Divvy For Windows
Mireille Kreines
I agree; I've been a fan of Moom since it came out. It is very cleanly integrated into OS X (it takes over the green button on windows, which is basically useless in its default state), and the developer is committed to updating it regularly.
So here is my problem, originally I'm a Windows user and developerr, and now I have a Mac OS based machine, I'm developing on Mac OS X as well, but the problem is that on Windows I feel comfortable with a lot of open windows (notepad, editors, browser etc) and switching between them is easy. While on Mac OS X I feel not that comfortable, because I don't know how to quickly switch between windows, maybe there is some kind of softawre where I can see all open windows. So I could quickly swith windows.
Spaces can also be nice. When I'm using a one-monitor setup, I'll often have a space set aside for e-mail and twitter, with another one for my browser and editors. Most of the time, though, I have two screens, so I don't bother with Spaces. (If you want to use it, it's in the same area in System Preferences as Expos.
I also edited DockMenus.plist in System/Library/CoreServices/Dock/Contents/Resources to remove the quit, hide, ... etc options from the right click menu. Now I can right click on the icon to switch between my currently opened windows. The image below demonstrates what I am talking about.
I tried the Mac app and prefer it to Better Window Manager. Divvy makes it quick and easy to resize your open windows. It presents a grid that lets you determine the size and position of an open window with just a click and a swipe.
When Divvy installs on a Mac, it places an icon in the menu bar. Before you can begin using the app, however, you must enable accessibility for it. On Yosemite, open System Preferences > Security & Privacy. Then on the Privacy tab, click the lock to make changes, select Accessibility from the list, and check the box for Divvy. For other flavors of OS X, click here for instructions.
After you have granted Divvy access to your system, click on its icon in the menu bar. A small window will pop up with a six-by-six grid, with the current active application listed at the top. The grid corresponds to your desktop workspace. Click on the grid and highlight a portion of it, and the active app will be resized. Divvy is also smart enough to let you resize multiple windows individually of the same app. For instance, I usually have at least two Chrome windows open throughout the day, and Divvy lets me keep one on the left side of my display and another on the right.
In settings, you can up the number of boxes on the grid -- up to 10 by 10 on my 13-inch, non-Retina MacBook Pro -- for finer control. According to the developer, you can go as high as 20 by 20. You can also set up a keyboard shortcut to call up Divvy, saving you the trip to its menu bar icon.
In addition, you can set up keyboard shortcuts for specific actions. For example, you could create one keyboard shortcut to resize a window so that it fills the left half of the screen and another keyboard shortcut to resize another window to fill the right half of the screen.
Divvy works across OS X's virtual desktops, remembering which apps open in which of your multiple desktops. It also works with multiple monitors, according to the developer, but I did not test this functionality. On my old MacBook Pro, however, Divvy saves me time in arranging my open windows for maximum productivity.
They don't require access for assistive devices to be enabled (other than for the on error block in the second script). They don't work with all windows though, and I don't know what will happen if you have multiple displays.
Automator services are supported out of the box and you can create them on a non-admin account, but as of 10.8 there is a bug where the keyboard shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar. There is also a relatively long delay before Automator services are run.
Very easy to create keyboard shortcuts.
Also when pressing option key on Mac it would cut the tiles in half, doubling the number for more granular control.
This is great if you want you Windows to be just of the edge of the screen.
@nroetert Not sure about the granular thing what you mention; You can set the window on any position in any size of grid, as long as the window supports the targeted window size. Could you explain a bit? Possibly you have more options than you think
@nroetert Ah, ok. I limited to 6x6 just because a bigger number would not have much use on normal, or even quite big screens. The windows would be (attempted to be) resized below their minimum It can easily be changed if you would prefer or need a bigger grid though.
