YCtrl

Thin wrapper around yabai that adds convenient and intuitive fixes.

By thin wrapper we mean that you could just replace yabai with yctrl and expect everting to work as is. Though, you need to get ride of -m and -- before actions/commands. e.g.

Same as yabai -m cli, it communicate with yabai socket directly.

yabai -m window --focus next
yctrl window focus next

Enhancements

inc enhance resize that just accept either right or left. (works as you would expect)
next/prev: cycles with spaces and windows on all commands.
focus next/prev: accounts for floating windows (isn't that the default?).
focus next/prev: If current space has only one window then window next would go to next/prev space window
event: Auto close empty spaces.
event: keep focus in current space last window. (space change, new window in different space, window destroy)
scratchpad: toggle (hide/unhide) a pre-defeined scratchpad (configured by grid '<rows>:<cols>:<start-x>:<start-y>:<width>:<height>'
Auto-switch focus to last window on window destory/minimize/hide

Someday

Ergonomics
- Move to next/prev space should auto created space if it doesn't exists
- Auto create space by id if it doesn't exists.
Control and Access
- Maintain internal state of yabai objects
Scratchpad
- Moving mouse from scratchpad automatically hides it.
- Have scratchpad window appear in all spaces (now switches to space where it has the scratchpad)
- toggle last
Bugs
- Fix installation by nix overlay
- Only switch focus to last window if current isn't hover

Setup

In yabairc:

yctrl &

# Setup event listeners
send() {; echo "echo event $@ | nc -U -w 1 /tmp/yctrl.socket"; }

yabai -m signal --add event='space_changed' action=$(send 'space_changed $YABAI_SPACE_ID $YABAI_RECENT_SPACE_ID')
yabai -m signal --add event='window_destroyed' action=$(send 'window_destroyed $YABAI_WINDOW_ID')
yabai -m signal --add event='application_hidden' action=$(send 'application_hidden $YABAI_WINDOW_ID')

yctrl config yctrl_auto_close_empty_spaces false # Disable auto close of empty spaces
yctrl config window_topmost on # redirect to yabai socket

# Scratchpad (definition are written json5) (special thanks to @arpandaze)
yctrl config yctrl_scratchpad_grid "6:4:1:1:2:4"
yctrl config yctrl_scratchpads '[
  {
    tag: "alacritty",
    kind: "title",
    target: "TermScratchpad",
    command: ["open", "-a", "Alacritty.app", "--title", "TermScratchpad"]
  },
  {
    tag: "discord",
    kind: "app",
    target: "Discord",
    command: ["open", "-a", "Discord.app"]
  },
]'

Installation

Cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/kkharji/yctrl

Flakes

{
  inputs = {
    yctrl.url = "github:kkharji/yctrl";
    yctrl.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  };
  output = { self, ... }@inputs {
    /// ......
    {
      nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.yctrl.overlay ];
    };
  };
}

Legacy

{
  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    (import (builtins.fetchTarball {
      url = https://github.com/kkharji/yctrl/archive/master.tar.gz;
    }))
  ];
}

kkharji/yctrl