Aerospace Is Probably The Best MacOS Tiling Manager I've Ever Used

[@shinyuta]

I just switched from yabai and fully setup Aerospace with sketchybar yesterday. Very nice. The removal of the animation between MacOS spaces make the experience feel a lot faster.

[@avramukk]

same

[@pedestrianlove]

Yeah a recent upgrade just breaks my yabai setup, so I went for aerospace and never look back. Plus, aerospace = yabai + skhd, this makes it even easier to configure the entire WM experience.

[@hameldesai4756]

Hey, where in the system settings in mac os can I turn this off "The removal of the animation between MacOS spaces" Thank you!

[@RegrinderAlert]

@@hameldesai4756It’s not part of the system settings. It’s because Aerospace doesn’t use spaces.

[@Wubwub772]

if you use yabai, just turn on "reduce motion" in mac prefs. its the same thing

[@fixpoint]

I discovered Aerospace about two months ago and have been using it ever since. It took me a couple of weeks to get proficient, but now I couldn’t imagine life without. I like the fzf command you demonstrated, so I’ll be adding that into the mix. I opted to skip out on sketchy as the value it provided was not worth the effort. Great video as usual! Thanks!

[@devopstoolbox]

Thanks! I'd really like to remove sketchybar, but without workspace indication I feel lost...

[@fixpoint]

@ Yes, I would be lost too if it weren’t for two things. One, aerospace does show which workspace you are currently in via the menu bar. And two, I’ve got myself in a routine where I place certain windows in specific workspaces. For example, email always goes into workspace 3 for me. I’ve found that I don’t need to see how many workspaces I currently have open very often. And in the when I do, I just click the menu bar, which lists all of them. Of course, every one has their own preferences. Nonetheless, thanks for sharing your setup! Great stuff!

[@EttVenterPhoto]

I've been using Aerospace for about 2 months, and it's the only WM I've been able to stick with after trying them all. Love your videos man you and I are a similar flavour of nerd.

[@srgsanky]

One of the best thing that I learned from this video is to switch to the terminal with a keybinding and use aerospace + fzf to switch between open windows. The other thing is the ability to have multiple modes where each can perform a different action for the same keybinding (for e.g. using the same keybinding to open WezTerm in one mode, while opening Alacritty in another mode). TIL.

[@Metruzanca]

Happy user of Rectangle (window snapping shortcuts) and alt-tab (actually see a preview of, like windows/linux does and all windows as separate entries). Combined with cmd+space to open whatever app and I'm pretty productive. alt+space summons my iterm terminal which auto-collapses when not focussed. I pretty much only work with my apps in "full screen" (not macos full screen, that shit sucks) and sometimes a vertical split down the middle. I don't need anything else. I tried workspaces for a bit but thats just too much. I'll minimize things that aren't needed (and alt-tab is configured to will filter those entries out)

[@JohnS-jc5mj]

Same here keep it simple all this other shit looks complicated

[@sergiosoares5045]

Same here, Rectangle + Alt Tab (showing only apps for the opened desktop) is powerful already. Another trick is alt + cmd + h to minimize all apps, then I use spotlight to focus on what I really need. But I will give a try to Aerospace to have more opinions about tiling in MacOS.

[@theherk]

Been using it for a few months and love it. I like to set the workspace names to relevant emoji so you get a nice helpful icon in the menu bar.

[@devopstoolbox]

Haha that's creative! I was thinking of actually renaming them using characters of they're meant for, i.e. 'b' for browsing, 'f' for finalcut, 'o' obsidian etc etc

[@jakmazdev]

​@@devopstoolbox ​ I used the whole names for different spaces, like "web" and "code". Then upgraded it to sketchybar for even better indication!

[@davidallred991]

surprised it took you so long. once of my favorite pieces of software in my setup, nothing comes close if using multiple monitors

[@GavinBogie]

Been using it for months! Great Software!

[@adjaydev]

Aerospace is the best! I switch from Amethyst earlier this year after the 'throw to screen x' stopped working after a macos update. I'm glad Amethyst stopped working! 🤣

[@jakubkuchejda3864]

I think a Raycast plugin would be a cool improvement to the "ff" command, having to go to the terminal first seems like an unnecessary extra step when you want to find an application. You can then create a custom keybinding to execute the command from anywhere.

