bug.n is a tiling window manager add-on for Microsoft Windows. It is written in the scripting language AutoHotkey.
What it can do
Provide layouts for resizing and moving windows, utilizing all available screen estate and customizable to your specific needs and workflow
Provide views (i. e. virtual desktops) for showing only those windows, which you need to do your work.
Dynamically resize and move your windows, applying a specified layout, without you having to care about moving them all by mouse
Increase the available screen estate by hiding and therewith freeing up the space occupied by
the Microsoft Windows Taskbar and
the title bar for every single window
and replacing all with a single slim status bar (-- but bug.n is not a shell replacement)
Show window management information in the status bar:
active window title
active layout
overview of the views used
Show system information in the status bar:
time and date
CPU and memory usage
disk and network load
battery level
Store your settings, i. e. which windows and layout were set on a specific view
Support multiple monitors
What it enables you to do
You can resize and move windows specified by the active layout and initialized by hotkey.
You can toggle the visibility of the Windows Taskbar.
You can toggle the visibility of the Windows title bar of the active window.
You can change the layout for the tiling window management suitable to your needs.
Tile: Lay out all windows like tiles on a master area, which can be further split up, and a stacking area, where remaining windows can be stacked or shown side by side.
Monocle: All windows are maximized and only one is shown at any time.
Floating: Windows are not dynamically tiled.
You can further customize the layouts for each view.
You can move windows to another view (virtual desktop) by tagging them with a number.
You can share windows between views by tagging them with more than one number.
You can move between views, hiding the windows, you do not want to see, and showing those, you want to see, by pressing a simple hotkey.
Installing and running bug.n
Requirements
Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher
AutoHotkey (if running bug.n from source as a script)
You may either download the stable version of bug.n from the repository, or download the current development version as the repository itself. Either way, you will have a zip file including an executable (bug.n*.exe), the source (src*) and documentation (doc*) files.
There is no installation process for bug.n. Unpack the zip file, and you should be able to run either the executable as it is or the main script (src\Main.ahk) with AutoHotkey.
By default bug.n stores the session data (configuration, layout, window states and log) to the user's APPDATA directory, e. g. C:\Users\joten\AppData\Roaming\bug.n.
Please see the documentation or the Wiki for more information on installing and running, customizing and using bug.n and for a list of changes made with the current version, in particular the changes in the user interface (configuration variables and hotkeys).
License
bug.n is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. Please see the LICENSE file for the full license text.
Credits
bug.n and its documentation is written by Joshua Fuhs and joten, but some source was copied from the AutoHotkey forum (http://www.autohotkey.com/forum). These are explicitly marked in the source code at the end of the appropriate section. Additionally the following listing summarizes these sources (of ideas or code):
Comments and Reviews
it works great. i'm using win 8.1 and bug.n functions should've been default options for it imo. it has a comprehensive documentation but i found it little bit hard to understand. non the less, i think totally worth learning.
Bug.n's First nuisance- taskbar disappears even if you move it See cheat sheet on [https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n/blob/master/doc/Usage.md] Win Space button: Show / Hide Windows Taskbar Stars off for needing to remember hotkeys. I stop there.
dwm for Windows, hopefully better support is coming!
I like this so far, but it doesn't feel natural with an MS Windows environment (this is the "ONLY" tiling windows manager for MS Windows). It still does need a lot of fixing up to do especially an easier way to edit settings. I suggest an actual settings dialog to edit everything instead of manually typing in your configs even with the option to save/restore presets.
My question is how can I toggle having windows show title bar? That is the only option I find lacking here.
... interesting application several times over the years and it has made visible progress.
My problem with this is that I get not familiar with that idiom on Windows. While I use tiling window managers on Linux for years all the time (and I don't want to use something else anymore) I can't really accept tiling on Windows very well. It seems that the GUI applications are a bit different on Windows, especially more complex in GUI (docking bars, floating bars, tabbed panes ...), which makes some of them don't like to be tiled.