skhd VS yabai

Compare skhd vs yabai and see what are their differences.

skhd

Simple hotkey daemon for macOS (by koekeishiya)

yabai

A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning (by koekeishiya)
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skhd yabai
64 218
5,488 21,195
- -
3.0 9.1
13 days ago 17 days ago
C C
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

skhd

Posts with mentions or reviews of skhd. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-17.
  • My MacBook setup (the 2024 version)
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Feb 2024
    It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).
  • Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Feb 2024
    I have a 49 inch CRG9 and the best recommendation for window management is Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) along with skhd (https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd). Yabai is a greedy window management solution that tries to fit opened applications in given space and skhd let's you easily jump between those using keyboard shortcuts. This has massively improved my ultrawide experience.

    Only disclaimer is, configuring yabai has a slight learning curve.

  • Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS
    35 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Nov 2023
    I want to echo this as well. I use a 2nd tool to help me add additional i3-like keyboard shortcuts as well (I have the ability to "stack" windows with Alt-S and rotate through them with Alt-J and Alt-K).

    It's called skhd https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

    I forgot where the script for the stacking is. I can look that up separately, but I'm on mobile atm.

  • App Switcher on MAC
    2 projects | /r/macapps | 18 Jun 2023
    Try rcmd or skhd.
  • i3 Linux -> macOS
    7 projects | /r/i3wm | 5 Jun 2023
    What I've done is configure yabai and skhd in a way that somewhat mimics my i3 setup (dotfiles in case it helps) with the help of Karabiner-Elements since Apple wouldn't recognize my keyboard layout properly (or at all...).
  • Ask HN: I've run Linux for 13 years. Is it time to switch to a Mac?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Apr 2023
  • Keyboard tricks from a macOS app dev
    13 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Apr 2023
    I use NixOS+GNOME+pop-shell for tiling windows on Linux, and I love it!

    I am quite frequently on MacOS, and I use Yabai[0] and skhd[1], managed with Nix-Darwin for tiling windows and custom keyboard shortcuts. With how I make my Linux and MacOS builds look and feel identical it's pretty easy for me to forget when I'm on one vs the other.

    For anyone curious, here's my repository for deploying my configs[3]. It's awesome to have one source of truth for managing NixOS servers and workstations, MacOS workstations, and other Linux workstations with Nix installed.

    [0] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

    [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

    [2] http://daiderd.com/nix-darwin/

    [3] https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixos-configs

  • How to disable CMD+TAB in Terminal
    1 project | /r/MacOS | 20 Apr 2023
    You can install skhd with brew install skhd, and configure it by writing the following lines inside ~/.skhdrc:
  • Recommendation for an app to execute a workflow with some hotkey !
    2 projects | /r/macapps | 5 Apr 2023
    I personally use skhd for binding hotkeys to multiple terminal commands. BetterTouchTool can also chain multiple commands, but I find it harder to edit than in an UI, depends on what you're comfortable with.
  • Alternatives to Karabiner?
    1 project | /r/macapps | 11 Mar 2023
    That, combined with skhd (for script hotkeys) and my rcmd app (for app switching) gave me a much better solution than the hard to edit config I had in Karabiner.

yabai

Posts with mentions or reviews of yabai. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-17.
  • My MacBook setup (the 2024 version)
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Feb 2024
    It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).
  • Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Feb 2024
    I have a 49 inch CRG9 and the best recommendation for window management is Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) along with skhd (https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd). Yabai is a greedy window management solution that tries to fit opened applications in given space and skhd let's you easily jump between those using keyboard shortcuts. This has massively improved my ultrawide experience.

    Only disclaimer is, configuring yabai has a slight learning curve.

  • Is there an app that does this Windows feature?
    1 project | /r/MacOS | 5 Dec 2023
    Want something free that's better than tiling on Windows? Yabai.
  • Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS
    1 project | /r/hackernews | 2 Dec 2023
    35 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Nov 2023
    Here it is. There is no visualization of the stack, which apparently Stackline in the other comment supports, but I don't tend to need that. Just being able to move between the windows is good enough for me.

    https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/203#issuecomment...

  • Asahi Linux folks are doing us a solid with WPA3 fixes
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Nov 2023
    I use Yabai on my Macs without SIP enabled. Here’s a list of the features that absolutely require SIP to be disabled: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/1863

    But you don’t need to disable SIP just for tiling.

    > there's still a ton of tinkering and tweaking you need to do to get Yabai really working correctly

    This is pretty much true of basically every tiling window manager on Linux, too.

    For me, using Nix-Darwin for MacOS and NixOS has drastically simplified my tiling window manager setup after initially doing the work to figure out my ideal config.

  • macOS Containers v0.0.1
    24 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Sep 2023
    SIP is a feature that protects you from malicious actors with root (admin) access on your device. After they've encrypted your photos and drives and changed your passwords, it prevents them from making your machine unbootable by deleting or altering system binaries. As a side effect of this protection, you give up certain freedoms to customize your system.

    https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

    For instance requires SIP to be disabled.

  • Yabai: A binary space partitioning tiling window manager for macOS
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Aug 2023
  • Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Jun 2023
    This is disproven by the fact that Yabai [1] can instantly swap spaces with SIP disabled.

    [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

  • [Serious] I don't get why people like Mac and I feel like I'm missing out
    4 projects | /r/webdev | 11 Jun 2023
    If you find the native window management lackluster (like I do), you can install a window manager like Amethyst, or yabai, veeer, or many others.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing skhd and yabai you can also consider the following projects:

hammerspoon - Staggeringly powerful macOS desktop automation with Lua

Amethyst - Automatic tiling window manager for macOS à la xmonad.

awesome-mac - Awesome environment for development with mac os.

Rectangle - Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts and snap areas

alt-tab-macos - Windows alt-tab on macOS

vscode-vibrancy - Enable Acrylic/Glass effect for your VS Code.

Karabiner-Elements - Karabiner-Elements is a powerful utility for keyboard customization on macOS Sierra (10.12) or later.

simple-bar - A yabai status bar widget for Übersicht

i3 - A tiling window manager for X11

MonitorControl - 🖥 Control your display's brightness & volume on your Mac as if it was a native Apple Display. Use Apple Keyboard keys or custom shortcuts. Shows the native macOS OSDs.