Proper automatic tiling window managers don't just put your free-floating macOS windows on a grid. That's a good first start, but you still have to deal with obstructions from other windows. Tiling window managers really manage the grid/tiles. You can often drag windows off the grid to make them floating, but windows by default spawn inside the grid and then stay there. There's no hiding of windows behind other windows, no half-overlapping. And, what I like most, you can get gaps between windows, which on macOS by default produce very obstrusive shadows. (@Will seems to enjoy them, though, so maybe it's just me).
Imagine a workflow on a wide-screen monitor: "I want to process a PDF and take notes". So you need the PDF viewer and note-taking app to play nicely with each other. If you are a tiling window manager pro and got used to this, imagine that the idea of the layout, i.e. "I need the PDF at 1/3 and the note-taking app at 2/3 width of my monitor" quickly translates into a mixture of opening applications and laying out their windows at once.
The reason I'm interested in this stuff is the fact that I regularly work inside of the terminal/shell in macOS. I download and update open source code packages and execute build scripts that eventually produce the apps I ship on the internet, for example. And it became naturally to split the full (not quite, but close to) HD resolution in halves to have multiple processes running in tandem and orchestrating their output. Or just wait for 4 things that run in the background to finish and see if they are finished at a glance.
Couldn't this same mindset be useful to sometimes also tile a Firefox window with research and my todo files next to each other to process e.g. research for hardware/spare parts, and then return to maximized windows again, at the flick of a shortcut?
@ctietze I don't know if this has any relevance since I only skimmed the above text, but I use Moom to manage windows on my Mac and it comes with a practical set of keyboard shortcuts. It is one of those "little" utilities that works marvellously.
It can remove the drop shadow of windows so they play nice with each other side-by-side; and it can also draw a highlight border around the focused window. I admit, the border decoration lags behind quite a bit when you drag windows around, though. But that sounds like something I'd want to have if I switched
I use i3 for tiling on most linux systems, but I like using Magnet on macOS. Its not at all the same thing as a tiling window manager, but its closer to the experience of using one than some of the other options I've found.
I second Magnet. I wanted something similar to the Windows snap feature, which this gives, but having keyboard shortcuts to switch windows between monitors etc is a game changer if your workflow requires using 2 monitors
Switching windows with the keyboard on Mac OSX is hilariously inefficient: itinvolves repeatedly pressing command+tab through millions of programs until youget to the right one when you could have just clicked the window and been donewith it. Moving windows is no better so people have resorted to paying for toolslike SizeUp and Divvy. I used to have these problems too until I switched toLinux discovered a program called Slate.
Slate is a keyboard-driven window managementprogram for Mac OSX. It is highly configurable and has tons of features. It haspermanently changed the way I use my Mac. Not only is it better than otherpopular programs like Divvy, SizeUp and Moom, it beats their prices at beingfree. Slate is the VIM/Emacs of window managers: it is less of a windowmanager than a workflow changing tool you will never give up.
When you press a shortcut (I use cmd+e), every window is instantly overlain witha letter, starting with those on the home row of your keyboard. By pressing theletter over a window your focus is transfered to that window. For windows thatare hidden behind others the application icon is displayed in the overlay.
I started off with Slate by rebinding my numpad to window movement commands.Whenever I need to type a number I use the ones along the top of the keyboard sobefore Slate the numpad was just useless buttons. I bound the numpad keys liketo resize windows in the direction they pointed. For example, 5 was fullscreen,4 was left half and 6 was right half. The other buttons were quarters, top andbottom. Special numpad keys like * and + did things like display a windowresizing grid or arrange my windows in a certain layout.
I have just scratched the surface of what Slate can do in terms of windowmovement and resizing, Slate has commands for resizing windows incrementally,nudging windows around, resizing to any fraction of the screen you want and evenmoving windows to specific pixel positions.
Like many amazing tools such as VIM and ZSH, Slate is configured through adotfile in the home directory called .slate. The SlateReadme file has very detailed information onconfiguring Slate so I am just going to show some tricks that let you dospecific things.
Along with the general configuration from the previous section, all you have todo to use window hints is bind the hint operation to a key. I like to usecommand+e as it is easy to type and not used in many mac applications.
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