Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Rift vs Other macOS Tiling WMs

  • Rift is described as “Aerospace but in yabai style”:
    • Like Aerospace, it uses virtual workspaces all within a single macOS Space, avoiding Apple’s Spaces quirks and SIP-disabling hacks.
    • Like yabai, it leans on low‑level/private APIs with a strong focus on performance.
  • Users report Rift feels “ridiculously fast” and unusually “just works” without Accessibility prompts.
  • One monitor/Space gets its own independent virtual workspace manager, mirroring multi-screen behavior some miss from Linux WMs.
  • Comparison with Aerospace: if you’re already happy with Aerospace’s performance, it’s unclear what extra Rift offers beyond implementation style and potential performance headroom.

Tabs, Layout Styles, and Feature Gaps

  • macOS native tabs (Finder, Ghostty, etc.) are a known pain point:
    • Rift currently misbehaves in some tab scenarios (e.g., closing Finder tabs making a neighbor window expand incorrectly).
    • The OS exposes very limited tab events, making robust handling hard. Aerospace is said to be planning improvements here.
  • Niri-/PaperWM-style scrolling layouts are requested; Rift’s author says it’s possible but doesn’t fit well with its current layout model.

Private APIs and Long‑Term Stability

  • Rift explicitly uses private APIs reverse‑engineered by yabai and others.
  • One side argues these are core, longstanding AppKit internals and unlikely to change, especially since Rift avoids the fragile “move between Spaces” hacks that broke yabai.
  • The opposing view: any private API use is inherently risky; Apple has a history of breaking such things, leading to stressful OS upgrade cycles. Some suggest avoiding entire categories of apps that rely on private APIs.

Installation, Rust Nightly, and Nix

  • Building Rift requires Rust nightly; several users hit #![feature] errors on stable.
  • Confusion arises from mixing Homebrew’s rustup with the official installer; when installed via the official script and rustup toolchain install nightly, builds succeed.
  • A Nix flake package is shared for Nix users.

Keyboard Workflows and Shortcut Conflicts

  • Heavy keyboard users discuss complex setups with Karabiner:
    • Caps Lock mapped to “hyper”/“meh” keys, then layered with hjkl for moving focus, moving windows, and changing workspaces.
    • Aerospace users often hide everything behind a “leader” key (e.g., alt+space) to avoid shortcut conflicts.
  • Others find Aerospace’s defaults hostile (e.g., binding all alt+letter to workspaces, clobbering common Emacs-like shortcuts) and complain about hidden/off‑screen windows.

Alternatives and “Lightweight” Window Management

  • Many commenters ultimately prefer simpler tools over full tiling WMs:
    • Rectangle, Magnet, Moom, Divvy, BetterSnapTool, Swish, Raycast’s WM, Loop, Hammerspoon configs (MiroWindowsManager, custom Lua scripts), Keymou for cursor hops.
    • Reasons: fewer macOS‑update breakages, easier onboarding, mouse/trackpad-oriented workflows, and “good enough” layout control.
  • Several say Rectangle or similar covers ~80% of needs without the complexity of a full WM.

Tiling vs Full‑Screen: Philosophy and Use Cases

  • Skeptical voices: macOS full-screen plus four‑finger swipes and Spaces are “beautiful” and sufficient for one‑ or two‑window workflows; tiling adds complexity and potential distraction.
  • Pro‑tiling arguments:
    • On large 5K/6K or ultrawide displays, full-screen wastes space; structured tiling (including more complex grids) is crucial.
    • Common workflows benefit from persistent side‑by‑side windows: editor + terminal + logs, browser + docs, chat + work, accounting + bank statements, etc.
    • Tiling reduces mental overhead from frequent app/Space switching and avoids slow, animated gesture transitions.
  • Some find macOS’s native Spaces/app-switching behavior (especially multi-window apps like Safari/Chrome) clumsy enough that they reach for Aerospace/Rift—or even switch to Linux.

Ecosystem Notes and Miscellaneous

  • There’s a sense of “many tilers on macOS” because Apple’s default windowing is widely disliked among power users.
  • komorebi (a tiler known from Windows) is reportedly coming to macOS.
  • Various side topics surface:
    • Desire for features like “double-tap Cmd to show window outlines and rearrange by trackpad.”
    • Complaints that most macOS tilers don’t work with true fullscreen (always leaving the title bar visible).
    • Suggestions for using Hammerspoon to “roll your own” WM.
    • Questions about hiding the macOS menubar and about taskbar-like utilities for seeing minimized apps.