Quintile – keyboard N×M grid tiling for macOS | Hacker News Reader

Quintile – keyboard N×M grid tiling for macOS

github.com

Honestly, I don't understand grids on a laptop. Probably, if you have a 27"+ monitor or two, you need this. For my 16" laptop, I use several Spaces (virtual screens) with several applications assigned to each of them. I took this from my fvwm/icewm days, and it is still the best way to manage small screen spaces for me.

Yeah I agree, with a single small screen, I only use yabai with the stack layout allowing to navigate vertically in a predictable way with ‘ctrl+up/down’ between windows inside a workspace. I think it works great with the horizontal navigation between workspaces with ‘ctrl+left/right’ native to macOS. I honestly don’t need anything else.

Most Mac window tools stop at halves, thirds, and quarters. I wanted arbitrary N×M grids and a way to put a window on any span of cells from the keyboard only.

Quintile does that. Hold Control+Option, hit G, pick two cells (or use presets for thirds/quarters), and the focused window snaps to that span. You can run something like a 5×2 grid, span columns 1–3, leave a tall pane on the right, all without the mouse.

Also: three grid profiles per display, move within the grid, send to next display. Menu bar app. Accessibility permission only. No auto-tiling window manager, no SIP.

Install:

  brew install --cask stefanopineda/quintile/quintile

Demo:

  https://github.com/stefanopineda/quintile/raw/main/docs/demos/hero.mp4

It is deliberately not a yabai or AeroSpace replacement. Windows stay normal macOS windows until you chord. Happy to answer questions about the grid model or hotkeys.

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