Show HN: Omacosy – Omarchy-style tiling desktop for macOS, no SIP
github.comI have been using omarchy on my tower since nearly a year now, shortly after it was released first. I really love the experience I am having with it but I still use my macbook for daly work, so I wanted to recreate a similar experience on it. Thats why I created omacosy, a setup for tiling windows, custom menu bar, some themes from omarchy, focus follows mouse, focus rings around windwos, some mac flavors with trackpad events and a custom mission control overview for your workspaces.
I used AeroSpace over yabai for the tiling window manager because I didnt wanted to compromise on SIP which is a mac security feature. It is supposed to be keyboard first like omarchy to move windows organize workspaces etc The setup runs around 157mb of ram and consists of AeroSpace, Karabiner (for the super key), and five small self build swift binaries.
I am running it daily on my M1 max macbook, currently on macOS26. I havent tested it much on other macbooks or macOS versions. The install script creates a manifest file to backup what was installed before and what it installed itself, the uninstall script takes that into account to clean up the macbook to exactly the state it was in before. It needs quite some permissions for it sfunctionality which I layed our in the project readme. I wanted to be really transparent about which permissions it uses and for what reason.
I would love to get some feedback or see people trying it out and hearing your opinion. Mostly about what still doesnt feel smooth in the experience or if you find any performance issues.
Hyprland deserves the credit, not Omarchy. https://hypr.land/
Thats true, my bad hyprland is definitly what makes omarchy work so well. I should have stated that in the description.
Kind of sideways rant about tiling window managers on Marcos in general..
I mostly use Linux + dwm as my daily driver, recently added a mac into the mix (mostly for testing personal cross-platform stuff, I use macs for work mostly), and not being a fan of the macos UI in general decided to set up a tiling window manager - googling showed me AeroSpace and Yabai as the most popular options.
The experience with both of these has been quite terrible, and I don't think the problem is with these projects themselves but with macos and how it's UI/desktops work. Full screen windows seemingly break both completely. Doc hiding/showing is completely inconsistent - sometimes it just renders on top of all windows and doesn't hide other times it stays hidden even on mouse hover. Windows just disappear and can't be switched to. Fullscreen tiling seems completely unsupport(ed/able) - you must waste screen space on pointless title/status bars for some reason . After googling it turns out many of these issues exist in a fresh/bare macos and have been know unfixed issues for like 5+ years.
I can't believe there are people claiming macos has a consistent, elegant and high quality UI... it is so terribly shitty and broken
>you must waste screen space on pointless title/status bars for some reason
There is macwmfx: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/macwmfx
I use it on a couple specific apps to remove title bars. You can inject it with DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES.
this is really cool perhaps I could integrate it or get some inspiration from it to declutter the tiling view
Just had some time to look at this, it needs SIP disabled which opens up some risk. That was the reason for me to choose AeroSpace as a foundation instead of yabai.
Yeah its a bit painful on mac. You cant have floating windows constantly in front on mac like you have on hyprland. In my implementation I added a super + s shortcut to pull any floating windows I lost to the front again. But its definitly not the nicest solution.
For fullscreen windows I also added a custom implementation with super + f that works in the workspaces setting. Just making videos fullscreen or clicking the green fullscreen button still exits the setup to macos fullscreen. The system is still kinda usable with mac fullscreen in parallel but its not a clean experience.
> rant about tiling window managers
MacOS is so absolutely terrible for programming work. The only coder-favorable unit on Mac that I wish Linux had a similar alternative for is the OSA layer. Nothing else is justifiable there from a software engineering standpoint. Nothing.
Apple keeps insisting on Jony Ive's influence and keeps making "an operating system for florists". Well, I'm a damn programmer - I need the utility, I don't care about stupid animations, widgets, jumping icons in the Dock, etc. If my enterprise overlords didn't push it so hard down my throat, I would be so much happier just using Linux.
Programmers are not a monolith. The minimal tiling keyboard driven thing works great for some, but it drives me up a wall as much as the standard macOS arrangement seems to irritate you.
Actually one of my peeves with Linux is that as of yet, there’s no WM or DE for Linux that gets even 80% of the broad strokes right for people who find a traditional Mac style desktop productive. Most options either lean Windows-style or minimal tiling style, with the only outliers (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC) representing the odd niche of a small handful of macOS fundamentals hybridized with conventions from the tiling things and Windows.
I'm not talking only about WMs on Mac - just in general. The restrictions they put around things get to ridiculous level of hassle experience. All those "you're holding it wrong" and "customers don't know what they want" vibes are just super annoying and unproductive. I hate when the software on the hardware you own treats you like a baby. What's the point of calling yourself a "software programmer" when you can't even control the damn software? It feels like making you helpless was the point.
I mean it's all subjective. The relative rigidity of the macOS UI just means that it isn't for people who don't like it.
For those of us who do enjoy it, it's great because a stock install is already 80% of the way to a productive setup. I can have a new Mac ready for work in 15-20m without copying dotfiles or anything like that.
Not that there isn't a place for tinkering and customizing, but it's not the computer(s) that I get work done on. It's for leisure time machines. When I try to work under Linux I end up on side quests trying to fine-tune everything to perfection (which is for practical purposes impossible, unless I write an entire desktop environment for myself) and can't get any work done. On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like and the things I can't I shrug and then focus on my work.
> On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like
Well, I'm not "the defaults" person - there isn't a single piece of software that I ever installed and didn't have to configure later, except maybe some CLI tools. To me, that's the point of "soft" in "software" - it should be malleable. Not everything has to be of the Emacs level of extensibility, but I should be able to change things to extract maximum utility out of it. I don't "tinker" for the sake of it - I make changes for performance and execution.
