Giving Macos a try again (coming from Linux and Windows) and am still bewildered by how primitive the native window management is. Thank you for the most detailed and useful video on mac window management i've seen so far.

@workflowinmind

Жыл бұрын

I genuinely wonder what do you use on Windows? To me it's the worst for this

@wolloify

Жыл бұрын

What so you use for windows tiling window manager? I tried looking for one but there was nothing.

@shankyjs

Жыл бұрын

@@wolloify windows has native shortcuts to achieve it, not that advanced as Linux based ones but they work better than mac natively

@MikeDent

Жыл бұрын

custom keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any app built right in to the os? Not sure windows does that

@fr3ak1shh

Жыл бұрын

@@workflowinmind I'll give you some windows shortcuts I use every day. Win+Arrow - for snapping/minimizing windows. Win+D - Minimize all apps. Do again to maximize. Win+Shift+Arrow - move window between desktops. Win+Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow - move between virtual desktops. Win+Tab - show all windows, show virtual desktops, allows you to drag windows between virtual desktops. And obviously intuitive window dragging/snapping with the mouse. I'm not saying Mac is bad, I'm actually considering getting one, and preparing myself for a shock to my workflow as a Windows "amateur power user" :)

This walk though is great. I love that you started by showing the built-in MacOS features as a base and then moved onto Amethyst. I've been using Amethyst for a couple months and have found it challenging to remember the keyboard shortcuts but for some reason as you go over them in your video they seem to make sense and be more intuitive than I thought.

I just got a 49 inch ultrawide LG monitor for my MacBook Pro. It was soon clear that I needed a tiling window manager, but there are so many to choose from. Your video helped me pick Amethyst, and get started using it. The video contained just enough info to be very useful, but not an overwhelming amount, and it showed helpful examples. Thank you!

Shift+Meta key is the prefix. J, K - moving between windows H, L - resizing windows space - cycle between layouts d - fullscreen - to make a different window the main window Ctrl-J, Ctrl-K - move windows

Glad to see you back on KZread! This video is exactly what I needed now. Thumps Up! Greetings from Germany.

Thank you for making this. I sadly have to switch to using a mac at work from my Regolith linux setup I've had for the last 3 years and it helped to see an overview. For anyone tiling window manager curious, Regolith linux is the most superior OS + distro for productivity I've ever found and is quite easy to use.

Very helpful, thanks for the vid! Really glad you highlighted the security aspects. Look forward to exploring more of your videos!

Really useful, thanks a lot, Rob. I never have used a tiling window manager, because I didn't really take the time to understand them, but you made it approachable and easy to understand. Really enjoying these tutorial videos (although I also did enjoy the honest product reviews tbh).

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I will still review products but only those I’ve bought myself. I’m particularly interested in reviewing things I bought that I ended up really regretting, of which there are many 😩

Rob! We're glad you're back! Thank you for all the awesome content!!

I’ve been a Magnet user for a while now but missed having an auto-layout feature. Amethyst fills that hole perfectly. Thanks for another great video!

I'm 100% windows 11 extremist, and I'm forced to work in macos. This is exactly what I was looking for. Well done my friend!

Finally, I found a free tiling window manager for Mac. Thanks. In case someone has problems with iTerm2, edit your terminal profile and set the Space option to Current Space.

Superb presentation of the main features of a program I did not know existed on a Mac. Using dwm and hating the window management of macOS, I've been using rectangle so far. Amethyst, however, resembles much more what I'm used to on a Linux pc. I also like the way spaces can be used like dwm's workspaces. Thanks for making me aware of this program and also for making extremely useful videos on how to use the Mac productively.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

With Amethyst I find going back and forth between Linux and Mac much easier. Glad you found this one useful.

From starting till end, every second of this video was useful Thanks mate

I recently got a Mac Mini for Logic Pro X, among other things. I use i3 on linux as my main tile manager. This is so fluid, and I enjoy using vim keys. This has been a seamless transition. Thanks

Brilliant! Thank you, Rob, I was certainly missing something like Amethyst since I've got 4k monitor last summer, so now routine tasks are going to be accomplished much faster. It's one of those great little gems I always loved Macs for in a Classic era. A small notice: as a long time Mac user, every time I hear 'Alt', it' always makes me do a mental translation, as this key is called 'Option' in the Mac part of the world since the very beginning ;)

Awesome video. Thanks a lot Rob 🙌🏻 Really like your content. Keep up the great work 💪🏻

A video packed with good information. Thank you so much!

