Ribbon vs AeroSpace: tree tiling or a scrolling strip?

Two different ideas of tiling

AeroSpace divides the screen. Every window on a workspace gets a share of the visible area, arranged in a tree of containers. Open a fourth window and the other three get narrower to make room. You can switch a container between side-by-side tiles and an "accordion" that works like i3's tabbed or stacked modes, but everything you see always fits on the screen.

Ribbon never divides the screen. Each new window becomes a new column on a horizontal strip, at a width you picked from a few presets. The strip runs off the edge of the display, and moving focus slides it along. Nothing shrinks when you open something new. That's the model niri and PaperWM made popular on Linux; what a scrolling window manager is explains it in more detail.

Neither approach is better in general. A tree works well when you keep two to four windows on screen and want all of them visible. A strip works well when you have many windows open, on a laptop or an ultrawide monitor, and you'd rather scroll to them than squeeze them.

AeroSpace in brief

AeroSpace is free and MIT-licensed, and it's very popular with people coming from i3 or sway. A few things define it:

• Config is a TOML file at ~/.aerospace.toml, plus an aerospace command-line tool with man pages. The project says it will never add a settings GUI.
• It runs its own workspaces. macOS Spaces are set aside. When you switch away from a workspace, AeroSpace moves its windows into the bottom-left or bottom-right corner of the screen, outside the visible area. The intended setup is one macOS Space per monitor.
• No SIP changes. AeroSpace says it will never ask you to disable System Integrity Protection.
• It's a public beta. The project expects breaking changes until 1.0.
• It isn't notarized. The Homebrew cask from the author's own tap removes the quarantine flag so macOS will open it.

Install it with brew install --cask nikitabobko/tap/aerospace. It runs on macOS 13 and later.

Ribbon in brief

Ribbon gives you one layout, the scrolling strip, and a native settings window where every option has a switch or a slider. Shortcuts are Control + Option plus a key: ⌃⌥← and ⌃⌥→ move focus, ⌃⌥⇧→ moves the window, ⌃⌥R cycles column widths and ⌃⌥F makes a column full width. You can stack several windows in one column or turn a column into tabs.

A three- or four-finger trackpad swipe moves the strip under your fingers. Each display and each Space has its own strip, so Mission Control and full-screen apps keep working. The engine is built on Paneru, an open-source MIT project, with a SwiftUI app on top. Ribbon runs on macOS 13 Ventura and later, on Apple silicon (M1 or later), and it's signed and notarized.

Side by side

Where AeroSpace is the better choice

• You know i3 or sway. The tree, the container commands and the workspace-per-number habit carry straight over. Our i3 on a Mac guide covers that route.
• You want everything visible. If you hate windows living off-screen, a tree that always fits the display is the right model.
• You want config in a file. A TOML file you keep in your dotfiles, with a CLI you can script, is exactly what some people want. Ribbon doesn't offer that.
• You don't want to pay. AeroSpace is free and very capable.

Where Ribbon is the better choice

• You want to keep macOS Spaces. With Ribbon, Mission Control, full-screen apps and the four-finger Space swipe behave as they always did. With AeroSpace's own workspaces, hidden windows sit in a corner and Mission Control shows them very small.
• You use several monitors with no spare corner. AeroSpace needs free space in the bottom-left or bottom-right of every monitor, or hidden windows can show up on another display. Ribbon keeps a separate strip per display.
• You'd rather click than edit. Every Ribbon option is in the settings window, and the Mac Setup page warns you about macOS settings that would get in the way.
• You want a trackpad gesture. Scrolling the strip with your fingers is one of the main reasons people pick a scrolling manager on a MacBook.
• You want a signed app with someone to email. Ribbon is notarized, and the developer answers support mail.

Switching from AeroSpace to Ribbon

Quit AeroSpace and remove it from login items first; two window managers fighting over the same windows never ends well. AeroSpace moves all windows back on screen when it quits. Ribbon wants "Displays have separate Spaces" turned on, which AeroSpace recommends turning off, so check that setting next. The setup guide walks through it and the trackpad settings.

Your AeroSpace habits map roughly like this: focus and move keys become ⌃⌥ and ⌃⌥⇧ plus arrows or H/J/K/L, accordion becomes a tabbed column (⌃⌥⇧T), and numbered workspaces become macOS Spaces, which you switch with Control + arrow keys or a swipe.

Not sure yet? Watch the live demo to see the strip move before you spend anything, or compare the other options in AeroSpace alternatives. When you're ready, buy Ribbon. All sales are final: no refunds (see the terms), so try the demo first.