Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

• Rectangle

  723 24,403 8.2 Swift

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

I'm the developer behind Rectangle. There are a handful of features in Rectangle that aren't in Magnet, like being able to repeat shortcuts to achieve different sizes/positions, and being able to modify a lot more of the behavior of the app (there are more settings, and there are terminal commands listed on the readme of the GitHub repo). The main draw is that Rectangle is FOSS, which comes with obvious benefit.

Beyond that, Rectangle Pro (paid, closed source) is where I've put a ton more features. You can find Rectangle & Rectangle Pro at https://rectangleapp.com

• yabai

  218 21,317 9.1 C

  A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning

I feel the same way. I would much prefer no animation at all, and an instant transition to another space.

Apparently this is possible with [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), but it requires disabling system integrity protection which I am personally uncomfortable with.

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• spoonfish

  2 35 10.0 Lua

Productivity-wise, Stage Manager is a step in the right direction in my opinion. I don't think that the macOS desktop environment needs a snapping/tiling window manager. Conceptually however, the best third-party window manager is spoonfish. But Rectangle suffices for certain tasks.

https://github.com/jcs/spoonfish

• phoenix

  16 4,176 5.2 Objective-C

  A lightweight macOS window and app manager scriptable with JavaScript (by kasper)

When I was annoyed with this I went ahead and downloaded phoenix (https://github.com/kasper/phoenix) wrote a little javascript and now I have a bunch of globally accessable hotkeys so I can lay my windows out in a number of combinations. Right now I have setups for over/under left/right, two by two grid, and three by three grid.

I've got some plans to spend some time enabling more arbitrary grids and subgrids but I haven't gotten to it yet.

• spectrwm

  26 1,298 8.1 C

  A small dynamic tiling window manager for X11.

  

I use the tiling WM spectrwm. It lets me pull windows out of tiling mode and into window mode. I think a common operation on most tiling window managers. Most of the time I don't want overlapping windows(thus the tiling WM) but every once in a while I do, so the best of both worlds.

It is a bit obscure but I quite like spectrwm, it fills this sweet spot where it is much simpler than I3 but much more feature complete than DWM.

https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm

• alt-tab-macos

  311 9,665 7.8 Swift

  Windows alt-tab on macOS

Try the utility called Alt-Tab: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app

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