple tasks?

For example, I have Codex running doing two things at once, and I wish I could have two windows in two spaces (two projects.) Slack has multiple channels.

Both these aren't native macOS apps but I wonder if you can use the macOS tabbing support to at least get this for well-coded native apps?

I love that idea, and had a similar one once (never realized), because I run many projects at once (and more than one role: personal / job_1 / job_2).

What I'd suggest is that you isolate the project spaces from one another so that a e.g. a Web browser crash caused by one project space cannot drag down the rest. BTW, I'd pay for this!

Keep building.

Super cool, I'm not on mac so I can't try. But I work on something similar for niri on linux. Trying to keep my projects separate.

One additional level I see appearing are the worktress when having multiple AI agents run in paralell. So while they belong to the same project, each worktree has theire own ide + browser etc.

This is an idea I had in mind since I started developing for the Mac 20(!) years ago. I obviously never even got to create a prototype, so it's cool to see someone finally implement it.

This looks great, will beta test over the coming weeks.

Thanks! Would love to hear your feedback!! You can email us at hello [at] drawers.computer

Any plans on open sourcing? This is really useful for me but I'm not comfortable giving full access to my mac

This is KDE activities. Install the latest version then you can setup environments based on your activity. Been a feature since (checks notes) 2008.

MacOS people really will pay for just about anything. Actually, it appears that they PREFER to pay.

I've always wanted something like this. I will be testing this out!

Incredibly clean website, refreshing to not see the default AI ui.

Looks very interesting, and your page makes the case very well.

Is it free for now? This looks like a huge solve to a problem

Sounds really interesting. I'll give it a try

Smart idea, can’t wait to try it

seems.. interesting. will definitely be interested in testing this.

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