// the find
acsandmann/rift
a tiling window manager for macos
A tiling window manager for macOS written in Rust, positioning itself as a faster, animation-capable alternative to Aerospace and yabai. Targets power users who want i3/bspwm-style layouts on macOS without disabling SIP. Pre-release but actively developed.
- Doesn't require SIP to be disabled, which is a real differentiator — yabai's most requested features need SIP off, making it a non-starter for many users
- Five distinct layout algorithms (BSP, master-stack, scrolling columns, traditional tiling, accordion stack) covering the major paradigms, each with its own implementation file rather than one monolithic layout system
- Works with 'Displays have separate Spaces' enabled, which breaks every other major macOS WM and is a constant pain point for multi-monitor setups
- Mach port IPC plus a CLI means it can integrate with status bars like Sketchybar without polling hacks, and the Lua client shows the API surface is real
- No official release yet — you're building from source and tracking main, which means breakage on any macOS update is your problem to debug
- Relies heavily on private/undocumented macOS APIs (see sys/skylight.rs, sys/cgs_window.rs, sys/window_server.rs) — the author frames this as a feature, but one macOS update away from catastrophic breakage with no Apple support path
- 57 forks and 1827 stars suggests interest but thin contributor base; the actor/reactor architecture is non-trivial and the codebase has no visible contributor documentation, so PRs face a steep onboarding curve
- Configuration and quick-start docs live entirely in the wiki with no offline docs, and the default config file (rift.default.toml) is the only real reference — not great for understanding edge cases or advanced behavior