Removal of window borders

[koekeishiya]

The window border functionality has had issues ever since macOS Ventura launched, and these issues persist in macOS Sonoma.

Some of these issues include, but are not limited to: incorrect z-ordering, incompatibility with window animations, incompatibility with topmost windows, weird lag upon window focus, inability to properly match corner radius of attached window, mission-control jankiness.

I will be removing this feature in an upcoming version of yabai.

Most of these issues are fairly trivial to solve iff the Apple WindowManager process is prevented from loading, as mentioned in various issues by @FelixKratz, but I am not interested in going that route.

It should not be particularly hard for a fork to reintroduce window borders in a patch if they wish to do so.

[gldtn]

Just to let you know @koekeishiya , I don't even know why I had expose as a shortcut in skhdrc as I have no use for it. When I did enter expose, I saw that borders was still there. Mentioning just in case you missed it!

yabai -m window --toggle expose

[Bellavene]

Expose has its own borders ))

[aymane-eljerari]

Are there any alternatives to use? It's more difficult to distinguish the highlighted window without any window border color.

[zakroma]

Window borders was an amazing feature that is really worth keeping. Very sad to see it go. Hope you'll change your mind.

[robrecord]

Does anyone know of an alternative to highlight the currently active window now that borders have been removed?

You could try FelixKratz fork: https://github.com/FelixKratz/yabai
Be sure to read the readme file.

[brorbw]

Sad to see it go. For me this is a regression in the feature set for a tiling window manger. inb4 "make your own fork"

[Bellavene]

In case someone is interested, you can add the borders back by using hammerspoon. Unfortunately it's not perfect yet, as theres a delay as well as no support for rounded borders, but knowing which window is active is more important in my opinion. Here's the snippet for anyone interested. Feel free to change and comment, i'm interested in improvements.

-- fix the window border issue, as the option was deleted from yabai
local windowfilter = require 'hs.window.filter'
local defaultFilter = windowfilter.default
local indicatorWIN = nil

local function drawBorder()
  -- Delete the old border if it exists
  if indicatorWIN then
    indicatorWIN:delete()
  end

  local win = hs.window.focusedWindow()
  local screen = win:screen()
  local max = screen:fullFrame()
  local f = win:frame()
  indicatorWIN = hs.canvas.new { x = max.x, y = max.y, h = max.h, w = max.w }:appendElements({
    type = "rectangle",
    action = "stroke",
    strokeWidth = 1.0,
    -- strokeColor = { red = 1.0 },
    strokeColor = { red = 250/255, green = 189/255, blue = 47/255 },
    frame = { x = f.x, y = f.y, h = f.h, w = f.w }
  }):show()
end

defaultFilter:subscribe(windowfilter.windowFocused, function()
  drawBorder()
end)

defaultFilter:subscribe(windowfilter.windowMoved, function()
  drawBorder()
end)

Hammerspoon is far from perfect for that case. Better to use Felix's fork, as described by robrecord #1889 (comment)

[MatterMr]

Is it possible to leave the option for users to use window borders, allowing us to choose whether we want the performance loss or not?

[koekeishiya]

It is not a matter of "performance loss". The functionality has literally been broken since the launch of macOS Ventura. See the 19 related issues for more details.

[brorbw]

I have been using borders on Ventura without issues. I don't use any animation nor expose or any macOS WM stuff (mainstage) though so it might not work with those I wouldn't know. I sincerely appreciate the hours put in to this project and I'm well aware of https://mikemcquaid.com/open-source-maintainers-owe-you-nothing/. That said removing a quite essential feature without much warning or switch to re enable "unsupported" feature seems like an odd choice. I respect that this is your project and ultimately you are in charge - I think this seems so out of the blue.
Especially for those of us that have not been aware, or choose to ignore the minor issues with the borders.

[aragalie]

I'm very grateful for your work @koekeishiya on yabai, as it really makes working on my Mac a great experience.

Having said that, I really really have a hard time now that I don't know which of my windows has focus. Frankly,yabai has now lost a lot of its value for me...

I do understand though the rationale for removing it, and I also don't think it makes sense to keep a broken feature, as it only creates more hassle the more time passes.

But we're still left with the core problem: how can I easily identify the active window now?

Does anyone have a suggestion on what can be done, within the confines of the current version, on how to do this?

[noamvokaal]

I completely agree with @aragalie. Yabai has helped me immensely over the years. Borders is the feature that made me use Yabai and not Amethyst.

The only possible solution not mentioned here is window opacity. You can increase the transparency of inactive windows with this feature. I do not find this solution usable though.

[zakroma]

I completely agree with @aragalie. Yabai has helped me immensely over the years. Borders is the feature that made me use Yabai and not Amethyst.

The only possible solution not mentioned here is window opacity. You can increase the transparency of inactive windows with this feature. I do not find this solution usable though.