Great video. Really well thought out and presented. Thank you

Add a hyperkey with with karbiner and your navigation can be reduced to 1 or 2 commands. Hyper + arrows. Hyper + f = fullscreen etc key combo’s with 3 modifiers will slow you down a lot. Great video!

Amazing video, thank you for sharing. I found it very intuitive, switching from magnet to amethyst

Excellent! Glad you are back! You always cover things that others don’t and I like that you cover things power users would want to know.

Thanks Rob. I idly searched for macOS tiling window manager and found Amethyst. I normally dislike video tutorials, but this was excellent.

Coming from Linux and i3 I found this very useful, thank you!

Great content again. Thank you for this unique content!

This is great, thank you for the detailed review.

Very helpful video. Thank you!

glad you're back ❤️

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I’m glad to be back.

Thanks, this was great!

Hugely useful. Thanks.

Been using linux for 12 years and now I work for a company that requires using mac. It's really annoying not having control over such basic stuff. This is really helpful.

Very useful! Thank you very much. So far I was playing around with Rectangle but I figured it was time to learn a tiling wm. +1

Love your content!

This is awesome. As Linux and Mac user, this was something I was missing in Mac. I did not know you can bind an app to a workspace like I do with i3 on Linux. Thank you so much!

@ErmandDurro

2 жыл бұрын

Same on my case 😃

@chop8557

Жыл бұрын

eyyy a fellow mac and linux user. usually u just get mac or windows or linux and windows people not often u get someone that uses mac and linux. really liked dualbooting linux on my macbook before the silicon chips came out. now i just carry 2 laptops cause i can

@avinash2899

Жыл бұрын

I recently switched to macos from swaywm. But it seems like it still has a lot to do to match window management of i3/sway. I don't see anyway to tab or stack full screen windows in a single desktop/workspace.

@melodyogonna

Жыл бұрын

Same!!

Thank you for showing the shortcut key, because I am a visual learning type. 🎉

A tad long, but really useful video. Thanks man, I was a linux user and so far, mac seemed boring and slow. You are getting me to start liking it.

im monad for years on linux ...now I have a MacBook Pro and needed something ...this looks like the one.. thanks mate

This is a life saver...I was struggling to setup yabai but it was just too complex

great video. I'm trying to use this amethyst right now. It is a little buggy. But ok, let's see in the future. Thanks for the video!

Thank you Rob!

Great video -- love the mic 🙂 Currently using Hammerspoon (very primitive but I was used to it), and this looks much better. PS: Ctrl-up didn't work for me until I enabled it (I used F3 normally). Also I didn't have the assign to Desktop on my options until I enabled something else - dunno what. Finally, macOS calls them desktops not spaces nor workspaces (they used to have spaces which were topologically connected like screens are). As you can tell I'm still tweaking. I'm also still using port, so will switch to homebrew when I can.

as a SWE with two 4k monitors, this is perfect! Thank you@

Being a maintainer for i3 (and i3-gaps) and switching to Mac looking to get a somehow familiar setup I really appreciated this video.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! That means a lot - I love i3!

Briliant!

Pretty useful content, thanks a lot (:

Thank You!!!

Amazing presentation. As a long time yabai user (read sufferer), I instantly deleted all that noise after your video. Team Amethyst ftw

I just switched from Linux, and this really helps.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot great overview! I'm sold. Btw seems like this 16:20 is now solved

Interesting for sure, but I think I’ll stick with yabai. Yabai with SIP disabled just adds so much more to my workflow (instant space switching, hold a key to move or resize windows, proper borders, opacity changes and so on)

I have no need to see the content before upvoting. You covering a WM is worthy enough.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I’ve developed that love of messing about with window managers that seems afflict tech people occasionally.

Is there a way to disable “opening app in space #2” when I am on an external monitor ? I have an ultra wide I don’t use spaces on it

is there a way to restore the switch to desktop 2 and 3's option's? they seem to be gone now.

I have not found a way to focus floating windows with amethyst, is it possible to do so?

find a certain lag or flicker when changing spaces using amethyst . I love the window management when I operate with multiple windows , but I don't like it takes me full screen when I open only a single application. Is there any way to stop this And what does the window resize interval do ??

