macOS: Essential Productivity Hacks for Developers

[@mehdio]

While making this video, I discovered AeroSpace, a new tiling window manager that doesn’t require disabling SIP. It seems promising. Let me know if you’d like a follow-up video, and I’m curious to hear about your experiences with it too!

[@jackg-dw9im]

Raycast and Aerospace plz!

[@SamEdwardes]

I changed from Yabai to aerospace. I really like it!

[@Thundechile]

Have used Yabai before but I think AeroSpace wins it hands down. Aerospace allowed me to remove skhd also, because I can have my shortcuts in Aerospace configuration also. If we're talking about software engineer productivity I'd say Tmux is pretty essential in that regard also.

[@zumatse]

Have you tried macOS 15 native window tilling? WDYT about it?

[@mehdio]

​@zumatse I'll def put my hands on this soon, but Im pretty sure its nowhere the capabilities of yabai or aerospace. Tbh I feel they addressed some feature gap that even Windows Os had for a long time.

[@xti2020]

Raycast pretty much covers me for everything. Would love to see how you use it!

[@crisnotfound__]

Agree 100% I use it with a ultrawide monitor and works like a charm

[@endresolem]

Raycast video is wanted from here too.

[@wolvgvng]

Nice to see a video like this from a macOS user. I've recently switched from Linux and it's a completely different world here - there are very few people who are in any way concerned about things like speed and user experience... everything has to be nice, smooth and easy to use with a finger on the trackpad

[@mehdio]

Dont worry, we are not alone, I'm here to help 🫂

[@lastink444]

Would love to see follow-up vid on AeroSpace, how is it vs Yabai, its integration with Sketchybar etc

[@teddyfulk]

Thanks bro, been jankingly piecing this setup with the defaults. This looks way better

[@TutoDS2014]

What are you using on your shell theme?

[@mehdio]

Starship with pastel powerline as preset starship.rs/presets/pastel-powerline

[@sridharkatta7775]

raycast & aerospace video

[@hugodsa89]

Ray cast video please 🙏🏻

[@nikhilpsathyanathan]

Using raycast + rectangle for windows management

[@VI-hf1ib]

Dash to Dock for macOS, finally. Thanks!

[@IncisiveCreations]

Great walkthrough. Still, why aren't you using native window tiling introduced in macOS Sequoia?

[@kerimtim]

Pleases someone tell me how to get a complete rid of any animations in mac like minimizing and maximizing apps

[@eddiejaoude]

Great video! BTW Mac now has the window positioning built in

[@reality-drift122]

i just moved to mac, thank for the maintaining sanity guide! i toyed with aerospace for a WM for a bit but couldnt dedicate the time needed to really make use of it. yabai looks like a good solution ill def be looking in your dotfiles thanks! would love to see how you have raycast config'd too, i know there is a some llm integration ya can do with ollama on it but havent had the time to dig into it

[@2Bee_McFly]

I'd love to see the theme used in the thumbnail :D

[@mehdio]

will do a video on my terminal setup!

[@EddieAguilar-p3s]

Do you have video about your prompt theme?

[@mehdio]

Will do a future video about my terminal setup!

[@Virass]

Yeah, man! I use a similar philosophy in my KDE environment on linux.

[@pedroavila1584]

Level 0 - Keyboard Level 1 - Freeing up screen space Level 2 - App shortcuts Level 3 - Windows management Level 4 - Spaces (virtual desktops) Level 5 - Custom status bar Level S - God mode I just would add: Level S++ - Terminal + vim key bindings + fuzzy finder Level X - automation via shell scripting Absolutely *loved!* this video, what a great productivity setup. (editing this from vim oc XD)

[@mehdio]

Thanks! And yeah, there are a lot you can do on your terminal. That's a whole dedicated topic!

[@mageshyt2550]

Aerospace is much better

[@mehdio]

What is your favorite feature over yabai?

[@msodev]

@@mehdio The stacked windows is super cool, no need to grant super permissions, just install it and it works, configuration is giga-simple, unlimited virtual spaces. Those are the advantages I got out of the box, but still need to tinker around more with it, its been only a couple of months since I switched

[@SayWhat6187]

This is not true. After daily driving it for over a month, I had to switch back due to horrible performance and bad support of external monitors. Due it’s method of hiding windows, it would lag the screen with flashing the windows everytime you change the screen. Only happens when you have an external monitor. But it was bad enough to switch back to yabai.

[@mageshyt2550]

​@@SayWhat6187 I never had this issue. I also have a dual monitor setup, with one monitor in a vertical orientation and the other in a horizontal orientatio

[@muhlisabdi4911]

Wins is more easy to use

[@tomasnorre]

Looks a lot like you would love hyprland on Linux.

