The Sway Tiling Window Manager
Sway’s homepage includes a fantastic, short video demonstration. Sway is a Wayland compositor; Wayland is a protocol designed to replace X11 on Linux. Sway itself is modeled after i3, a popular X11 tiling window manager. Sway is unlikely to ever run on macOS, but the video is worth watching as an illustration of a tiling window manager’s important features.
Here’s a list of features missing from Apple’s tiling window manager for macOS and iOS (called “Split View”):
- Any number of tiled windows can be created (instead of just two side-by-side windows).
- The positions of tiled windows can be swapped.
- All actions can be performed using keyboard shortcuts.
- Windows can be divided horizontally or vertically (instead of only vertically).
- Regular stacking windows can be created in front of the tiled windows.
The last item, about creating stacking windows in front of tiled windows, strikes me as something that would make Split View much more powerful on macOS. Normally on macOS, windows can be organized either as tabs, or as windows. In Split View, windows can only be organized as tabs, so an entire organizational vector has been lost. It would be great to be able to use Split View without having to give up so much power.