I daily drive this and my verdict is: it's the best way to manage windows on a Mac, but falls short of i3/sway. In particular, support for re-arranging windows by dragging them to positions relative to one another is extremely limited in that it's not able to create new vertical or horizontal splits the way you can in sway, which forces me to take awkward detours with keyboard commands to get to the window layout I want most of the time. Like, say I have two windows side-by-side, and I want to split one of them vertically. In sway I'd pop open the new window, then drag it to the top or bottom half of the window I want it to share horizontal space with, and bam, all done. With aerospace the best way I've found to do this is to open the new window, then switch all three windows into a vertical stack, then focus the window that was originally on the left and invoke the 'move left' command on it.

    h_tiles
    ├── window1 (focused)
    ├── window2
    └── window3

    h_tiles
    ├── window1 (focused)
    └── v_tiles
        ├── window2
        └── window3

> Doesn't require disabling SIP

That's very interesting! I've been hesitant to use similar WMs as basically all required disabling SIP. Anyone knows what AeroSpace is doing differently that it can work alongside SIP?

Edit: found this in the README:

> AeroSpace will never require you to disable SIP (System Integrity Protection). For example, yabai requires you to disable SIP to use some of its features. AeroSpace will either find another way (such as emulation of workspaces) or will not implement this feature at all (window transparency and window shadowing are not practical features)

This is great! I've been using Amethyst so far, but I immediately liked Aerospace more. The main gripe I have with Amethyst is that it throws windows in a very sluggish and unreliable fashion. With Aerospace, windows get moved to different workspaces/monitors in a flash and the move never fails. I also like how it completely ditches MacOS built-in workspaces, which, as the author argued, is rather unsatisfactory, in favor of its own virtual workspace solution, which finally makes handling a multi-monitor setup a bearable and even somewhat enjoyable experience.

(I couldn't use yabai on my work computer as it requires disabling SIP, which the author of Aerospace explicitly argues against, which I find reasonable.)

Actually, in my Linux days I moved from i3 (which Aerospace is based on) to xmonad (which Amethyst is based on), but on MacOS Aerospace just feels quite better. None of the 3 WMs on MacOS comes close to what a true WM on Linux can offer, but I guess Aerospace is as good as it can get.

Oh, I like the fake Spaces approach.

I have considered trying that by minimizing windows, but would never get around to it.

Tiling is doomed to sadness on macOS, because of lack of APIs. But this is probably the most performant approach.

Have used yabai, but only for moving windows and focus-follows-mouse. Not for tiling. Because flaky (not yabai’s fault).

Thanks nikitabobko.

Looking forward to trying it as soon as I figure out how to mod alt-tab to ignore all the windows (from every fake workspace) in the corner.

Also, linked in the docs, JankyBorders. Nice.

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabaihttps://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macoshttps://github.com/FelixKratz/JankyBorders

I have gotten somewhat used to Raycast's window management tools, and it is not really possible to use them with AeroSpace.

For example, with Raycast I can resize and float a window using "reasonable size" option, which also puts it in the middle. I can use left half and right half to create a split, or I can maximise a window or even use quarters or thirds. With AeroSpace, trrying to move the windows in the tiles using left half, right half, or left two thirds or using reasonable size to float the windows, it doesn't work.

Also, there are bugs associated with moving apps to "next desktop" and "previous desktop". AeroSpace seems to have its own implementation of Mac's multiple desktops called workspaces, so the video guide actually doesn't show transitioning between different desktops, but different workspaces. As a result, using "next desktop" and "previous desktop" completely breaks the tiling. I would've liked Workspaces to just be associated directly with the different Mac desktops so that the movement between workspaces just moves to the different desktops so there is some compatibility with Raycast and native MacOS.

I use yabai pretty heavily, for the past 5 macos versions without disabling SIP on a work computer. I really like it, the tiling is flaky only maybe once every few days (I am doing yabai commands probably once a minute at least) so I bound a keystroke to `yabai --restart-service` and it always comes back immediately

So I find it really pretty reliable and pretty great. Multimonitor is hard and I don't use it much, but having stacks and fast 'full-screen' to minimize is so great

On some version upgrades, work antivirus thinks it's a virus so disables it for 24 hours, and I hate using my computer those days, it feels so clunky and sad

I have been trying this for a few months now. I3 is quite perfect and Aerospace is a nice try, but it’s very far from i3; it’s quite flaky. I guess this is because Mac OS X doesn’t actually allow full control like Unix WMs do?

I have not found anything better though, but I will install Linux when it’s working well on Apple Silicon. Only i3 is at least for me enough reason to use Linux as Mac OS X, again imho, is terrible window manager wise.

What is the difference in user experience between this and Yabai? I don’t think the SIP issues for Yabai is a big one, no one I know who uses Yabai disables SIP, and they seem to enjoy it.

Is the i3 stuff the difference?

Personally I use a utility that allows resizing and moving windows with the mouse from anywhere on the window when holding a modifier combination, like Fluxbox. Not as automatic, but also never flaky - more like making floating much easier with less mouse movement than moving to a totally managed style.