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.

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

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

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 — change 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.)

Mouse Follows Focus

This setting can be enabled by changing the following line

"mouse-follows-focus": false,

to

"mouse-follows-focus": true,

in your .amethyst file.