I was coming here to see if someone compared Rift to Aerospace. Aerospace mostly does the job, main problems I've seen are with modals and ghostty tabs counting as a window for some reason.
Heads up that installing via homebrew seems broken at the moment:
$ brew install acsandmann/tap/rift
Error: acsandmann/tap/rift: An exception occurred within a child process:
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - rift.default.toml
This commit looks like it'll fix the issue, once it makes its way into a release.
A curiosity: how do these macOS window managers interface with the OS to do their job? Do they use public APIs to manipulate windows? Or the accessibility interface?
Aerospace worked well for me, but I missed animations and the ability to use fullscreen on one display while working on the other. I also prefer leveraging private/undocumented APIs as they tend to be more reliable (due to the OS being built on them and all the public APIs) and performant.
Also having looked into this and seeing how much Aerospace struggled with creating a stable surface area, the macOS accessibility APIs are quite old school and look nightmarish to deal with.
What I started with was using Raycast and then taking advantage of its window management capabilities by just having keyboard aliases for operations I regularly perform. For example, I frequently split a window's size in half and move it either to the left or right (e.g. browser on the left [always on the left, for whatever reason...] and terminal on the right) by typing the relevant alias.
In the past 6 months, though, I've started using Mikkel Malmberg'sLeader Key, which in general seems to fit my brain better, and thanks to Raycast's deeplinks I can just refer to existing capabilities in Raycast directly through Leader Key.
I'd be curious to learn if I'm missing out on something worth while by having a fully featured window manager. Currently all I do for windows is split, maximize, move to previous screen, and center.
(I'm aware that Leader Key is superseded by Tuna, but I haven't felt the urge yet to make the jump; something about actively avoiding the part of my brain that wants to endlessly tinker with configurations.)
I guess it's good that there's a new tiling manager out every couple of weeks, but we could probably use one that's really good over a bunch that do a throw at the problem.
FWIW, I found AeroSpace to be excellent for about a year. Eventually I wanted a scrolling window manager, so I moved to OmniWM (very unstable and indiscriminately scope-crept) and then to Nehir, which I'm enjoying a lot.
That's really all I use most of the time, though on two large screens (32 & 27"). Every now and then I will consume one into a column. I just find that an easily configurable two-up is very nice.
trenchant | a day ago
Aerospace has crashed on me three times today, so excellent timing for this post :-)
sebastien | 2 hours ago
I was coming here to see if someone compared Rift to Aerospace. Aerospace mostly does the job, main problems I've seen are with modals and ghostty tabs counting as a window for some reason.
alexpls | 17 hours ago
Heads up that installing via homebrew seems broken at the moment:
This commit looks like it'll fix the issue, once it makes its way into a release.
For now, manually building is the way to go.
bjeanes | 14 hours ago
heh, I came here to comment the same thing. Glad it's been fixed. I'll try it again in a few days!
joschi | 14 hours ago
How does it compare to OmniWM?
gignico | 9 hours ago
A curiosity: how do these macOS window managers interface with the OS to do their job? Do they use public APIs to manipulate windows? Or the accessibility interface?
stringy | 8 hours ago
It seems like it varies; from the Motivation section in the README:
alper | 8 hours ago
Also having looked into this and seeing how much Aerospace struggled with creating a stable surface area, the macOS accessibility APIs are quite old school and look nightmarish to deal with.
gignico | 6 hours ago
I would say private APIs are actually more subject to change, but I suppose in practice this does not happen so often
usrme | 6 hours ago
What I started with was using Raycast and then taking advantage of its window management capabilities by just having keyboard aliases for operations I regularly perform. For example, I frequently split a window's size in half and move it either to the left or right (e.g. browser on the left [always on the left, for whatever reason...] and terminal on the right) by typing the relevant alias.
In the past 6 months, though, I've started using Mikkel Malmberg's Leader Key, which in general seems to fit my brain better, and thanks to Raycast's deeplinks I can just refer to existing capabilities in Raycast directly through Leader Key.
I'd be curious to learn if I'm missing out on something worth while by having a fully featured window manager. Currently all I do for windows is split, maximize, move to previous screen, and center.
(I'm aware that Leader Key is superseded by Tuna, but I haven't felt the urge yet to make the jump; something about actively avoiding the part of my brain that wants to endlessly tinker with configurations.)
(Also, do check out Mikkel's YouTube channel, it's a delight!)
klingtnet | 9 hours ago
I see neither an
AGENTS.mdnorCLAUDE.md, I upvote.alper | 10 hours ago
I guess it's good that there's a new tiling manager out every couple of weeks, but we could probably use one that's really good over a bunch that do a throw at the problem.
incanus | 5 hours ago
FWIW, I found AeroSpace to be excellent for about a year. Eventually I wanted a scrolling window manager, so I moved to OmniWM (very unstable and indiscriminately scope-crept) and then to Nehir, which I'm enjoying a lot.
alper | 3 hours ago
Nehir is pretty great, but I don't have a huge screen so I don't need much more than 100, 50/50 and 70/30 layouts.
incanus | 2 hours ago
That's really all I use most of the time, though on two large screens (32 & 27"). Every now and then I will consume one into a column. I just find that an easily configurable two-up is very nice.
michaelglass | 6 hours ago
I've been using https://github.com/ianyh/amethyst since the beginning of time. Anyone used both? Why rift?