What is stackline?
Consider a browser window with many tabs.
A tabbed user interface consists of a collection of windows that occupy the same screen space. Only one tabbed window may be visible at any given time, and it's the user's job to specify the 'active' window.
Tabbed interfaces provide visual indicators for each tab. The indicators are relatively small, so they can be visible at all times. Each indicator identifies the contents of a window & communicates its position relative to the active window.
A 'stack' is a generalized subset of a tabbed UI that enables multiple macOS windows to occupy the same screen space and behave as a single unit. A stack let's a user…
- add & remove windows from a stack
- navigate between stacked windows
- understand the contents of a stack at a glance
Stacks are a recent addition (June 2020) to the (excellent!) macOS tiling window manager [koekeishiya/yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai). Currently, there is no visual indication of the active window, surrounding inactive windows, or even that a stack exists in the first place.
Enter stackline, which adds simple, unobtrusive visual indicators to compliment yabai's window stacking functionality.
- 🚦 See your stacks. Window indicators show you which BSP leaves are stacks & how many windows each stack contains
- 🔦 App icons. Toggle icons on to know exactly which apps are stacked where. Toggle icons off and get a slim minimalistic indicator that doesn't get in the way.
- 🧘♂️️ Smart positioning. Whichever mode you prefer, indicators always stay out of the way on the outside edge of the window (nearest the screen edge).
stackline v0.1.55has full support for multi-monitor setups, too. - 🧮 Always in sync. stackline keeps track of stacks as you move between spaces, resize windows, and add or remove stacks.
- 🕹️ Flexible control. Control stackline via shell commands, or access the instance directly via Hammerspoon.
| Icon indicators… | …or minimal indicators |
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Give a ⭐️ if you think (a more fully-featured version of) stackline would be useful!
