Amethyst icon
Amethyst icon

Amethyst

 21 likes

Amethyst is a tiling window manager for Mac similar to the xmonad tiling window manager popular on Linux. Amethyst is written in Objective-C and has configurable shortcuts, multi-monitor support, multiple layouts, and the option to float certain applications.

Amethyst screenshot 1

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Application type

Country of Origin

  • US flagUnited States

Platforms

  • Mac
4.5 / 5 Avg rating (2)
21likes
1comment
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  Snap windows
  2.  Tiling Layouts
  3.  Customize Windows
  4.  Multi Column View
  5.  Autostart
  6.  Mouse tracking
  7.  Application whitelisting
  8.  Floating windows
  9.  Toggle
  10.  Support for Keyboard Shortcuts
  11.  Tiling

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Amethyst information

  • Developed by

    US flagIan Ynda-Hummel
  • Licensing

    Open Source (MIT) and Free product.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.5
  • Alternatives

    89 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Category

OS & Utilities

GitHub repository

  •  15,329 Stars
  •  495 Forks
  •  332 Open Issues
  •   Updated Apr 22, 2025 
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Our users have written 1 comments and reviews about Amethyst, and it has gotten 21 likes

Amethyst was added to AlternativeTo by Siphons on Jul 16, 2015 and this page was last updated Jan 5, 2021.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
wviana
Jan 29, 2018
1

Bring i3wm like window management into macOS.

What is Amethyst?

Amethyst is a tiling window manager for Mac similar to the xmonad tiling window manager popular on Linux. Amethyst is written in Objective-C and has configurable shortcuts, multi-monitor support, multiple layouts, and the option to float certain applications.

No command line knowledge is necessary to run this application.

Amethyst allows you to cycle among several different window layouts. Layouts can also be enabled/disabled to control whether they appear in the cycle sequence at all.

Layouts Include:

Tall The default layout. This gives you one "main pane" on the left, and one other pane on the right.

Tall-Right Exactly the same as Tall, but the main pane is on the right, with the other pane on the left.

Wide The rotated version of Tall, where the main pane is on the top (extending the full width of the screen), and the other pane is on the bottom. If either pane has more than one window, that pane will split into columns instead of rows.

3Column-Left, 3Column-Middle, 3Column-Right Widescreen-Tall This mode is like Tall, but if there are multiple windows in the main pane, the main pane splits into columns rather than rows. The other pane still splits windows into rows, like Tall.

Fullscreen In this layout, the currently focused window takes up the entire screen, and the other windows are not visible at all. You can rotate between each of the windows using the "focus the next window" shortcut, as usual.

Column This layout has one column per window, with each window extending the full height of the screen.

Row The rotated version of Column, where each window takes up an entire row, extending the full width of the screen.

Floating This mode makes all windows "floating", allowing you to move and resize them as if Amethyst were temporarily deactivated.

Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) This layout does not have a main pane in the way that other layouts do. When adding windows, any given pane can be split evenly into two panes along whatever axis is longer.

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