Moom: Bringing order to chaos since 2011
Window managers help manipulate application windows in order to increase productivity. A good window manager for Mac will allow moving, resizing and rearranging application windows quickly. It will allow customizing how windows are handled, have keyboard shortcuts for performing window manipulations quickly and allow snapping windows to various locations on the desktop with the mouse. Window managers help manipulate application windows in order to increase productivity. A good window manager for Mac will allow moving, resizing and rearranging application windows quickly. It will allow customizing how windows are handled, have keyboard shortcuts for performing window manipulations quickly and allow snapping windows to various locations on the desktop with the mouse. DownThemAll!, Neat Download Manager for Mac, and Folx are probably your best bets out of the 9 options considered. 'Increase download speeds' is the primary reason people pick DownThemAll! Over the competition. This page is powered by a knowledgeable community that helps you make an informed decision.
Moom makes window management as easy as clicking a mouse button—or using a keyboard shortcut, if you're one of those types of people.
With Moom, you can easily move and zoom windows to half screen, quarter screen, or fill the screen; set custom sizes and locations, and save layouts of opened windows for one-click positioning. Once you've tried Moom, you'll wonder how you used your Mac without it.
Pop-up positioning
Hover the mouse over any window's green button, and Moom's pop-up palette appears.
Quickly fill the screen, or move and resize to vertical or horizontal halves on screen edges. Want quarter-size windows instead? Hold down the Option key, and the palette presents four quarter-size corner options, along with 'center without resizing.'
Resizing isn't a drag…
Actually, it is a drag, using Moom's unique on-screen resizing grid.
Click in the empty box below the pop-up palette, move the mouse to where you'd like the window to be, then click-and-drag out its new dimensions.
Release the mouse button, and the window will fill the outline you've drawn on the screen.
…it's a snap!
Want to quickly move and zoom windows to certain areas of the screen? Just enable Moom's Snap to Edges and Corners feature.
Grab a window, drag it to an edge or corner, and release the mouse. You can set the resizing action for each location in Moom's preferences.
Save and restore window layouts
Set up a collection of windows in the size and locations you wish, then save the layout. Restore the layout via an assigned hot key or via Moom's menus.
This feature is particularly useful if you use a laptop with an external display—Moom can trigger saved layouts on addition or removal of displays.
No mouse required
Mac Os Windows Management
Don't worry, keyboard users—Moom isn't just for those who prefer using a mouse. Enable keyboard control, and you can move, resize, center, use the on-screen grid, and much more—all without touching the mouse.
In addition, every custom Moom command—keep reading!—can be assigned a global keyboard shortcut, or one that works only when the keyboard controller is onscreen.
![Macos Macos](https://www.funkyspacemonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/rectangle-macos-window-manager-2-FSMdotCOM.png)
Countless custom commands
Create and save often-used Moom actions to a menu of custom commands—complete with optional dividers and labels.
Moving, zooming, resizing, centering, even moving to other displays—all are doable via custom commands. You can even create a sequence of commands tied to one shortcut, easing complex move and sizing operations.
But wait, there's more!
- Use Moom as a normal Dock-based app, as an icon in the menu bar, or as a completely invisible background app.
- Access custom commands through the Moom menu bar icon, through the green button's pop-up palette, or via keyboard shortcuts.
- Use a small hexagonal grid for grid resizing, instead of the full-screen virtual grid.
- Move windows across displays—and with chained commands, zoom them to new sizes and locations while moving.
- Display a keyboard cheat sheet that shows what tasks you've assigned to which keys in keyboard mode.
- Resize windows to precise dimensions—perfect for checking how well things fit in windows of varying sizes.
If you typically work with a lot of applications open at once on MacOS, you’ve probably noticed that things get pretty cluttered pretty fast. MacOS’s window manager has a few built-in features to help manage things, but I was never completely happy with it. In the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with using two tiling windows managers—Amethyst and chunkwm. In this post, I’ll give a brief overview of some of their differences and difficulties.
Why Use a Tiling Window Manager?
