Just how well do tiling window managers work nowadays?

Rectangle works great for me. Mostly I use it when I need to display two windows side-by-side, so I use my L-half shortcut to display one window on the L half of the screen, and equivalently for the R. I can also activate these with the buttons on my Logitech G502X mouse, which I've programmed to activate those shortcuts. I also use the full-screen shortcut a lot. I occasionally divide my screen into quarters, but that's rare. You can also do this using the Mac's built-in tiling, but the Mac's system doesn't respond as quickly, and its shortcuts are more cumbersome. E.g., I use Command-Left Arrow to tile to the L half of the screen with Rectange, while the Mac uses Fn-Control-Left Arrow (though perhaps the Mac's shortcuts can be changed).

I second this. I use Rectangle Free and it works like a charm. Perhaps someday I'll try one with good "suggestions" for where to place the window when dragging it with the cursor, but for now I'm okay with just using the keyboard.

While I have Loop (free) as window manager, in practise I mostly use Swift Shift (free), which moves/resizes windows fast.

feels kinda of weird that, swish wasn't mentioned yet (given its past popularity) 😂 ... I liked it and will buy it once my trial period ends. I'm not sure about multi-monitor compatibility as I use my MBP as my main driver

Magnet has worked great for me. I've configured my own preferred hotkeys for all the window placements and use it all day to get things exactly where I want them instantly. Huge workflow accelerator. No app compatibility problems that I've yet encountered. (Using it on macOS Tahoe.) Well worth the modest price.

I think the compatibility question depends a lot on whether you mean a true tiling window manager or a window snapping helper. On macOS, fully automatic tiling can be great, but some apps will always be awkward: apps with strict minimum sizes, custom toolbars, floating palettes, weird modal windows, or apps that expose extra AX windows. In those cases, the best tools usually need an “ignore” or “floating” mode. For most normal apps, simple snapping tends to be much more reliable because it only acts when you ask it to. The main limitation is that macOS may refuse the exact frame if the app has a minimum width/height, so a good window manager should read the actual result back instead of assuming the requested size worked. macOS built-in tiling is useful, but the green-button menu has always felt a bit interruptive to me. You have to move the pointer to a tiny traffic-light control, wait for the menu, then choose a layout. That little pause breaks the flow, especially if you arrange windows many times a day. For me the bigger workflow split is keyboard-first vs trackpad-first. Rectangle/Magnet/Moom/Raycast are great if shortcuts feel natural. If you mostly work on a MacBook trackpad, gesture-based window control can feel lighter because you don’t have to remember as many key combos. Disclosure: I’m building a macOS window manager, so I’ve been running into these edge cases a lot recently.

I’ve used one ever since i got a computer (past 9years), some apps dont play nice, esp alot of eda tools (that you’d be lucky to be able to run anyways (x11, vivado, etc). Fusion’s floating sidebar is a separate window that can get managed sometimes . But overall, I’ve had no problems, if an app doesn’t play nicely i just toggle floating/unmanaged mode. I would recommend virtual workspaces over native ones (aerospace over yabai). Performance isnt as good as native under load but its much more reliable IMO. Recommend to just use one display if u can, multi-monitor is just confusing. I would never go back to using the computer without a tiling wm.

macOS has built-in tiling options if you long press on the green traffic light. Personally, I wouldn’t pay for an app to do that.

I used Aerospace for a while and I liked it. For stacking and switching between multiple instances of the same app, it made things a lot easier. Switching from 1 -> 2 screens was much better too - no more having to rearrange things all the time. I moved away because I stopped needing to stack apps, but I would recommend giving it a whirl.

Yabai is the only one I’ve used that has proper binary space partitioning support like I’ve seen in Linux hyprland. It’s also highly customizable and works well on a large screen. And it doesn’t screw up native Mac spaces. Pair it with skhd to do custom key remapping and it’s A+ It does run in the terminal and is managed by a config text file but if you can get over the learning curve it is my favorite by far over Amethyst, Aerospace, Magnet, Rectangle, Mac default tiling.

Stay since a few years. Never let me down, and it handles two offices and home with different monitors and setups. Some of them 4 monitor environments. Nevet fails, not one app and boy i have a very rigid idea of how i want things…

Amethyst FTW!

Also a happy Rectangle Pro user here. I don't want a window manager that tries to auto-arrange all windows. That's too "dynamic" for me. But I do want to quickly "throw" windows into a couple of pre-defined places, like corners or the central column. The mouse gestures of Rectangle Pro are awesome for that.

In my experience, the apps aren't the hard part. The hard part is going back to a normal desktop afterwards.

My personal experience is that built-in basic window snapping is pretty reliable now, but expecting a full tiling window manager experience can still lead to some annoying edge cases. For normal apps it works well enough for me. The problems tend to show up with apps that have fixed-size windows, custom toolbars, floating palettes, or windows that just do not like being resized. Adobe apps are a good example. They usually do not break the window manager, but they can make neat layouts harder to maintain. I would start simple with shortcuts for half-screen, thirds, maximize, and move-to-display. If that fixes most of the problem, I would not spend too much time setting up a full tiling system.