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4,163 ideas

Waffle – Native macOS terminal that auto-tiles sessions into a grid

Hi HN. I built Waffle because I kept ending up with 15 terminal windows scattered across three spaces with no idea what was running where.Splitting/merging in iTerm kind of works but it never felt intuitive to me.With that in mind, I built something to suit my workflow:Waffle is a native macOS terminal (Built on Miguel de Icaza's SwiftTerm) that tiles your sessions into an auto-scaling grid automatically. 1 session is fullscreen, 2 is side by side, 4 is 2x2, 9 is 3x3. Open a terminal, it joins the grid. Close one, the grid rebalances. No splitting, no config.I've been using it a lot recently and one thing I've found really useful is that sessions detect which repo they're in and group accordingly. Each project gets a distinct colour. Cmd+[ and Cmd+] flip between groups. If you have three repos open across eight terminals, you can filter to just one project's sessions instantly. Also, no accidentally closing a window with CMD-W as it gives you a confirmation and requires a second CMD-W to close.Honestly, if you live in tmux, this probably isn't for you but it's really helped to speed up my workflow.Other things: It comes with a handful of themes (and has support for iTerm themes), bundled JetBrains mono, has keyboard shortcuts for everything. Free, no account, opt-in analytics only. macOS 14+.There's a demo on the landing page if you want to see it in action.

Hacker News5mo agoToolAI

73FL score
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boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS

Hi HN!I recently switched from a Fedora/GNOME laptop to a MacBook Air. My old setup served me well as a portable workstation, but I’ve started traveling more while working remotely and needed something with similar performance but better battery life. The main thing I missed was a simple taskbar that shows the windows in the current workspace instead of a Dock that mixes everything together.I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock. It shows only the windows in the current Space, lets you switch Spaces by scrolling on the bar, and adds a desktop switcher so you can jump directly to any Space. You can also hide the system Dock, pin apps, preview windows with thumbnails, and launch apps from a searchable menu (I keep Spotlight disabled because for some reason it uses a lot of system resources on my machine).I’ve been dogfooding it for a few months now, and it finally felt polished enough to share.It’s for people who like macOS but want window management to feel a bit more like GNOME, Windows, or a traditional taskbar. It’s also for people like me who wanted an easier transition to macOS, especially now that Windows feels increasingly user-hostile.I’d love feedback on the UX, bugs, and whether this solves the same Dock/Spaces pain for anyone else.P.S. It might also appeal to people who feel nostalgic for the GNOME 2 desktop of yore. I started my Linux journey with it, and boringBar brings back some of that feeling for me.

Hacker News5mo agoToolAI

84FL score
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