Keyboard-driven Window Management in OS X

Ever since reading about Tiling Window Managers in Linux, I’ve been looking to either switch to Ubuntu (sadly, I can’t get it to support my cinema display) or achieve a similar effect on OS X.

I posted a question to StackOverflow, which eventually led me to SizeUp. Initially, SizeUp did not support moving windows between monitors, though that has since been addressed. I found that the default key bindings interfered with Emacs and other applications, so I have mine setup as follows:

The setup is quite intuitive, as I simply hold down Command + Option along with one of the following:

| y | u | i | o | p |
    | j | k | l |
    | m | , | . |

• y moves the window to the left screen
• p moves the window to the right screen
• k centers and maximizes the window (true maximize, not the crappy Apple maximize)
• i, and , move the window to the top or bottom half of the screen
• j, and l move the window to the left or right half of the screen
• u, o, m, and . move the window to the corners of the screen

By matching the commands to the qwerty layout, it’s easy to remember which key combination to use.

I’m not a fan of Command+Tab for application switching (I usually have a lot of applications to choose from). Instead, I use Quicksilver/Google Quick Search to type the first few letters of the application I want to switch to. From there, I use Command + ~ to switch between the windows of the application.