Amethyst

Tiling window manager for OS X similar to xmonad. Was originally written as an alternative to fjolnir's awesome xnomad but written in pure Objective-C. It's expanded to include some more features like Spaces support not reliant on fragile private APIs.

A quick screencast of basic functionality can be found here. (It's rough, and I'd love to see a better one if someone has the skills and inclination to make one.)

Credits

Credit goes to fjolnir for the bulk of the initial logic and structure.

Getting Amethyst

Amethyst is available for direct download here or using homebrew cask.

brew cask install amethyst

Note: that Amethyst now is only supported on OS X 10.9. The last version that supports 10.8 can be found here.

Building

Install the latest version of Xcode
Clone the project, then cd to the Amethyst directory.
Install xctool
- brew update && brew install xctool
- you may need to accept all XCode licenses, e.g. sudo xcodebuild -license
Install cocoapods
- gem install cocoapods
- you may need to exec zsh or similar for this command to be found, if using rbenv.
rake install
cp Amethyst/default.amethyst ~/.amethyst

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute please branch off of the development branch. Otherwise just try to stick to the general style of the code.

Contact

If you have questions or feedback you can email me or drop by #amethyst on Freenode.

Using Amethyst

Amethyst must be given permissions to use the accessibility APIs under the Privacy tab of the Security & Privacy preferences pane as shown below.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Amethyst uses two modifier combinations.

mod1 - option + shift
mod2 - ctrl + option + shift

And defines the following commands, mostly a mapping to xmonad key combinations.

mod1 + space — cycle to next layout
mod2 + space - cycle to previous layout
mod1 + w - focus 1st screen
mod1 + e - focus 2nd screen
mod1 + r - focus 3rd screen
mod2 + w - move focused window to 1st screen
mod2 + e - move focused window to 2nd screen
mod2 + r - move focused window to 3rd screen
mod2 + [n] - move focused window to nth space
mod1 + h - shrink the main pane
mod1 + l - expand the main pane
mod1 + , - increase the number of windows in the main pane
mod1 + . - decrease the number of windows in the main pane
mod1 + j - focus the next window counterclockwise
mod1 + k - focus the next window clockwise
mod2 + j - move the focused window one space counterclockwise
mod2 + k - move the focused window one space clockwise
mod1 + return - swap the focused window with the main window
mod1 + t - toggle whether or not the focused window is floating
mod1 + i - display the current layout for each screen

Setting Up Spaces Support

Spaces are, unfortunately, not supported right out of the box. To enable it you must activate Mission Control's keyboard shortcuts for switching to specific Desktops, as Mac OS X calls them. This option is in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard preferences pane. The shortcuts will be of the form ctrl + [n]. Amethyst is only able to send a window to the nth space if the shortcut ctrl + n is enabled.

Customization

Amethyst can be customized by creating a json file called .amethyst in your home directory. The structure and valid keys and whatnot are all defined in default.amethyst.

Layouts

You can set the layouts you want to use by supplying a list of layout names under the "layouts" key. For example,

"layouts": [
    "tall",
    "fullscreen",
],

will restrict your layouts to the tall and fullscreen layouts. The available layouts are as follows:

Tall ("tall"): Defines a main area on the left and a secondary area on the right.
Wide ("wide"): Defines a main area on the top and a secondary column on the right.
Fullscreen ("fullscreen"): All windows are sized to fill the screen.
Column ("column"): All windows are distributed in evenly sized in columns from left to right.
Row ("row"): All windows are distributed in evenly sized rows from top to bottom.
Floating ("floating"): All windows are floating. (Useful if you want a space dedicated to floating windows.)
Widescreen Tall ("widescreen-tall"): Like Tall, but the main area uses columns and the secondary area uses rows.

Mouse Follows Focus

This setting can be enabled by changing the following line

"mouse-follows-focus": false,

"mouse-follows-focus": true,

in your .amethyst file.

Always float an app

You can set specific application to float by default, this can still be toggled by mod1-t

"floating": [
    "com.apple.systempreferences"
],

Get the required string for the app osascript -e 'id of app "Finder"'. Just replace Finder with the name of your app

Layout HUD

By default Amethyst pops up a HUD telling you the layout whenever the layout changes. You can disable it in your .amethyst file using the enables-layout-hud key. i.e.,

"enables-layout-hud": false

By default the HUD will show when changing to a different space. You can disable the HUD during space changes, while still having it enabled when cycling or selecting a different layout, by using the enables-layout-hud-on-space-change key. i.e.,

"enables-layout-hud-on-space-change": false

symbolix / Amethyst