I fully agree. Unfortunately using transparency is not an option for silicon macs when one's using ios apps hence disabling sip is not possible.

[koekeishiya]

I mean I get it, I liked borders too when they worked, but I am the one dealing with all the support requests. As I said, all you have to do is look through the 19 issues connected to this one to get an idea of how exhausting that is. I am done with this topic now.

[Jbusma]

i get being burned out on a billion perfectionist requests, but you could just ignore them instead of torching a perfectly good tool.

i bet if you polled everyone you'd get 90%+ of people who never have a noticeable issue.

don't be a slave to an ungrateful, vocal, minority.

[koekeishiya]

I think you are severely underestimating the number of people who go "nah fuck this" when something does not work, rather than reporting the issue. I know because I am usually one of them.

I don't have issues with ungrateful people or whatever; I make decisions that I personally think are the correct way to go, and this happens to be one of them. If someone disagrees with decisions that I make they are free to make a fork or build their own software.

[cloud-wanderer]

@koekeishiya I completely understand you, as you offer your precious free time to develop and maintain this amazing tool. It's become irreplaceable in many people's daily workflow, including my own. Meaning: Thanks for your hard work!

In that sense, I do think this still leaves the core problem: How to identify an active window?

I can not, and probably would not if i had a choice, deactivate SIP, so any transparency configurations do not work, besides other things.

As the borders are now gone, it has become impossible for me to identify an active window. Yabai is still valuable as a window manager, however if it is impossible to identify the current window, it becomes useless to fulfill this function. This a hard problem, that needs to be addressed, regardless of borders or not.

Side Note

Without deactivating SIP, certain things like switching, moving and refocusing apps to different desktop besides others are not possible, therefor i've been scripting my way around this with hammerspoon and lua. I've been able to do all things that i've been missing, including borders. However this is not ideal, only showcases that it is possible. Reason I am saying this is: It is possible, even with SIP, to do everything. (excluding transparency, i've tried with overlays but it's not ideal and i quickly deprecated that thought) Maybe there is a way for yabai as well, without adding too much effort in maintaining or using hacks.

[DetachedHeadState]

Just spitballing here, but would it be possible/feasible to pull the border highlighting functionality into its own standalone tool? My understanding is that this used to be the case (limelight?) so presumably there was a technical reason it needed to be pulled into yabai proper, but it does seem to me that conceptually at least, this is a completely orthogonal feature to the core of what yabai does, so if there is any way this could be done then maybe that would be the way forward that addresses the stability concerns while also giving folks the option of having the highlights if they really want it?

Would love the author's insights into what sorts of technical roadblocks might be encountered with this approach.

[brorbw]

@DetachedHeadState I think this is more that possible to extract the features. Limelight is probably not feasible to pick up development on again however.
If you look at https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar for instance it uses the same hooks into Skylight and CoreGraphics and it is probably the result of yabai removing the top bar ages ago (Spacebar was the first to port the top bar functionallity out of yabai iirc).
However both SketchyBar and yabai uses non public apis which are inherently hard to debug and requires a bit more finessing than just your run of the mill application.

[FelixKratz]

I had some free time yesterday and hacked together a new standalone border system: https://github.com/FelixKratz/JankyBorders

It does not use the accessibility API at all and should thus be faster.

Feel free to contribute.

[Bellavene]

I had some free time yesterday and hacked together a new standalone border system: https://github.com/FelixKratz/JankyBorders

It does not use the accessibility API at all and should thus be faster.

Feel free to contribute.

Thanks! Will try soon.

[Bellavene]

Outstanding. Lightning fast borders, like it should be. Thank You.

[ghost]

Thanks, @FelixKratz, really appreciate your efforts, you are a lifesaver :)

[szhanggg]

@FelixKratz you are the goat bruh.

[gabriel-vasile]

I am on macos 12 so I should not be affected by the border issues but I upgraded yabai to v6.0.1 (my mistake, I didn't know the borders would be removed)
Is there any way for me to return to v5.0.9? homebrew has only the latest version and installing from source again only has the option --HEAD to install latest code.

[rjhilgefort]

@FelixKratz Thanks for the additional tool, works great! 🙌🙌🙌

[SichangHe]

I am on macos 12 so I should not be affected by the border issues but I upgraded yabai to v6.0.1 (my mistake, I didn't know the borders would be removed) Is there any way for me to return to v5.0.9? homebrew has only the latest version and installing from source again only has the option --HEAD to install latest code.

I forked the Homebrew formula and rolled it back to the v5.0.9 commit. You can install that version like:

brew install SichangHe/yabai5/yabai

[koekeishiya]

Upgrade to yabai v6.0.10 and use https://github.com/FelixKratz/JankyBorders instead.

[xiantang]

coool will try

…

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