[@GOTHICforLIFE1]

Been using Aerospace for a while, and it's really nice. Only thing i don't really like compared to my normal keybound rectangle, is that i sometimes have to use multiple workspaces instead of having windows overlapping them like i did before. That can be a pro or a con, depending on how you prefer to work. that was a minor con for me, but in return aerospace allows me to super easily readjust the sizes of windows. Super nice once you get used to it. The biggest hurdle to get used to is how windows interact with each other. But overall great tool

[@theherk]

Why can’t you have them overlap?

[@devopstoolbox]

To be fair, you can just set everything as a floating window by default using a catch all regex - see my config and just use '*'. then you'd be able to only using it for size adjustment. but then you lose most of the functionality of having tiling windows in the first place...

[@Merlinvn82]

Aerospace is awesome. I use meh (ctr+shift+alt) as the main key instead of Alt key, so I don't have to mess with alt for my Neovim key, hyperkey for moving or modifing windows, workspace. And each frequencely use app will have its own namespace: Meh+b: browrser, meh+n: note, meh+t: terminal, and so on. Cmd+tab: now switch back and forth workspace instead of app.

[@YannSchmidt]

I just moved my mac to use Nix Darwin a few days ago. I will try Aerospace. I didn't like Yabai so I stopped looking for a WM after that. I so want to try Ghostty but It's almost there !

[@devopstoolbox]

I think you're going to love aerospace. I had the same experience with yabai. Ghostty is coming out soon, and it's definitely great and it is my default emulator now, but to be honest, Wezterm is just as good and even better in some cases. Ghostty just makes an overall better package than the alternatives

[@1234minecraft5678]

Alt + Ctrl + Shift + F, bro has a hand more than me, this is too much

[@devopstoolbox]

I know I'm cheating but that's what board configurations are for. I have both a superkey configured and a bunch of keys sending both alt and shift exactly for that. also, you can play around with it if it doesn't conflict with other shortcuts

[@binh1298ify]

Thanks, I've been using yabai for a while and this is much better

[@jonathanrodriquez3775]

sketchyBar had been a game changer for me paired it with Amethyst

[@devopstoolbox]

Amethyst didn't work for me, but sketchybar is a thing of beauty and I'm so happy I found the experimental feature of running it vertically

[@petaflop3606]

Amazing, so timely, having just about had enough of Mac's lacking window management. They made such a token attempt in the last couple releases, I was almost about to full linux hyprland lol but I'm glad I can stick to my mac dev env. Thanks for the intro to Aerospace

[@ronitgandhi7716]

Hey! Love your setup. No hate but can you make videos for devops also? Because i am seeing your videos since the start and I really enjoyed and learnt many new things from your old videos. I am not saying new are not good, they are top tier in all ways:editing, explaining. But i want to see more hacks or tips related to cloud and devops, as your channel name says. No hate just a friendly tip! Anyways I'll always watch all your videos. Great content❤

[@devopstoolbox]

Point taken! Thanks for the feedback. A word of honesty, cloud architecture is what I do for work, and while this channel was meant to cover these things, I found myself drawn to a very narrow niche of improving my setup so that I enjoy my work. You'd probably notice on my nushell vid, (another one coming soon) that most of my examples include working with kubectl and aws. I'll think about this comment and try out some more interesting bits with a devops angle in the future. thanks!

[@ronitgandhi7716]

@devopstoolbox Yeah. But anyways I'm here to watch any kind of video you make. Because they are damn interesting and always learning new things!!

[@KenBanksPEng]

Given Aerospace is not sensibly compatible with macOS Spaces, I thought it was a showstopper, since I have my yabai giving me windows management per Space (without disabling System Integrity Protection). I will now investigate the Aerospace / sketchybar version of spaces. Wonder if I can map the 3-finger trackpad swipes to this new space emulation.

[@devopstoolbox]

Pretty sure there’s a setting for that I’ve seen in the docs but never bothered as my Mac is in clamshell mode and I try to keep my hands on my keyboard

[@jizhang2407]

Thanks. I'm using Loop which is also quite handy.

