I’ve used Hammerspoon as a window manager for almost 10 years.
I decided to explore some of the newer tools in window management to see if I could find an alternative approach for what I do with Hammerspoon.
Using yabai and skhd, I wrote the following skhdrc file that nearly reproduces the core functionality of my Hammerspoon window management code.
I have four general window management use cases:
- halves
- quarters
- maximize
- move to another display
Here’s how I implemented that with skhd hotkeys mapped to yabai commands:
# left half
ctrl + alt + cmd - left : yabai -m window --grid 1:2:0:0:1:1
# bottom half
ctrl + alt + cmd - down : yabai -m window --grid 2:1:0:1:1:1
# top half
ctrl + alt + cmd - up : yabai -m window --grid 2:1:0:0:1:1
# right half
ctrl + alt + cmd - right : yabai -m window --grid 1:2:1:0:1:1
# maximize
ctrl + alt + cmd - m : yabai -m window --grid 1:1:0:0:1:1
# top left corner
ctrl + shift + alt - left : yabai -m window --grid 2:2:0:0:1:1
# top right corner
ctrl + shift + alt - up : yabai -m window --grid 2:2:1:0:1:1
# bottom left corner
ctrl + shift + alt - down : yabai -m window --grid 2:2:0:1:1:1
# bottom right corner
ctrl + shift + alt - right : yabai -m window --grid 2:2:1:1:1:1
# prev display
ctrl + alt - left : yabai -m window --display prev; yabai -m display --focus prev
# next display
ctrl + alt - right : yabai -m window --display next; yabai -m display --focus next
This configuration covers all my existing window management needs. One minor inconsistency compared to my existing setup is that the window doesn’t maintain the same relative position and size when moved to a different display, but it’s a pretty subtle difference.
It seems like I might be able to solve the resizing issues using a managed layout, but this is a pretty different approach to what I currently do, so maybe another time. This mode can be enabled (per display) with:
yabai -m config layout bsp
There is also some strange behavior where when a window is full screen on my large monitor and I attempt to send it to my other screen, yabai doesn’t actually the window to the other screen and instead, it ends up somewhere on the bottom left of the larger display and I lose focus on the window. This happens when I run a hotkey bound to
yabai -m window --display prev; yabai -m display --focus prev