Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS (github.com)

this is cool, I love multiple options on macOS.

What’s the difference between this and yabai or aerospace?

I used to be a big user of tiling window managers but, more recently, I’ve discovered that the workflow of something like Moom is nicer in more situations.

Pretty cool, but nothing beats Swish if you're using a Macbook trackpad https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/

I've moved from window managers to deterministic app switching with Rcmd mapped to capslock and dual cmd being tied to some window arrangement and screen swapping karabiner commands.

I've switched to what I consider a french cleat system where I have task specific app/window sets and only keep a single task open at a time.

Similar to how french cleat walls are for general storage but then you can arrange all tools for a project on a specific cleat for the duration of the project.

How many apps must a person use in reality that rcmd+letter isn't sufficient for deterministic switching?

Any web app that isn't just general browsing I have mapped to a safari app now, gmail, llms, etc. chrome's tab management is just a joke.

With 5k/6k displays ordinary tiling is a joke: windows are too big. So apps like moon are far better option.

On Windows there is no such thing as Moom, so I use tiling manager like komorebi.

As a person switching between different OSs and devices, it’s a shame that rift seems to not use well-established key binding like alt+hjkl.

Also for 5k+ display (or ultrawide) this kind of window tiling is a must (which komorebi has)

    +-----+-----------+-----+
    |     |           |     |
    |     |           +-----+
    |     |           |     |
    |     |           +-----+
    |     |           |     |
    +-----+-----------+-----+

~Welp, I tried, but HN seems to render this not like I paste it~

I used to be a heavy user of i3. It's very flexible and configurable, and you can do much more than just moving windows. But after I switched to Mac, I couldn't find a tiling window manager that was both feature-rich and stable. After trying several options, I just use Rectangle[1]. It's not a window manager; it only provides shortcuts for window placements like simply moving windows to left/right/top/bottom or splitting the screen into 3/4/6 sections and place windows. It covers 80% of my needs and there are no pitfalls or unexpected behavior, so now I'm happily using it. Another reason is that I'm getting old and tired of using very flexible software with tons of custom configs.

[1] https://rectangleapp.com/

A killer feature that none of the tiling managers for macOS will ever implement for reasons I don’t know why:

Make it so I can double tap the cmd key to see outlines of windows and allow me to swipe using the touch board to shift windows around into pockets space.

Having just gone through really yak shaving Aerospace into a spot that I'm happy with, I'm curious how folks on here manage having so many overlapping keyboard shortcuts?

Maybe it's just me, but I want to map to many things to some combination of hjkl just for the ergonomics...

Aerospace's modal feature sort helps solve that shortcut conflict... How are others dealing with this?

There got a lot of tiling window manager for macOS. People create another and another and another new ones.

This might not be sufficient for a lot of folks and I do notice sometimes a bit of struggle here and there, but for someone like me who mostly uses one widnow at a time on the Mac, or two screens when I have a external monitor setup along wiht my laptop, this thing kinda does it for me (but then I have never been a heavy "tiling" user at all) – https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mchl9674d0b0/...

I wanted to build my own window manager at some point, but was quickly scared away by the lack of a proper API on MacOS. You basically need to hack your way around it by using the accessibility API instead. I see this project uses Objective C bindings and the accessibility API and am wondering how easy it was to debug, write features and what kind of tooling was used for this.

I have been using aerospace which provides very similar window managing to i3 and so far I have had no issues. I personally don't like the animations or the typical "ricing". Installing random, unmaintained software just for the looks sounds extremely reckless to me

I used to use tiling window managers on macOS and in the end it got a bit tiring that after every update something broke. It seems like all of them are fighting the system in some very brittle ways.

In the end I just learned some shortcuts that Apple provides for moving windows around. I still much prefer working on Linux, but this is at least usable and i do not have to fix it that often.

I've tried using i3-likes on MacOS but the lack of a mod key is really hurting usability for me. Also, they tend to not be like dwm where each screen has its own virtual desktops, which is not how I'm used to work.

Another one for my collection: https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers

I have been using Loop(https://github.com/MrKai77/Loop) after trying some of the alternatives listed here and wanted to post that as it was not mentioned. It is something that solves what I was looking for in window management on macos and just putting it out here :).

How did OP get semi rid of the macos top menu bar?!

What is quite upsetting about macOS tile managers is they only seem to work with windows in 'maximum' mode rather than 'full screen', so you always end up wasting screen real estate at the top. (ghastly!)

I see from the animated gif Rift is like this, and Rectangle is too.

I don't get it. Why anyone would need to use tile manager in macOS? How often do you need to have apps side by side? In most cases, just making the app full screen and switch between windows with 4 finger swipes does the job beautifully. Enlighten me please

I get why full-screen plus trackpad gestures feel great on macOS—if you mostly work in a single window, that’s enough. But when the workflow becomes multi-window (terminal, editor, browser DevTools, logs, docs), predictable layouts start to matter. Tiling tools aren’t just “put two windows side by side”—they: - Cut context-switching overhead: focus moves and rearrangements happen via keyboard without breaking flow. - Create reusable “work panels”: replicate the same layout across projects/spaces, so you don’t keep “placing windows.” - Make high-res displays useful: on 5K/6K or ultrawide, precise partitioning beats full-screen. My compromise on mac is “light management” (Rectangle/Moom with a handful of shortcuts) for ~80% of needs; when I need stronger workspace semantics, I use Aerospace/Rift. Not everyone needs tiling, but once window count and switching frequency rise, its value becomes obvious.

been using magnet for a long time, it lets you map custom key-combos to put windows in specific slots

https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/

I'm getting an error during compiling. I did a "brew install rust", cloned the project then did "cargo build --bins --release" and got the error

   Compiling rift-wm v0.1.0 (/Users/bartvk/Developer/github.com/rift)

error[E0554]: `#![feature]` may not be used on the stable release channel

Now I get I may have to switch to some beta rust version, so I did a "brew install rustup" and tried again "cargo build --bins --release" but same error.

It'd greatly help if there was a step-by-step installation guide. I'm not into rust, so I'm getting a bit lost here.

Note that using Hammerspoon, you can build your own window manager.

Personally, I really like how Divvy (https://mizage.com/divvy/) uses a modal (press cmd-alt-ctrl-x, then press a single key to chose a layout for the frontmost window), but it's no longer maintained.

Thus, using OpenAI's Codex, I generated a modal window manager (https://github.com/ahamez/dot_hammerspoon/blob/master/wm.lua).

Thought it would be interesting to share this approach!

> It uses private APIs reverse engineered by yabai and other projects

Don't get used to this. Because of private API use, this project will break at some point after some macOS update.