yabai icon
yabai icon

yabai

 7 likes

yabai started as a C99 rewrite of chunkwm, originally supposed to be its first RC version.

yabai screenshot 1

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Application type

Country of Origin

  • NO flagNorway

Platforms

  • Mac
5 / 5 Avg rating (2)
7likes
2comments
0news articles

Features

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Properties

  1.  Customizable

Features

  1.  Automatic window tiling
  2.  Tiling Layouts
  3.  Tiling Window Manager
  4.  Tiling

 Tags

  • macwindowmanager
  • windowmanagerformac

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yabai information

  • Developed by

    NO flagÅsmund Vikane
  • Licensing

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

  • Rating

    Average rating of 5
  • Alternatives

    98 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Category

OS & Utilities

GitHub repository

  •  25,817 Stars
  •  662 Forks
  •  205 Open Issues
  •   Updated Apr 22, 2025 
View on GitHub

Our users have written 2 comments and reviews about yabai, and it has gotten 7 likes

yabai was added to AlternativeTo by Paul on Jul 15, 2019 and this page was last updated Sep 27, 2021.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Matej Potocnik
Apr 12, 2020
0

This is fantastic piece of software for OSX if you like tiling WM form Linux world. Concept is clean and simple, as WM gets messages from another daemon called shkd.

Totally customisable and very fun and productive to use. Worth every minute of your time.

Guest
Apr 12, 2020
0

I'm using Yabai since it officially replaced chunkwm ... there is no better tiling WM for OSX. My productivity boosted enormously. On downside you have to put some effort to configure it with shkd ... but it is worth every minute of it. Pure joy especially for us programmers :)

What is yabai?

yabai started as a C99 rewrite of chunkwm, originally supposed to be its first RC version.

However due to major architectural changes, supported systems, and changes to functionality, it is being released separately. There are multiple reasons behind these changes, based on the experience I've gained through experimenting with, designing, and using both kwm and chunkwm. Some of these changes are performance related while other changes have been made to keep the user experience simple and more complete, attempts to achieve a seamless integration with the operating system (when possible), proper error reporting, and yet still keep the property of being customizable. Requirements

yabai is officially supported on macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and macOS Mojave 10.14.4/5. It uses a scripting-addition, which is a bundle of code that we inject into Dock.app to elevate our privileges when communicating with the WindowServer. The WindowServer is a single point of contact for all applications. It is central to the implementation of the GUI frameworks and many other services. Because of this, System Integrity Protection must be disabled for yabai to function properly.

Official Links