[@devopstoolbox]

beautiful! I'm trying to avoid the mouse as much as I can but nevertheless a great option !

[@cunningham.s_law]

amazing this video made me switch from amethyst only problem is I now have to change my bindings since I used alt hjkl to resize panes in tmux or wezterm

[@devopstoolbox]

what I love about it is the freedom to keep or change whatever you like...

[@NikitaSkryabin]

been using aerospace for a few months now. it’s far better than yabai+skhd in pretty much every aspect. the only issue I have is that it starts lagging a lot when there’s a CPU hungry process. i know the author made some progress in recent release to improve the situation, but it is still there unfortunately. there are few more quirks like windows jitter if you put your mac to sleep, then disconnect an external monitor and then wake computer up, but that’s something I cal live with

[@farzadmf]

AeroSpace is awesome. Just wish that it had a way to resize and move floating windows

[@devopstoolbox]

Havn't even thought of that option!

Even being a Linux user for more than 15 years this is great content. And now, there is a tilling manager for Windows, named Komorebi. Also, you should make a video about your coffee hardware and grains someday, they look top notch!

[@onejdc]

+1 for Komorebi, a Windows Tiling Manager written in the Rust programming language ( /grin )

[@Keb_Le]

virtual workspaces was game changing for me

[@Keb_Le]

appreciate the cofee analogy btw loll

[@devopstoolbox]

absolutely

[@ferferrara]

Hey, I love that level of customization, but at the same time, it leaves me wondering, what's stopping you from switching to a Linux distro? I think this is an interesting question, I do it frequently, and I would like your opinion.

[@devopstoolbox]

In all honesty, I love macs, I love the “safe garden” (with all its downsides). In my line of work I deal with Linux servers most of the time but never as a desktop. While I do want to try it out one day, it would require additional hardware (probably a ton of other settings) and yet another variable (or a bunch of them) to get used to. I have too many of these ATM

[@benarcher372]

Thank you so much!

[@MartinEngelke-q7l]

Sketchybar is the real game changer :)

[@KeithMoon1980]

The amount of effort people will go to, to avoid using the mouse/trackpad is wild.

[@devopstoolbox]

There's no denying that 😅 I can be honest and say it sometimes crosses the line of productivity. That said, I do believe that personally my brain loses a few focus points every time I reach our of the keyboard...

[@enidoi]

take everything you just did here and show how to use nix or ansible whatever to setup everything to make iterating setups and redeploy quickly on new setups/ resets.. bet that video would pop. anyways subscribed

[@devopstoolbox]

Already did :) Although, to be fair, I'm removing nix home manager from my dotfiles setup bc I think it creates unnecessary friction in 99% usecases

[@traumzeit]

Would you mind sharing your aerospace config? Looks like it isn't on GitHub yet.

[@devopstoolbox]

Yes! pushed now. sorry for the delay

[@shyampadia]

Aerospace is so easy to use. Everyone should switch to it

[@lucasefe]

Hey. Thanks for the video. Your dotfiles are not updated, can you push your changes? Thanks!

[@devopstoolbox]

updated 🙏

[@wthrajat]

Hey! How is your browser blurred too? Which compositor are you using for Mac?

[@con_sci]

Any idea why Yabai needs to disable SIP but Aerospace doesn't?

[@devopstoolbox]

Honestly, no. and I didn't bother asking. could be part of the reason why aerospace's dev doesn't care about getting his app approved by apple?

[@muizzyranking]

Watching this incase i get Mac soon.

[@martinlarsson6621]

Been using Aerospace for a while and it’s as close to i3 I can come on Mac. Theres only one issue that totally bugs me. When I have a debugger attached to a program, when the program is paused, then Aerospace waits on response from it and completely hangs. When debugging I have to resort to cmd-tabbing to get the work done.

[@devopstoolbox]

Sounds like a nightmare. I also had one very rare issue, where it can't work properly with a teleprompter... try openning an issue there. they're quite responsive

[@MetroKitten]

I hope they will implement some more ultra wide support. Only thing that makes aerospace not workable for me. Having a 30 inch wide terminal isn’t ideal.

[@theherk]

You don’t have to. You’ll can set different gap settings based on display name. So for my wide screen I just increase the side gaps.

