I have had a pretty stable setup using yabai[0] for my wm and skhd[1] for my hotkey daemon. Both are by the same dev and I have nothing but good things to say about them. Occasionally windows will get in a wonky state, but I have a hot key to reset them. It is usually stable for a week+

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

+1 for yabai with skhd! I can't imagine working on macos without it and I really can't stress this enough. Hotkeys with skhd is game changer for productivity and nothing compares to yabai for a tiling window manager on macos (though you don't have to use the tiling if that's not your thing).

I've been using yabai as well! I was wondering if it was possible to replicate iTerm2's dedicated hotkey window [1] for other applications (primarily firefox) using yabai/skhd?

[1] https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-hotkey.html

I do not know the answer to your question but the way I solve that problem in osx is using quicksilver and triggers. You can give each app or really any quicksilver command a hotkey to switch to it directly or start it and switch if it's not running. I couldn't live without it. I have hotkeys for all my commonly used apps and generally never launch or switch apps any other way. I also have hotkeys for manual tiling to the corners, sides, center, and full screen so I don't need to use the gui for that. The fact that this isn't doable out of the box makes me question if either Apple or Microsoft has ever considered hiring a single ux expert.

On Linux I use jumpapp for the same functionality.

I've been using yabai and skhd for about a week, I was wondering what you are using for your menu bar? I'm not really sure about a suitable replacement for something like i3bar coming from Linux.

I have been using ubersicht[0]. The same developer of skhd/yabai has a dotfiles repo that I mostly copied his config from.

[0]https://github.com/felixhageloh/uebersicht

I'm not the user you replied to, but have you tried yabai's built-in one?

I haven't had any issue with it coming from i3bar/polybar, but then I don't really do anything specific with it, just time and battery.

It really doesn't work that well especially on small screens. Spotify for example has a minimum size and will be unusable when the tile is smaller than that because half the window isn't visible. Focus-follows-mouse is also broken when using multiple screens and workspaces.

I've been thinking of using these. What I want also is to "save and restore" or just "force" some windows to specific monotors and sizes. Is that possible with yabai?

"Usually stable for a week" does not sound great..

Not GP, but that's better than my Mac as a whole. Weird OS issues with the trackpad, login, or fan/cpu/ram usage despite nothing big running necessitate a restart at least once a week.

I'm in the same boat and it sucks.

I had 240 days of uptime on my G5 Mac Pro at one point.

I doubt we'll ever see that kind of stability in macOS again, and it makes me sad.

I would generally agree, except in this case that makes it one of the more stable pieces of software I am running on my mac. When it happens I have a single hotkey mapped to restart the service which recollects all my windows and usually fixes anything that was going wrong in ~3-4 seconds.

I love i3. I wish I could get something like it for the Mac. I love it so much I might ditch my Mac for a Linux laptop. Regarding Phoenix I use magnet on the Mac which gets pretty much this. Though this is probably much more customizable. Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

Yes, i3 drastically improved my ability to be productive and not get lost in my windows.

I sorely miss it when I am using windows or MacOS.

I have good success with yabai:

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Yeah I’ll check it I it after the many testimonials here but m leery about having to disable system integrity protection even temporarily

I actually run it with SIP still active. Some features are disabled, but it still does everything I need it to.

I have run with SIP disabled pretty much since it was introduced. Nothing happened. Unless you are a three-letter-agency target or a person clicking on random files, you’ll be fine.