How can I change ID of display and space?

[kentaro0919]

I have three monitors.
[ Display no3 with ID 3] [Display no2 with ID 2] [MacBook with ID 1]
I am trying to rearrange the order of monitors to the following.
[ Display no3 with ID 1] [Display no2 with ID 2] [MacBook with ID 3]

If this is not possible
Do you know if I can change the ID of the space?
[ Display no3 {Space 4} {Space 5} {Space 6}]
to
[ Display no3 {Space 1} {Space 2} {Space 3}]

[koekeishiya]

The space numbering is handled by macOS and is not something we can override. You can assign labels to spaces in yabai upon startup, which you can refer to in Yabai-related commands that operate on spaces, which will allow for the sort of keybindings that you are trying to create.

I have not looked into very much details with regards to the display situation. You can probably change the arrangement of your displays in the Display section of System Settings/Preferences, or use some external tool for display management. Yabai does not offer any feature to customize this.

[kentaro0919]

Thank you for your information.

[albertsj1]

I have 4 monitors (if you include my mac laptop). I wanted to refer to my displays consistently from left to right, with the display farthest on the left being display 1. My laptop is my primary monitor and happens to be in position 3 when ordered from left to right. I have 9 spaces configured for my primary display. This is how I made that happen. It's not the most elegant solution, but it works for me.

I have a script called yabai_ctl.sh. This purpose of this script is to call yabai -m query --displays and use jq to sort the displays from left to right and dump the display numbers in a text file, ordered from left to right. When you disconnect/reconnect your displays, the script will be triggered again and re-order your displays if necessary.

#!/usr/bin/env sh

case "${1}" in
    display_added|display_removed|display_initialize)
        yabai -m query --displays | jq -r 'sort_by(.frame.x) | .[].index' | xargs > ~/.config/yabai/env/displays.txt
        ;;
    *)
        echo "'${1}' not a recognized option."
esac

In my ~/.yabairc, I have the following to call that script and use the output.

${HOME}/bin/yabai_ctl.sh display_initialize &> /dev/null
readarray -d ' ' -t screens < ${Y_ENV_DIR}/displays.txt

# When I have 4 displays, I know I want 3 to be my primary.
PRIMARY_DISPLAY=${screens[3]}
MAX_SPACES=9

yabai -m config external_bar                all:32:0 \
                layout                      bsp \
                window_border               on \
                window_border_width         $D_WINDOW_BORDER_WIDTH \
                normal_window_border_color  $D_NORMAL_BORDER_COLOR \
                active_window_border_color  $D_ACTIVE_BORDER_COLOR \
                top_padding                 $D_WINDOW_PADDING \
                bottom_padding              $D_WINDOW_PADDING \
                left_padding                $D_WINDOW_PADDING \
                right_padding               $D_WINDOW_PADDING \
                window_gap                  $D_WINDOW_PADDING \
                auto_balance                off \
                split_ratio                 0.5 \
                window_shadow               off \
                window_animation_duration   0.0 \
                window_opacity              on \
                active_window_opacity       1.0 \
                normal_window_opacity       0.9 \
                mouse_follows_focus          on
#                debug_output on


#
# setup spaces
#
for i in $(yabai -m query --spaces | jq ".[] | select((.display == ${PRIMARY_DISPLAY:=1}) and .index > $MAX_SPACES).index"); do
  echo yabai -m space --destroy $i
done

function setup_space {
  local idx="$1"
  local name="$2"
  local space=
  echo "setup space $idx : $name"

  space=$(yabai -m query --spaces --space "$idx")
  if [ -z "$space" ]; then
    yabai -m space --create
  fi

  yabai -m space "$idx" --label "$name"
}

setup_space 1 emacs
setup_space 2 web
setup_space 3 outlook
setup_space 4 chime
setup_space 5 firefox
setup_space 6 other
setup_space 7 slack
setup_space 8 kiwi
setup_space 9 term

# rules, etc....

yabai -m signal --add event=display_added action="${HOME}/bin/yabai_ctl.sh display_added &> /dev/null; skhd -r"
yabai -m signal --add event=display_removed action="${HOME}/bin/yabai_ctl.sh display_removed &> /dev/null; skhd -r"

Sorry this is so long. I need to get my config files in Github and possibly write a blog post about this.