[@alleandromurrieta2366]

can u teach us aobut that beautiful terminal u have?

[@mehdio]

sure, next video! I'm using alacritty with starship.rs

[@casadogaspar]

Would be nice the links for those apps in the description. Apart that nice video, getting some ideas for sure.

[@mehdio]

@casadogaspar just did! Sorry, I forgot the obvious

[@jewish_ai_music]

Awsome vid brother, BTW whats your shell theme, it looks sick!!

[@mehdio]

Thanks! Shell is Starship with pastel poweline starship.rs/presets/pastel-powerline

[@mxpf26]

But MacOS is now already coming with its own Window Manager, or is it that bad?

[@mehdio]

Still much limited to what developers would requires IMO

[@HenriqueMDerosa]

It seems it's missing how to display the app icons of each space. 😁

[@mehdio]

Hey! Didn't go into details but feel free to check the dotfiles here : github.com/mehd-io/dotfiles/blob/master/sketchybar/plugins/yabai.sh#L41

[@pmothais]

Nice video 👍🏻I'm using Raycast myself and didn't know about skhd. I have a question though, why don't you use Raycast directly instead of skhd to set keyboard shortcut to run apps?

[@mehdio]

I found Raycast configuration management a pain compared to a .dotfiles you can git. Also, when working with different spaces, shortcuts in Raycast sometimes don't follow through the space where the app is.

[@pmothais]

​@@mehdio thanks for the answer. I see your point and kind of agree on the configuration pain in Raycast. Maybe I use spaces a bit less than you do and didn't notice the behaviour Raycast has. But I'll definitely give a try to skhd and sketchybar 😉

[@ปั๊กกกกกกก]

I had the problem, help me plz. ➜ yabai -m space --focus 2 cannot focus space due to an error with the scripting-addition.

[@blooming9941]

sudo yabai --load-sa

[@kevinhuddy4470]

Just discovered your channel! Nice content! I'll look @ more. Any chance you can share me the portable vesa you use for the monitor? Thanks 🙏

[@mehdio]

Ill do a video of my full nomad setup as other people requested! :)

[@kevinhuddy4470]

@@mehdio i'm leaving for a 2 weeks work trip in 2 weeks, can you write it to me in private so i get it in time lol?

[@StevenDake]

superb content! I am an infrastructure engineer, and completley agree, mouse has to go!

[@adrienrouchet]

What is your vscode theme ? Looks super clean !

[@mehdio]

I used some of the material-ui one, these are great! I particularly like the ocean one.

[@adrienrouchet]

@ thanks!

[@rafaelsachetto69]

Do you know Aerospace?

[@h3ct0rjs]

Pretty cool, I was looking something like this, I also switch between linux machines and mac os and I'm a total disaster. This looks pretty similar to i3 :-)

[@ephraim-duncan]

What monitor is that? looks like one I can travel with

[@mehdio]

Aha funny you ask, I was wondering if I should do a quick review on my portable setup. Its an UPERFECT 15.6

[@ephraim-duncan]

@@mehdio thank you

[@david121212v]

Which terminal are you using and what do you think about warp? Never figured out why I should use different terminals I also tried leveraging brave browser, but I can’t use iCloud passwords there

[@mehdio]

Im using alacritty. Wezterm is also a solid option. Warp features are great but having to signup to use some features just look wrong to me for a terminal

[@djosefandersson7605]

Also use warp, it’s great! And Arc as browser

[@jinglebots]

raycast DD plz

[@mehdio]

🫡

[@DanielRios549]

You basically turn macOS into a Linux

[@curbyourdata]

I couldnt like the video because it took clicking and I threw out my mouse

[@mehdio]

there's a solution for that : chromewebstore.google.com/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en

[@AnonymousOG]

Why say Alt? It's clearly the option key, not alt.

[@mehdio]

That is very true.

[@QuickBitFlips]

​@@mehdio it helped me tho , I am never going to use the apple layout keyboard , NEVER. i am so used to ctrl + ing , i had to swap the ctrl and windows key on my huntsman mini lol.

[@sadiksaifi7326]

Aerospace is much better

[@wdirex]

accidentally googled shkd

[@mehdio]

Lol no way I didn't know there was a similar opensource project called shkd

[@nurb2kea]

Just use linux. And all the shortcut and no mouse...is more for a specialised workflow...just try to use blender with its million shortcut and your setup... This will be a mess in seconds... For coders ok, but the time I waste to use the MacOS basics is mostly the time you use to config and update all this. And less is more (better) for coders to eliminate possibilities, I guess.

[@arifsoylu]

Level -1: Do not use a mac.