I'd like to begin by saying it's an awesome Amethyst presentation. I've been using it for some time now but I'm still trying to figure out if it's useful or not. I'm not a fullscreen app user, and never have been. Other than when I'm using Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro, or ZBrush, apps that make sense to run in fullscreen mode, other than that, I don't get this workflow. Yes, I mean in macOS. Web browsing for me is nonsense to be tiled. I could say that probably another use for it could be on terminal emulators but that would be another discussion too. I've been an iTerm user for some time but no more. Terminal, the default terminal emulator on macOS lacks at least 2 features and because of that I started to use Alacritty and/or kitty. By that I felt the need of tmux and tmux changed everything. You will get the point if you know already what I'm talking about or when you get there.

Very good explanation. Unfortunately I cannot get it to do what you say it can do. Back to rectangle...

VIM commands to move around 🤩🤩🤩

Please do a little video on the latest beta feature, support for custom config file in your home directory. ~/amethyst.yml. Maybe share your configuration too. I think this could be a very interesting feature going forward, especially if/when they will support XDG based directories so you can get your file the hell out of your home directory 😂

Check rectangle ,Its awesome !

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I have a long flight coming up so I’ve downloaded to Thai try out.

I’ve been using yabai for a long time but this convinced me to give amethyst a try. I love yabai but configuration and setup can be a hassle, you’re sort of fighting the OS all the time. Would love to see a video going over XMonad similarly!

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

You might have seen it already but Derek at DistroTube has some excellent XMonad content: kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZaKjrZaAhNDffdo.html

@Perrolini

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft yeah I have! Would still love to see yours as well 😬

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

@@Perrolini I'm looking into ArchARM with XMonad on the RaspberryPi at the moment. I think that would make a nice video.

@Perrolini

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft yes that would be awesome!

I'm waiting for my Mac for my new job, and as a long time Linux and i3wm user, I really hope that this app can make me feel at thome

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

It’s definitely not as feature-packed as i3/xmonad but it’s easy to set up and gives you a good core set of features to play with. If you’re an i3 user and you are okay with disabling SIP, then yabai gives you more options and will feel more familiar.

@farzadmf

2 жыл бұрын

I think I'll be OK with disabling SIP, but not the company since it's a work machine 😆

Thanks

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks very much! Much appreciated.

It’s one thing that drives me mad - constantly moving overlapped windows around/. Looks like this app (with the help of this video) can help me fix that

Quick question (and sorry if I'm not wording this correctly). While in a two-pane setup, any advice on how to move my main window (positioned on left side) the the right side? I've had no issue setting up my keyboard shortcut to have the focused window go to the main window position, but no luck creating a command to have the window to the right side.

@tech_craft

Жыл бұрын

There's no explicit shortcut to move the main window. Instead you'll have to focus on the main window and then move the focused window.

Nice vid. I'd love to see some shortcuts for Mac, since Apple released the app for the platform

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I've been working on some interesting automation for Mac stuff with a mix of AppleScript, Automator, Shortcuts, HammerSpoon and the StreamDeck.

@Mehmehx

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft nice, looking forward to it

Here from i3wm rice... I've been used macOS for years and I ever thought about something like this, but I've never knew it was possible. Thank you, now I can continue to use macOS on my macbook instead of dual boot with linux🤣🤣

can you have true linux style focus follows mouse especially on a multi screen setup?

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

You can certainly enable focus follows mouse. I can't speak to how well it works on multi-screen setups because I very rarely work with more than one screen. From reading around on the Amethyst issue tracker it seems there are still some rough edges with focus follow stemming from the fact that the developer doesn't use that feature himself.

How can I create a new window instead of opening the previous application. I can only use command+n in one application now, is there any other way?

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Amethyst shouldn't bind to Cmd-N. Which apps are you facing issues with?

Is it possible to get rid of window decoration/boarders? On my i3 i have a 1px border around windows, thats it, and how i like it!

@tech_craft

Жыл бұрын

Sadly not with Amethyst. I think I'm correct in saying that removing borders means turning off SIP and Amethyst doesn't have a mode for that. You could look at Yabai which has more features but requires SIP to be turned off.

I have tried Amethyst and the only thing that bothers me, is the amount of keys I have to press. If I could find I way to map like ctrl+alt+shift to a specific key like caps lock for example, that would be great. I think this can be done in Karabiner but I haven’t looked into it yet.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

It's definitely possible to create shorter mappings using BetterTouch Tool so I imagine Karabiner can do the same.

@billeterk

Жыл бұрын

Yep, there are a few Hyper implementations easily found for Karabiner. That plus HammerSpoon is my current manual tiling set up.

