spin2win VS AutoRaise

Have you heard of Phoenix [1]? It seems relatively unknown but I actually found it to work better than Yabai in some ways. The gist is that it basically simulates a tiling wm and virtual desktops by internally tracking state. It's also highly hackable/extensible being written in JS. Spin2Win [2] is a config that's worked well for me.

[1] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix

[2] https://github.com/nik3daz/spin2win

That said, it seems there are no perfect solutions. At work where I can't really be futzing around with window management config I basically just use Raycast + hotkeys and try to keep everything inside maximized application windows. This means using Arc browser (tabbed), iTerm (tabbed), VS Code (with native tabs), etc mapped to cmd+1, cmd+2, cmd+3...Not much "tiling" going on but at least everything is pretty keyboard friendly.

Actually, if you're interested at all, I just, after literally months of reading about this, found a pretty sick solution.

Have you ever heard of Phoenix? https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/. Despite googling around for this exact topic, with 3.8k stars I had never heard of it. Apparently someone has created slim, JS scriptable interface that is basically tailor made toward creating your own tiling WM. I just installed it and loaded one of the examples: https://github.com/nik3daz/spin2win. And what it does is basically ignores the built-in spaces and creates truly virtual desktops by just hiding and resizing windows. And it works pretty well. The response time between switching "desktops" is basically instant.

I'm not sure they appeal to the same group of users. macOS is IMNHO much worse than GNU/Linux with a proper window manager, much less comfortable to use with multiple desktops, and forces the use of a mouse/trackpad way too much.[1]

The m2 can run Linux - but external display support is probably a long way off.

So for the user wanting to run Linux - m2 isn't really viable - unless you actually work on it with just the built-in screen - for me that doesn't work ergonomically.

I have the m2 - it's not terrible - I suspect I'd prefer one of these.

[1] Rectangle and AutoRaise helps a lot, making the UX livable:

https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

There used to be third-party tools to enable focus-follows-mouse and universal clickthrough, but I'm not sure any still exist for recent OS versions. Seems like it should be possible though. Maybe AutoRaise can do what you want? Looks like you'd need to compile it yourself with custom flags though. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67258537/focus-follows-mouse-on-macos

*PS* I have already tried AutoRaise (https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise). But, basically what it does is: Change FOCUS on mouse hover. That's NOT what I need.

AutoRaise for focus-follow-mouse. I don't want auto raise, so that is disabled https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

People discussing this a long time ago (stackexchange) mention a project called AutoRaise. No idea if it still works.

My buddy actually got an achievement on github by accepting and merging his own pull request within 5 minutes on his https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise repository...

On the mini, I was running AutoRaise. On the Macbook Air, I was running AutoFocus.

I don’t think there is a setting in built (happy to be corrected). Had stumbled upon this sometime back. Check it out. https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise

Install AutoRaise or something similar that allows you to focus on windows just by moving your cursor over them or hovering over them while holding a modifier key.