Tiling window managers (TWMs) organize the applications on your desktop into non-overlapping tiles. They may do this by putting applications side-by-side, in rows, or in any number of non-overlapping layouts. The placement of windows is handled automatically for you, but you are given the power to easily rearrange and resize windows.
A big difference between tiling window managers and traditional window managers is that when you resize a window using a tiling window manager, other windows will also resize to ensure maximum use of screen real estate with no overlap.
The Contenders
Pyre 1 50427 – a party based rpg games pc. I’ve been using both Amethyst and chunkwm, and I have been fairly happy with them. I don’t want to pick favorites here, but there are differences that could affect your choice if you are looking to jump into TWMs.
Amethyst
Amethyst is probably the easier option to get started. Its installation is straightforward, and it has a minimal GUI for editing its settings. Enabling and disabling is handled through the menu bar.
Amethyst provides a number of standard layouts that you can cycle through using a hotkey. In each layout, there is a “main” window (sometimes you can have multiple main windows, but I haven’t used that feature much). It seems the intention here is that most of your work is in the main window, and you can monitor the others. You can easily navigate to auxilary windows and swap them to the main position. You can also resize the main window, and all auxillary windows will adjust accordingly.
A few examples:
- Tall: The main window is on the left side of the screen, with auxillary windows stacked vertically on the right.
- Row: All windows are stacked vertically. The top one is considered the main window, and it usually takes up much more space than the others.
- Binary Space Partitioning: Panes are split recursively. You can visualize this as starting with one pane, cutting it in two horizontally, then cutting the left-hand side in half vertically. (This is the layout `chunkwm` uses.)
- Fullscreen: Only the main window is shown–all others are hidden.
chunkwm
chumkwm is a bit harder to implement. In addition to the window manager, you need to install another service to handle keyboard input. The maker of chunkwm provides two options. Both chunkwm and khd, the keyboard handler that I’ve used, need to be started as services via the command line, so I found it helpful to create aliases for enabling and disabling them. Editing settings is done via an `rc` file.
chunkwm deals exclusively with binary space partitioned layouts, and it gives you a ton of control within this paradigm. By default, you shift focus between frames using hotkeys reminiscent of Vim navigation, and you can resize the currently-focused pane.
Resizing takes the form of expanding or contracting one edge of the pane. For instance, the default configuration allows you to push the top of your current frame up using `command`-`option`-`w`, and you can pull it back down using `command`-`shift`-`w`. By default, recursive splits alternate between horizontal and vertical, which I don’t believe you can do with Amethyst.
The Downsides
I’ve really liked using both of these tools. I find it difficult when I have to go without tiling windows managers. When I use them, things feel clean, I know right where everything is, and I can see what I want to see. However, I have experienced a few pain points with them.
The learning curve
With both window managers, there are hotkeys to memorize, patterns you get used to, and settings you need to tweak to get them where you want. It definitely takes some time to get the muscle memory to be productive.
Some apps don’t play well with TWMs
I’ve seen a few applications that fight for control of their size. Some win (mostly MacOS applications like System Preferences). Some tie (iPhone simulators enlarge to take up the most space in a pane without distorting their dimensions in Amethyst). Some lose (popup menus in IDEs on chunkwm get expanded to take up a ton of real estate on the screen). And some are just horrible (chunkwm and iPhone simulators just flash between the size that the simulator wants, and the size chunkwm wants).
Both window managers have mechanisms for opting out of tiling. chunkwm does this by workspace, and Amethyst does this by application.
Macos Best Window Manager
(Dis)connection with external monitors
With both window managers, everything goes wrong when you unplug an external monitor. Maybe this is fair–what would the expected behavior be in this situation? But it’s still a pain; my workflow now includes restarting the window manager whenever I unplug. It’s the biggest issue I’ve seen, and it would be a dealbreaker if I were connecting/disconnecting external monitors frequently throughout my day.
Wrapping It Up
Okay, so the list of complaints about these tools is longer than I’d like, but I think the pain points are worth it. Since installing them, I’ve felt more productive than ever. What’s your experience with TWMs?