I squeeze both Linux and Mac environments to their utmost possible scriptability. Bootstraping a Linux box from scratch for me is a matter of minutes. I wish I could say the same thing about Macs - there are tons of things you just can't easily change from the command line, it's a long cycle of - click, open, navigate, click, browse, confirm, click, logoff, reboot, etc. And it's simply annoying. It feels like needless ceremony for the "cybersecurity theater" or whatever. And the 80% of opinionated pre-made things to make you productive is just bullshit - like for example, the very first thing I always do on a new Mac is that I run:
This makes a huge difference in keyboard latency. Why the heck these values are not reachable from the UI is a mystery to me. I'm glad that at least this one is tweakable from the command line, but many other things are not.
I suppose I should be thankful for not having to deal with Windows. Which is way worse.
Okay very cool, will try. But please remove the claude-ese from the GitHub repo. It just erodes trust.
Hey thanks, I will try to get the readme more human. I am not a great writer and I wanted to have each piece explained well and in detail. Especially about the permissioning and different features. Looking forward to your experience hope you area gonna like it.
Just a tip - Don't worry about not being a great writer. Trust is earned, and making AI write everything will guarantee most users won't give your project a sniff whatsoever
Your writing is 100x better than Claude writing
It’s funny, I’m in a similar boat (omarchy at home, macOS at work) and recently spent a lot of time working out a system with SIP-enabled yabai for window management, kanata for the super key and other QMK-style tap-hold-chord mapping, and hammerspoon to fill in the space management commands for which yabai needs SIP disabled.
If this had existed last week, I’d have saved a few hours, but it was a kinda fun few hours and now it’s all mine. Glad to know I’m not the only one on this particular quixotic quest.
Sounds like a cool project as well, what were your thoughts about disabling SIP? Would be curious to hear how omacosy compares to your setup. What you have similar what you did different.
looks very interesting, might give it a try. I'm currently just using Raycast WM capacity together with InstantSpaceSwitcher. For me it's always how hard it is to memorise yet another keyboard shortcut (i have a lot of them); but i'll take a look
Yeah Im using raycast as well with this setup is pairs really well.
The shortcuts I made really close to omarchy's shortcuts, because that's what I got used to now.
I guess the most important one is super + k. It gives you an overview about all shortcuts so you don't have to guess or dig through config files.
Very nice! I'll play with it for a few days and see how I like it. However: 3. Korren isn't in the Brewfile — build it from the korren repo: ./packaging/macos/build-app.sh --install
What korren repo? it doesn't even exist under your github user anymore...
hahaha nice catch thats an easter egg or sneak peak. Its not required and the piece in the install script is just for me atm to integrate it with the theming so it stays consistent with the omacosy theme. It does nothing if korren is not installed. That readme section just shows how you can configure your default terminal and browser for the shortcuts. Korren is a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator with workspaces, tabs and splits with command blocks that I am still working on and plan to open source soon.
I just realized it was putting in the config file even if korren is not installed, thanks for the hint I fixed that with a guard. Its harmless but useless clutter.
I have used Amethyst, Aerospace and OmniWM (using). All of these work well most of the time, but something weird is bound to happen at least a few times each day given all the possible hacking around system APIs.
What are some of the main or repeating issues you have been running into? Like the floating window goes to the background for example.
Like what? I've been using Aerospace for a while and didn't experience any issue.
Offtopic but not really: does anyone know the minimal fix on how to remove the animation between changing "desktops" in Mac OS? I want it to be instant, no slide animation. Please and Thank you
This setup switches instant. But on default MacOS I think the only thing similar is Accessibility > Display > Reduce Motion. But I think it doesnt remove it just makes it shorter. I am not aware of any other way.
i have this installed and its amazing! https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
perfect. you made my day! thank you kind HN user!
this is the way! I even configured it with a combo on my ZSA voyager and now it's just there! Also changed default keys for switching desktop (i believe i disabled it) and have InstantSpaceSwitcher take over, which means my logitech mouse can do the instant switch too; so so happy using this, wish alt tab could use it too.
The solutions I've read about all do a simulated super-fast swipe
This works well- you can swipe using touchpad; or use ctrl + arrow keys- free and open-source
https://space-rabbit.app/
AeroSpace is really nice for i3 like tiling on macOS https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
Yes this is based on AeroSpace, I used it with some custom configs and hidden commands for the tiling. This project is more about combining it with the custom menu bar, mission control, shortcuts and a few other things to get a well rounded experience.
Great work! I'm a fan of the hyprland setup on Omarchy and also daily on Mac! Do you have any screenshots showing some of the tiling, apps running and what not? Looks excellent!
Yes there are 4 screenshots in the readme, it's a bit long and most of them are in the bottom. There is a plain desktop one, one for the shortcuts help menu, one tiled one and one for the custom mission control. They are in the docs folder in the repo it you just wanna check out the screenshots.
thank you!!! I missed that sorry
No worries, curious if you already see things in the screenshots that could be improved.
How would this work on the dual monitors? Is there an option to have a secondary monitor have just one workspace while main monitor has multiple workspaces?
Currently I use it on two monitors, both have independent 1-9 workspaces and you can move your windows across them with shortcuts or by dragging. On my big monitor I mostly just use the first workspace.
When you plug the monitor out it collapses the workspaces and tries to fit them on empty ones on the Mac screen. It remembers the previous setup to restore them once you plug the monitor in again.
why doesn't YC fund products like this ?
Hard to monetize I guess, omarchy and hyprland are also public domain and just build out of passion, like this project.