[@devopstoolbox]

honestly, that's why I sold my ultrawide monitor. instead of contributing to my productivity it was killing it. adding a tiling manager made things worse. instead I got a nice, standard ratio 4K monitor that I love. aerospace does the rest

[@AizazShahid-ck8cn]

I have been using yabai + sketchybar with my ultra wide and it works great

[@dotintegral]

Huh... I don't have an idea how to bind keys. Can't use ALT + letters, as my native language requires those combos. Can't use CTRL + letters as this is what Vim/Tmux use. Can't use CMD + letters, because of all the handy shortcuts in other apps. Using Shift + Mod + letter feels like playing on a piano

[@devopstoolbox]

in this case, I'd create a mode for app launching. set the shortcut to enter the mode and send the relevant key. the only issue with this setup is the annoyance of having to hit the 'enter mode' shortcut everytime you need an app

[@sebastianalfaro1887]

Hey!! love this videos, i took a lot of ideas form them, wanted to ask you, which docking station are you using here 1:33 ?

[@devopstoolbox]

Thanks! This is the CalDigit TS3 Plus. I think they have a bigger brother now that's even better. Absolute beast and I love it! every single port is used and it's maxed out 😅

[@linkarzu]

Everyone seems to be migrating to Aerospace, but my heart is with Yabai and I specifically use it in stack mode and set my terminal transparent. Aerospace has stack mode too? Personally, I don't like tiles.

[@quiquicuta5375]

Yes it does. I personally use it this way too. In Aerospace the stack mode is known as "accordion", you can also modify the accordion padding to your preference, so there are no gaps between the apps of the stack. Btw, I really enjoy your content!

[@linkarzu]

@@quiquicuta5375 appreciate the response! So it's the accordion mode shown in the video, just without paddings or gaps then, thank you!

[@the_schreiber]

I switched from mac to nixOS and never looked back

[@laughingvampire7555]

to me the most amazing thing about watching vim/tmux channels is how much vim/tmux users get amazed by features that have been in emacs for at least a decade before they arrived at vim.

[@DanteMishima]

How sweet.... The amount of things you have to go through for basic functionality

[@tsukinoko_kun]

The big problem with tiling window managers on Mac is that many windows have a minimum and/or maximum size. Even Discord isn't working when tiled.

[@LeFlamel]

I still don't see the need for any tiling more complex than a single vertical split. Otherwise I pretty much always want whatever GUI I'm looking at in full screen. Basically why tile when you can just pull up whatever GUI I want on command with Raycast?

[@devopstoolbox]

You're not wrong. but when you want stuff running side by side it's always a mess. I been doing that with yabai, then raycast, then just got a bigger screen thinking they'd be floating around. long story short, non of them worked. sure, when you need a single instance of anything ther's no point in tiling. but when you do want a little bit more freedom that's where I was losing. also, the workspace + app launcher capabilites totally got me

[@LeFlamel]

@devopstoolbox I run stuff side by side inside Zellij just fine (it has floating panes). But tiling for GUIs is overkill because the scaling around the core UI is usually pretty bad. And Raycast can pull up specific instances easily if the instance has dynamic naming.

[@_Altdragonson]

i was using this for a while but tell you what it becomes a hassle after a while

[@devopstoolbox]

I can definitely see why. Personal opinion - it has to some with 1. sensible (and lean) config 2. an actual motivation for running side by side apps and 3. bindings that you can get used to.

[@avramukk]

Is it possible to configure default behaviour for new aerospace like in yabai? Like half of of window each times, not just vertical. I see that i need attach each time them, but can I do it automaticaly without alt+ hjkl?

[@KietDev-xj2ss]

How did you get that window border ? I can't find any line in your .config that enables it

[@devopstoolbox]

I cover that at the end of the video, this is jankyborders!

[@HakAtIt]

Ugh. This looks painful AF. I just moved away from Gnome, realizing it was why I was hating my linux system. The accordion configuration is what i think id have to do. Least this feels like im on my phone or a mobile, but if inwant to work on things in full screen, I'd just open the window full screen.

[@devopstoolbox]

it's not the full screen that appeals so much, it's the ability to have working tiles that you can set side by side, change orientation, size, and, when you need it - a workspace.