I tried Amethyst and didn't like it. It kept tiling windows that I open-very annoying to me. I didn't watch this whole video: TLDR. What I need is a way to save my Finder window set(s) and reestablish them quickly via a menu or keyboard shortcut. The only window manager that comes close is "Simple WindowSets", but is often too slow to be practical. Does Amethyst allow me to save specific Finder window sets? Presently, if I wish to save and recreate window sets (both Finder & Apps), I use Keyboard Maestro, which works perfectly but requires a lot of work to setup each window set, especially when I move to other Macs I have.

@tech_craft

Жыл бұрын

That’s not something you can with Amethyst but you might like Emmet which does exactly that. It’s $10, built by a high-schooler in the US and fits the exact use case. I use it for repeatable layouts for my screencasts.

Danke!

@rebdo

Жыл бұрын

thanks! very useful video. beside my mac i use a linux laptop with arco linux and xmonad. i like the feature to throw a window to another space by numbers shortcut on the linux machine very much and i always missed it on my mac. i use rectangle a lot, and its fine, but it wont be able to get a window to a different space by number, so i always looked for something to get me this on the mac. and now i found your video, i already subscribed to your channel in the past, but i havent watched all your videos, i wish, i had done this :)

@tech_craft

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the support! I really appreciate it. If you like XMonad you might also like Yabai for the Mac.

@rebdo

Жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft Thanks for the advice, for me is amethyst perfectly adequate cause i dont want to disable the SIP for installation Yabai. But again, thank you very much, i like your channel and your work!

Tiles is like Magnet but much better, with animations and a better UI overall. Also, it's free.

The only thing I can't seem to find out how to do is make the current window "small and centered", similar to a feature Yabai has. Sounds small but it's the only thing keeping me from using Amesthyst

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I think this is possible with a custom layout and I keep meaning to do just this. I’ll dig in and share the result when I have it.

God bless u

they should add an option to disable the slow animations when switching desktops

This is an good option but still nothing beats Fancy Zones from WIndows :(

Awesome , an alternate to Stay which is a paid app , can Amethyst launch a bunch of apps and apply the designated layout??

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Sadly not. That's a feature I love from my xmonad setup.

No xmonad video? 🥺

This is brilliant, thanks Rob. I am curios how you use a 5k2k screen for your dev workflow.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

My usual setup is three columns, with the editor in the middle, docs to the left, and a terminal to the right. I'll often have something like entr running in the terminal to automatically run tests/builds etc as the source changes. If I'm doing web work, I might swap the terminal for a live reload window showing the output.

you can get this on windows, it's called "amethyst windows" and it will do the same thing but on windows instead of mac.

Floating over lapping windows FTW

Hi. I’m new to this, but is it possible to have a configuration file almost like yabairc? Where you can set up all your configuration and hotkeys?

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Sadly not. This is the biggest drawback of Amethyst for me. I use xmonad on Linux and would love a similar system on Mac. Yabai seems close, but is limited by what Mac allows.

@ditchcomfort

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft oki thank you. Yes I know, I was looking into yabai but I don’t want to turn off SIP even if it’s my home machine. And a lot of work setting up. I’m totally new to tiling manager but after watching your video I’m all-in now 👍🏻 Another question I have… Do you use the default mod1 and mod2 keys? Or du you use custom hotkeys, like caps + letter/number? I would love to have custom keys ONLY for Amethyst. But that’s not possible either I guess?

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

One option is to use something like Better Touch Tool. You can set Caps Lock to 'Act as Hyper' and then use that as the modifier for your Amethyst shortcuts. Hyper has the nice benefit of rarely clashing with other apps.

@ditchcomfort

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft Yes that’s what I was talking about. I’m using Karabiner for setting up my Hyper key and some other shortcuts. But, do you use hyper with Amethyst or the default? I’ve only played around for two days but already getting pretty used to the default bindings… but I haven’t really decided yet.

@ditchcomfort

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft another issue I’m having is to make Alfred float. No matter what I’m doing I can’t make it happen. I’ve added the app itself to the list + added Alfred Preferences in the menu. Do you have any solution?

I cannot live without Yabai but maybe I will give amathyst a try to see if this works for me :) my .config files save my yabai config but maybe there is a way to do that for amathyst too?

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I don't believe there is a way to get a config file out of Amethyst. That would be nice for sure.

The thing that really bothers me about tiling on MacOS is that you can see the window in the floating state for a frame, before it snaps into position. Both Yabai and Amethyst have this, so I'm guessing it's a limitation of MacOS, and not something that can be fixed by the developers. I wish MacOS had native support for tiling, or if this issue was somehow fixed, but that first one will never happen.

xmonad master race my guy.... yooooooo.... 😏😎😫

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

Such a great piece of software.

