My thoughts after the first month of use

[Kha1r0]

Hey there!
I've switched to aerospace about a month ago and for my workflow, it's a big upgrade from the classic Sequoia experience or even Software like Rectangle.
Especially the straightforward config was very easy to get into.
There's two key faults i see in aerospace and want to spark a discussion about, especially 2. is very important to me.

1. Localized keyboard layouts

The default config is completely unusable with the german macOS keyboard layout.
This is because it binds to option + 56789 and L, which in the german macOS keyboard are already bound to [, ], |, {, } and @.

So for my config, i had to unbind the workspaces 56789, so i can use the brackets.
I also had to switch the navigation keys from HJKL to UIOP, so option + L is not blocked for the @ symbol.

Getting to this point as a beginner is not quite beginner friendly. It could be suggested to provide localized layouts or promote a place to show off own configs so beginners can more easily get started. Once i got the hang of it though, it wasn't a problem anymore.

2. Using aerospace alongside macOS spaces, not as a replacement

As Josean Martinez correctly mentions in his introduction, aerospace reimplements workspaces, because there are limitations with the built in Spaces, especially in terms of keyboard shortcuts and animation speed.

The problem is, that it misses some of Mission Control and macOS spaces's most important benifits.

1. Visual Overview
   • When in mission control, it is very easy to see a) which windows are open b) in which space, to get a grand perspective over the spaces.
   • Aerospace's workspaces completely lack this functionality. (Going through all the workspaces is not a suitable replacement.)
   • (Yes, enabling "Group Windows by application" makes it possible to graphically see every single open window, but that's not helpful since it doesn't show them in the context of their workspace, e.g. one browser instance for each workspace.)
2. Mouse/Trackpad Gestures and their Speed
   • Speaking on behalf of people, who sometimes lie in bed with their laptop, i don't want to use the keyboard to navigate 100% of the time.
   • The perfect window manager needs to be good at managing windows with the keyboard, as well as the mouse. The user has to have the opportunity to choose.
   • What aerospace lacks are the great and partly pretty fast Trackpad/Mouse gestures that macOS has for switching between workspaces and getting an overview (e.g. three finger swipe sideways, three finger swipe up).

So, what's the solution?

1. Completely discard Mouse Navigation, which will only make 100% keyboard navigation people happy, or:
2. give users the opportunity to either turn aerospace workspaces off completely, making only use of the aerospaces great tiling opportunities (Which would solve the situation for me already) or
3. Implement a mode, where aerospace workspaces work together with macOS spaces. e.g. only numbered workspaces corresponding to the macOS numbered workspaces.

Now, can't we already just use macOS Spaces and just stay on aerospace workspace 1 all the time? That would be nice, but no, we cannot. Let me give you an example.

Let's say I'm on a macOS Space and I'm on aerospace workspace 3. Both are empty:

When i open a window, it tiles correctly as expected.

But if i now open a new macOS Space, that also belongs to workspace 3 and open another window, the newly opened window tiles WITH THE WINDOW ON ANOTHER macOS SPACE.

Going back to the first space, we see, that it tiles with the other space, making it completely impossible to use macOS spaces, while aerospace is installed.

Besides, we will never get rid of macOS spaces anyways. Things like full screen Browser videos will always create a macOS Space.
Users need a way to turn off aerospace workspaces, if they prefer to use aerospace only for window tiling, not for workspace management. Because macOS is already very good at virtual desktop management.
Thanks for reading through this. I'm eager to hear about your opinion.
Cheers!

[Fanatic17]

I apologize for not reading all of it, I'm a fellow user of aerospace but I wanted to tell you a couple of things:

• Localization: yes i had the same problem too (italian keyboards, even though I switch between italian an US layout i need a reliable method to switch spaces in both) and i solved it assigning ctrl instead of option as the modifier to switch space and shift + ctrl to move a window to a monitor. I just wish i could configure reliably also qwerty or something with ctrl but it is used as a shortcut in many apps
• Turning aerospace off: in the menubar you can pause it or quit and it's basically the same thing or maybe I'm missing the point; keep in mind I only have one mac workspace since i began using aerospace.

I'll probably make my own post with my thoughts about this, this was inspirational

[Kha1r0]

I'm not talking about turning aerospace completely, but disabling aerospace workspaces, and keep using the tiling window functionality.

[Neo3477]

I have used BetterTouchTool to switch between workspaces:
3 finger swipe to the left: /opt/homebrew/bin/aerospace workspace next
3 finger swipe to the right: /opt/homebrew/bin/aerospace workspace prev

[Kha1r0]

Thats a great idea. But what do you do when you have a browser video maximized and it creates another space?
Also, the Visual Overview remains to be solved.

[shishkin]

I wonder if aerospace list-* queries could be used to build 3rd party workspace visualizer. I understand, the aerospace author is not keen on GUI bells and whistles, which is fair.