[@HakAtIt]

@devopstoolbox tiles are neat. I did look into it before. Windowa allows to automatically tile when you hit the edge of the screen, and most windowing DE's do now too. I just have realized this format isn't for me, though i appreciate that it exists.

[@mihaiii6720]

PLEASE PUSH YOUR AEROPSACE CONFIG

[@devopstoolbox]

my bad. pushed

[@arkix_yt4897]

sorry how can you start tmux automatically every time you open new terminal window? do you attach it to last session or start it manually?

[@devopstoolbox]

I don’t have it setup although I’m assuming you could just tell the terminal to run Tmux attach on startup. I don’t find myself killing a terminal window. Almost ever

[@owlmostdead9492]

Auto-tiling is clearly the way to go

[@devopstoolbox]

for some for sure. it can be a nightmare if not done right and configured properly

[@vitalis]

How about windows alternatives?

[@mtin79]

What about raycast window manager ? It comes with 100 of other tools too

[@davidallred991]

aerospace is much better especially for multiple monitors, I use both together, aerospace for window management and raycast for shortcuts and tools etc.

[@driden1987]

NGL Omer, at this point should look into drinking mate

[@kissu_io]

Very snobby and perfect. 💖

[@iron7956]

How much buggy is it? I have heard that yabai was really buggy. It's one of the few things that would be keep me from switching to mac, I am to comfortable with hyprland

[@subatomicmolecules]

Aerospace is far less buggy because they would rather reimplement their own stuff than deal with private API's like YABAI

[@Wubwub772]

you should know aerospace hides windows in the same space instead of using multiple spaces. some apps have issue with that you'll need to test your own workflow

[@devopstoolbox]

So far, other than the odd crash here and there which I haven't really managed to debug yet, so unsure whether it's my config or something else, it's been great. everything works as expected

[@devopstoolbox]

true. photoshop is one such example

[@rrkumar78]

After watching this video, I guess I’m the Starbucks coffee guy. I have no idea what any of this stuff means and wish there was just a simple GUI to make it work.

[@devopstoolbox]

There’s nothing wrong with that… on the contrary. Some of us have a tendency to make a rabbit hole out of everything 😜 BTW, checkout github.com/MrKai77/Loop

[@mirkoigumnovic6381]

Found any downsides?

[@devopstoolbox]

Good question! I did. Very rarely it would crash, not something I managed to catch or reproduce intentionally or something that bothers me enough (once a month and pretty sure it’s a setting that I managed to miss) Also, super specific, but I have a teleprompter that functions as a screen and they won’t play nicely together no matter the energy I invest. So I have to disable it for a few minutes every other week when making videos. The rest are all fixable with proper bindings.

[@mirkoigumnovic6381]

@@devopstoolbox It receives pretty good reviews everywhere. And all downsides I found so far are minor and could be called nitpicking: its not as snappy as yabai (I guess this is due to rearranging window positions to simulate spaces) and those few pixels visible in the bottom right corner are triggering my OCD so much 😅 We can only dream apple would one day let us manage spaces the way linux does to get this solved in a proper way, but thats highly unlikely. Anyways a great piece of software and thumbs up for your review.

[@EvestDev]

why is nobody talking about this? O.O

[@zankfrappa93]

is this a coffee channel or tech channel i dont know

[@camiloromero7633]

Both are nice 🚀

[@devopstoolbox]

not sure... what do you want it to be?

[@Booombasstic]

Kidding 😁

[@zankfrappa93]

@@devopstoolbox a channel about coffee tech

[@avramukk]

same title with video from Josean Martinez)))

[@devopstoolbox]

omg that's a close one. the inspiration came from my recent Ghostty video (exactly the same)

[@yairsaragusti]

אתה ישראלי?

[@ktolis]

why not just buy a bigger monitor?

[@devopstoolbox]

I guess you watched the intro 😅? I totally did and it wasn't the solution

[@ktolis]

@@devopstoolbox after i switched to a 49" i have found less and less the need for similar software but i do see the point for smaller monitor real-estate and it does look good.

[@JimLifts]

Starbucks is trash glad you moved on from Starbucks !

[@devopstoolbox]

Oh I was never there 🤣