I have been using window managers on macOS for a while. For a long time, I’ve used manual ones like Divvy and Spectacle.

They worked but I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of tiling window managers. I read about Yabai and Amethyst and didn’t quite get it. I tried them, gave up, stuck to manual window managers and came back a few years later and spent some time with Amethyst.

I use it with another utility, Phoenix which I have been using for various purposes. It’s an app that offer JavaScript APIs for working with mac files, apps and their windows and frames. So I would define keyboard shortcuts like ctrl-shift-v to launch MacVim in Phoenix and then leave it to the tiling window manager to sort it out. Occasionally using keyboard shortcuts offered by the tiling window manager to rearrange the existing windows.

Having used them for a while, I’m forming an opinion of how I would like to use them and how they can better suit me.

My ideal set up would be for the tiling window manager to handle both launching and hiding apps and automatically reconfiguring the layout depending on which apps/windows are active so I didn’t have to use Phoenix for the former (I’d probably keep Phoenix around, but for other things) 1.

I want it to support app launching, tile automatically without much manual intervention, stay simple, supports multiple monitors and be fast.

I started building mine2 called SimplyWM. It’s not feature complete yet, but I have been running it for a while and will enhance it as I go along. Feel free to check it out and let me know your feedback.

  1. SimplyWM v0.3.0 build 5 supports launching and hiding apps with keyboard shortcuts. ↩

  2. I forked Amethyst, stripped it down and made some changes. Again, it’s a great tiling window manager, so be sure to check it out too. ↩