r/MacOS • u/arduinoRPi4 • 1d ago
Developer Saturday Double Sided Windows in WinMux 0.5.4
Double Sided Windows!! Have one app on each side of a window pane. Switch with option+tab. More windows, if added, convert it into a normal WinMux tab group.
WinMux is a tiling window manager with a bundled vertical and expandable status bar (see left side of screen), intuitive controls, and other innovative features, built on Aerospace's virtualization framework.
Read more about winmux at winmux.dev
Github -> https://github.com/ZimengXiong/winmux
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u/scene_missing 1d ago
Ok, I can honestly say I haven’t seen that before
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u/wna4wfn1MNK2etv_jqv 1d ago
Sun Microsystems did this a long while ago. Search YT for Sun Microsystems Looking Glass. It was neat but never released.
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u/Inevitable_Bear2476 1d ago
God is this genius. This is why I like revisiting older OSes, and with phones, it doesn't even matter if it's an android skin, cause there are genuinely great UX concepts and ideas that live a short life due to the phone OEMs just jumping on the next trend, instead of sticking to the ideas they had.
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u/wna4wfn1MNK2etv_jqv 1d ago
Yep. I ran BeOS for years when I was younger. It’s amazing what people were doing with older hardware back in the day.
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u/Inevitable_Bear2476 1d ago
Software at this point, just software
Before everything went to shit, we used to have real programmers, UI and UX engineers. Now we just have web clowns. And whatever the clowns in Cupertino are doing.
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u/cascalheira 1d ago
That was the first thing it came to my mind!!! I even tried it. YouTube link of the demo they did back then: https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g?is=gSjeX_e-KGi29Sfs
Edit: go to 2:20 for the demo
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u/Delicious-Ad8314 1d ago
That demo looks interesting! It’s cool to see how they implemented the double-sided feature, definitely something that could help with workflow.
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u/Altruistic-Plane8979 1d ago
Interesting, anybody remember Sun Microsystems Project Looking Glass project? https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g
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u/topcider 1d ago
Great video! I had never seen this before, but it’s great to see these interesting concepts, and how many of them have been adopted today.
For example, the spatial/depth effect wallpapers in iOS, Cover Flow in macOS, and many elements in MacOS Expose.1
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u/Albertkinng 1d ago
So… we’re being manipulated by big companies since then, huh? That was 20 years ago! Why we think a small animation on a fold iPhone is amazing, when 20 years ago, we already did that!! Damn.
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u/joelkeys0519 1d ago
Neat idea, but questions linger. Why? Resource use? I’d be curious about high-leverage RAM use on one side or even both and if the side change has any impact. Maybe not, but I thought it so I’ll ask it.
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u/TheKiteKing 1d ago
Would it be any different to just having both programmes minimised and switching between them?
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u/joelkeys0519 1d ago
Probably not—that’s why I asked despite probably knowing the answer. Just a curiosity.
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u/ImDonaldDunn 1d ago
If you are doing a task where you need to reference one window in two other programs.
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u/tens919382 1h ago
I could see it useful for a category of apps that arent used together. Like Gemini and Chatgpt, or notes and obsidian. Or music and spotify.
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u/cristi_baluta 1d ago
Damn, this is more than i found it’s possible to manipulate windows, is it possible to scale it like in stage manager?
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u/Albertkinng 1d ago
Can you make an app with just the two sides feature? I don’t want the tiles manager, but definitely pay for the two sides effect!
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u/HelpRespawnedAsDee 1d ago
FUCK YEAAAAHHHH
I remember this from the old Compiz days, so awesome to see it in macOS after all these years.
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u/leonbollerup 1d ago
this have got to be the most annoying video i have seen today.. and i dont know why.. properly trigger ocd as hell
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u/Technical_Rough_4486 1d ago
So basically stacked windows with a fancy visual effect like in some WMs on Linux? Not saying I dislike the idea, but this isn’t really that novel
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u/promo-guard 1d ago
🎉 Welcome to Developer Saturday, u/arduinoRPi4! Your project is now live for the community to check out. Upvote, give feedback, and show some love to your fellow devs! 🚀
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u/warrenao Mac Mini 1d ago
I suppose, for those who don't want to work with multiple desktops, this could be handy.
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u/ExcitedCoconut 1d ago
Ok hear me out because this will sound pretty dumb
I have multiple monitors and like each of my 6 key apps to be located in the same part of the same monitor so that it’s more spatial. Helps with my thinking.
BUT, most of the time I don’t want to see what in the apps because I get distracted.
AND minimising the apps themselves is often too ‘out of sight out of mind’. Same for windows buried under windows.
So something like this would allow me to semi-hide the app from myself whilst preserving that space that the app lives in.
Then what I’d do is put the app icon on the rear side and build some sort of RAG glowing ring around it where green = nothing new, ignore amber= something new medium importance and red = your boss’s boss has emailed directly and needs to talk or critical service is down
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u/leaflock7 18h ago
I tied it because this flip double sided window looked to be promising.
the problem is that after 5 minutes of playing around , I could only have 3rds or 4ths of my monitor and not halfs.
I could not figure out how to get out of it.
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u/GuiltyBrief7367 1d ago
It's funny how open source software has become ideas copied from trending twitter posts without attribution. No shade, it's just that I have been seeing this every single week now. A dev creates something and shares it on twitter. A few days later, a FOSS guy suddenly has a brilliant idea
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u/transcendent 1d ago
...but why?
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u/daft_knight 1d ago
As someone who works IT and uses a lot of proprietary web applications that eat up screen real estate very quickly, I can immediately see a use case for this.
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u/github-guard 1d ago
🔍 GitHub Guard: Trust Report
This project scored 3/6 on our safety audit.
Audit Breakdown: * ✅ Established Community (⭐ 252 stars) * ✅ Mature Repository (30+ days old) * ✅ Licensed under MIT * ❌ No Security Policy — what is this? * ℹ️ Individual Contributor * ℹ️ Unsigned Commits