Check Onemenu form Marko!

coming to macos from linux and windows (mostly for gaming) i'm shocked at how trash macos is out of the box. this video really helps a lot, but i'm almost certainly still ditching this thing for a proper linux machine.. I tried amethyst but it's still pretty limited. Also, setting the layout order is a big help to ensure you start in your default and have favorites close by

Any reason why xcode is not toggling?

@tech_craft

Жыл бұрын

Not sure. I don’t use Xcode much at all so can’t really say

@cockyboby

Жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft red hering. Sometimes, some windows just don't toggle. App restart resolves the issue.

Ctrl + Shift + Alt + k?! Why are they so keen on making you play twister with your fingers? I can never remember three-key shortcuts, let alone four-key ones.

This gonna be an absolute lifesave until Asahi is ready to completly replace macos on m1/m2. After i3 for nearly a year now, i feel it's impossible to work work floating windows, like for real.

I use FancyWM on windows and amethyst looks better.

I tried multiple window managers like Yabai, Amethyst, Aerospace, etc. However, after all, I ended up with a conclusion that most of the time window managers are to fight with you, not to help you. They flicker, annoy, interrupt, etc. Unless you are using a super wide screen, most of the time you are going to waste time with layouting poups, modals and windows that you don't want to be layouted. At least in my case, I usually want to have a single window per space/workspace. If I want to open something temporarily usually I don't want it to mess with my layout. Therefore, I ended up with Rectangle just for quick shortcuts to move around windows and Aerospace to stop using Spaces and instead use virtual workspaces which are faster. Also, I switched my workflow to terminal, so tmux is enough most of the time :).

I don't want to rant but the window management on macOs is bad. The multiple desktop solution is laughable compared to Windows and Linux. Don't even get me started on multiple monitors... I used to see people talking wonders about how the productivity on Mac is so great. Productivity = multiple desktops + multiple monitors. On Linux I can have multiple virtual desktops with different apps opened (the same app opened in different desktops each belonging to that desktop). I usually split my desktops based on tasks and that extremely annoying to do on mac because it treats desktops as spaces. And then you have that one "desktop" with only one app maximized. Really? MacOs sadly is half baked and I feel sad for picking a macbook based on fanboy hype.

@tech_craft

2 жыл бұрын

I’m a huge xmonad fan, so you won’t hear me disagreeing. But you can definitely get better than the stock Mac experience

@dom6477

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft This week I shared my screen in a conference and it randomly jumped to my other "desktop" and I had my email opened. It was so embarrassing. What happened is that I had google slides maximized in one space and then I pressed esc to exit full screen. Then, instead of showing a normal size window of my slides, it jumped to another "desktop" in which my email was opened. I am 100% sure if I was on Windows, this wouldn't happen because they have proper virtual desktops. Thanks for you reply tough. I will try some tools to ease my life while I'm forced to use this crap.

@dom6477

2 жыл бұрын

@@tech_craft You were right. Amethyst improves the window management a lot. Now I can work better with multiple desktops. It is not ideal but it is way better (cmd + tab shows everything opened).

@ioagel

2 жыл бұрын

window management on macs is far from optimal… but using rectangle or magnet or amethyst + the ability to independently cycle virtual desktops in multiple monitors makes it far better than gnome, trailing behind of course linux tiling wms like i3, xmonad etc… now… the productivity in mac os comes from apps like alfred, keyboard maestro, better touch tool, hazel, all the omni group software, continuity, handoff, universal control and many more exclusive to macos productivity software, that destroy everything that windows or linux have to offer… it is not even funny how much superior the apple ecosystem is when you invest on it….

Nice presentation, but please stop calling it fullscreen, when it's not. Fullscreen takes up the entire screen and creates its own space. That's what fullscreen means in Mac Os. That means no space at the bottom, no top bar. What you're doing is just maximising the window, not making it fullscreen. As for the app itself... I'm not sure I see the appeal. Memorising a bunch of unintuitive keyboard shortcuts, the most arcane installation process (why the hell isn't it just an app you drag from a .dmg file?), and I don't see any advantage vs something like bettersnaptool, which is a proper app, with a normal mac os installation procedure, good UI, and much more intuitive to use.

it works like 💩, may be it had conflicts with the default shortcutcs, but moveing windows was horrible, yabai+skhd works much better, but with bugs too. i've uninstalled this app after five minutes of usage