{"id":239655,"date":"2026-05-05T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/05\/i-switched-to-a-tiling-wm-and-stopped-wasting-time-on-window-management\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T13:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T17:30:09","slug":"i-switched-to-a-tiling-wm-and-stopped-wasting-time-on-window-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/05\/i-switched-to-a-tiling-wm-and-stopped-wasting-time-on-window-management\/","title":{"rendered":"I switched to a tiling WM and stopped wasting time on window management"},"content":{"rendered":"

I switched to a tiling WM and stopped wasting time on window management<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/i-tried-a-tiling-window-manager-on-my-linux-macbook-and-stopped-wasting-time-on-window-management\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-05 12:01:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.makeuseof.com<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve heard about tiling window managers for a while now, with many praising them for an increase in productivity. The idea is pretty simple, instead of dragging and resizing floating windows on your desktop, the tiling manager arranges them into a grid. Every window gets a space, and as you add more, they fit across your screen in various rectangle shapes. You navigate with a keyboard (until you run an app that uses a GUI and a mouse), and you never have to manually move stuff around again.<\/p>\n

I finally decided to try one on my M1 MacBook Air running Asahi Linux. What I didn’t expect was how much I’d have to unlearn first, though in the end, I think it’s pretty worth it.<\/p>\n

I also didn’t appreciate going in to this experience just how much a tiling WM isn’t just a way to arrange my windows on the screen. It’s a fundamentally different metaphor for interacting with a computer. On a typical PC, Mac, or Linux machine, you’re usually managing a virtual space modeled on physical reality. You move windows and documents around on a “Desktop.” With a tiling windows manager (WM), that metaphor disappears. Windows don’t have spots on your desktop anymore. There is no desktop. You don’t move stuff around, you navigate between things.<\/p>\n

The shift takes some time to internalize. I wanted to click on the background, drag a window to a spot that wasn’t available. The habits of 30 years plus of standard computing won’t go away any time soon. But, over time, something clicked. I wasn’t worrying about moving my windows around so I could see what was behind a foreground window. I was just working.<\/p>\n

…
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Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I switched to a tiling WM and stopped wasting time on window management https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/i-tried-a-tiling-window-manager-on-my-linux-macbook-and-stopped-wasting-time-on-window-management\/ Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":239657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.makeuseofimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wm\/2026\/05\/hyprland-on-macbook.jpg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[139,71],"class_list":["post-239655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-asahi-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239659,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239655\/revisions\/239659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}