Tiling WM in MacOS with yabai

Since I switched to MacOS the only software I’ve used to manage my windows has been Rectangle¹, which I mostly used for 2 column view and maximizing a window.

A while back I started struggling with too many windows being open, going unnoticed and having to reach my mouse anyway to select them “comfortably”. I try to use my keyboard for everything I can, one of the reasons I’ve tried multiple CLI tools wherever possible.

I didn’t even know other “window managers” existed for MacOS, even less that they had tiling capabilities. Not even on Linux did I use tiling WMs, sticking to 2bwm², it just felt like a good time for a change. The reasoning behind trying tiling this time is to clean my workspaces more frequently from those unused applications that are left open.

Amethyst³ was the first option I tried, only for 30 minutes until I got annoyed by all the defaults and different layouts available; there were also some errors when trying to save the configuration from the UI. I was looking for something simple, where I could choose what to enable, so ended up trying yabai⁴.

Yabai is a CLI to control windows, but hotkeys can be configured using skhd⁵. It also allows for more customization goodies by disabling MacOS SIP (system integrity protection), but I chose not to enable these features on my work machine.

The keybinds are simple calls to the yabai binary. The only thing I’m having issues right now is with switching windows when using the stacked layout. Here’s an example of the basic configuration:

# focus window
alt - h : yabai -m window --focus west
alt - l : yabai -m window --focus east
alt - j : yabai -m window --focus south
alt - k : yabai -m window --focus north

shift + alt - n : yabai -m window --focus next || yabai -m window --focus first
shift + alt - p : yabai -m window --focus prev || yabai -m window --focus last
shift + alt - m : yabai -m window --focus prev || yabai -m window --focus last

# swap managed window
shift + alt - h : yabai -m window --swap west
shift + alt - l : yabai -m window --swap east
shift + alt - j : yabai -m window --swap south
shift + alt - k : yabai -m window --swap north

The configuration for yabai and skhd is fairly straightforward, and I’ve included it in my dotfiles repository⁶.