Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

bspwm VS yabai

Compare bspwm VS yabai and see what are their differences

bspwm logo bspwm

A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

yabai logo yabai

A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning
  • bspwm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • yabai Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-26

bspwm videos

Switching To Bspwm - Initial Thoughts

More videos:

  • Review - BSPWM - Its like I3 but not.
  • Review - BSPWM Review

yabai videos

Yabai Demonstration

More videos:

  • Demo - yabai macOS Tiling Window Manager Demonstration

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to bspwm and yabai)
Window Manager
34 34%
66% 66
Linux
100 100%
0% 0
OSX Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Utilities
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare bspwm and yabai

bspwm Reviews

Top 13 Best Tiling Window Managers For Linux In 2022
Support for multiple windows, limited support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically determining the location of app tiles, and configuration and control via messages are among the characteristics of bspwm.
Source: www.hubtech.org
13 Best Tiling Window Managers for Linux
bspwm’s features include support for multiple windows, partial support for EWMH, automatic mode for automatically setting the position of app tiles, and it is configured and controlled through messages, among others.
Source: www.tecmint.com

yabai Reviews

We have no reviews of yabai yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, yabai should be more popular than bspwm. It has been mentiond 132 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

bspwm mentions (20)

  • What WM should I use?
    Use BSPWM. It supports right clicks by default and its modular. You might want to look for status bars that work with it, slstatus does not work. Good luck, supremacist! Source: about 1 year ago
  • What are some OpenSource apps that are the best of their kind?
    I had not heard of bspwm but I am a fan of telling WMs. Looking at the documentation now, I really like the pragmatic approach lol https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Got some questions before moving to linux...
    I am not familiar with that distro at all, so no idea. KDE Plasma is fine, I use it myself (with BSPWM as my window manager, but that's irrelevant). Source: over 1 year ago
  • MacBook Setup - OS Ventura 13.1 - Samsung QLed 43” - VM: yabai - Terminal: Hyper
    There's a paradigm shift required for a lot of people to start using automatic tiling window managers. Yabai is basically a bspwm port for MacOS and it follows the rules of binary space partitioning. In fact, bspwm has a great diagram on its github readme that illustrates how it works. This will limit the number of windows you can have on any given desktop. To overcome this limitation you use multiple desktops. A... Source: over 1 year ago
  • How much better is neoVim? Is it really that much better than VsCode?
    It’s night and day. I also combine a heavily customized NeoVim config (https://github.com/tomit4/notes/tree/main/nvim) with a tiling window manager (https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm), the espanso text expander (https://espanso.org/), Vimium in the browser (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/), and a 40% ortholinear keyboard(https://drop.com/buy/planck-mechanical-keyboard). Source: over 1 year ago
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yabai mentions (132)

  • Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
    I have a 49 inch CRG9 and the best recommendation for window management is Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai). Yabai is a greedy window management solution that tries to fit opened applications in given space and skhd let's you easily jump between those using keyboard shortcuts. This has massively improved my ultrawide experience. Only disclaimer is, configuring yabai has a slight learning curve. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Is there an app that does this Windows feature?
    Want something free that's better than tiling on Windows? Yabai. Source: 6 months ago
  • macOS Containers v0.0.1
    SIP is a feature that protects you from malicious actors with root (admin) access on your device. After they've encrypted your photos and drives and changed your passwords, it prevents them from making your machine unbootable by deleting or altering system binaries. As a side effect of this protection, you give up certain freedoms to customize your system. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
    This is disproven by the fact that Yabai [1] can instantly swap spaces with SIP disabled. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
    I feel the same way. I would much prefer no animation at all, and an instant transition to another space. Apparently this is possible with [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), but it requires disabling system integrity protection which I am personally uncomfortable with. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing bspwm and yabai, you can also consider the following products

i3 - A dynamic tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii, and written in C.

Rectangle - Window management app based on Spectacle, written in Swift.

dwm - dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All of the layouts can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

Magnet Window Manager - Magnet Developers

qtile - Qtile is a full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written in Python.

Moom - Move your mouse over the green zoom button in any window, and Moom's mouse control overlay will appear (as seen in the above animation).