Ricing MacOS (For Beginners)

One thing I always felt was lackluster regarding Apple was their lack of customization. Apple has great UI principles, though, so at some point, I stopped caring very much. It looks great out-of-the-box, so why bother trying to change it?

Then I discovered r/unixporn. If you're not familiar, it's a popular subreddit where people can share their *NIX customizations. After looking through the top posts for what felt like hours, I decided to make my machine my machine.

A screenshot of how everything looks together with the obligatory neofetch.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Most of what I accomplished was from compiling various resources from the specs shared on each post and figuring out which ones would work best for me. I knew next to nothing about customizing my experience on MacOS, but I figured I'd give it a go.

Here's what I did.

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TL;DR —

WM: Yabai
Hotkey Daemon: skhd
IDE: VSCode
terminal: Warp
widgets: Übersicht
bar: simple-bar

& that's pretty much it!

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Window Management

I wasn't sure what exactly I was looking for here. I tried Rectangle, which was really solid since it behaved similarly to Windows, but ultimately settled on yabai.

There was also a specific widget I wanted to use that required yabai (more about that below).

Here's my yabai config —

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# global settings
yabai -m config mouse_follows_focus          off
yabai -m config focus_follows_mouse          off
yabai -m config window_placement             second_child
yabai -m config window_topmot                off
yabai -m config window_opacity               off
yabai -m config window_opacity_duration      0.16
yabai -m config window_shadow                on
yabai -m config window_border                off
yabai -m config window_border_placement      inset # exterior
yabai -m config window_border_width          5
yabai -m config window_border_radius         3
yabai -m config active_window_border_topmost on
yabai -m config active_window_border_color   0xffF9D48F
yabai -m config normal_window_border_color   0xff1B222D
yabai -m config active_window_opacity        1.0
yabai -m config normal_window_opacity        1.0
yabai -m config split_ratio                  0.50
yabai -m config auto_balance                 off
yabai -m config mouse_modifier               fn
yabai -m config mouse_action1                move
yabai -m config mouse_action2                resize

# general space settings
yabai -m config layout                       bsp
yabai -m config top_padding                  44
yabai -m config bottom_padding               8
yabai -m config left_padding                 8
yabai -m config right_padding                8
yabai -m config window_gap                   8

# no yabai 
yabai -m rule --add label="System Preferences" app="^System Preferences$" manage=off
yabai -m rule --add label="Finder" app="^Finder$" manage=off
yabai -m rule --add label="App Store" app="^App Store$" manage=off
yabai -m rule --add label="Activity Monitor" app="^Activity Monitor$" manage=off
yabai -m rule --add label="Calculator" app="^Calculator$" manage=off
yabai -m rule --add label="Colorpicker" app="^Colorpicker$" manage=off

Hotkey Daemon

Since I use yabai for window management, using skhd feels like a must.

Here's my skhd config —

# ~/.config/skhd/skhdrc

# change window focus within space
alt - j : yabai -m window --focus south
alt - k : yabai -m window --focus north
alt - h : yabai -m window --focus west
alt - l : yabai -m window --focus east

#change focus between external displays (left and right)
alt - s: yabai -m display --focus west
alt - g: yabai -m display --focus east

# rotate layout clockwise
shift + alt - r : yabai -m space --rotate 270

# flip along y-axis
shift + alt - y : yabai -m space --mirror y-axis

# flip along x-axis
shift + alt - x : yabai -m space --mirror x-axis

# toggle window float
shift + alt - t : yabai -m window --toggle float --grid 4:4:1:1:2:2

# maximize a window
shift + alt - m : yabai -m window --toggle zoom-fullscreen

# balance out tree of windows (resize to occupy same area)
shift + alt - e : yabai -m space --balance

# swap windows
shift + alt - j : yabai -m window --swap south
shift + alt - k : yabai -m window --swap north
shift + alt - h : yabai -m window --swap west
shift + alt - l : yabai -m window --swap east

# move window and split
ctrl + alt - j : yabai -m window --warp south
ctrl + alt - k : yabai -m window --warp north
ctrl + alt - h : yabai -m window --warp west
ctrl + alt - l : yabai -m window --warp east

# move window to display left and right
shift + alt - s : yabai -m window --display west; yabai -m display --focus west;
shift + alt - g : yabai -m window --display east; yabai -m display --focus east;

#move window to prev and next space
shift + alt - p : yabai -m window --space prev;
shift + alt - n : yabai -m window --space next;

# move window to space #
shift + alt - 1 : yabai -m window --space 1;
shift + alt - 2 : yabai -m window --space 2;
shift + alt - 3 : yabai -m window --space 3;
shift + alt - 4 : yabai -m window --space 4;
shift + alt - 5 : yabai -m window --space 5;
shift + alt - 6 : yabai -m window --space 6;
shift + alt - 7 : yabai -m window --space 7;

# stop/start/restart yabai
ctrl + alt - q : brew services stop yabai
ctrl + alt - s : brew services start yabai
ctrl + alt - r : brew services restart yabai

I didn't really feel like I needed to configure yabai + skhd too much, but after getting used to it in my workflow and updating it as needed, I have no idea how I could ever go back to not using it.

IDE

I use VSCode for my IDE. I've tinkered with Neovim, and Zed and I think either one would be a solid replacement for VSCode. Personally, I'm leaning more towards Neovim. The whole point of 'ricing' for me was to make my machine feel more like my machine and that's what Neovim offers. I also really like the idea of not using a mouse since getting used to skhd.

I don't have Neovim on this machine (yet), but here's Zed & VSCode side by side —

Light - Zed, Dark - VSCode.

As you can see, Zed is familiar. I like what Zed promises, so I definitely plan to use it here and there and continue to learn about it (Neovim too), but VSCode is my go-to for the foreseeable future.

I use VSCode with the Vitesse Black theme.

Terminal

I use Warp for my terminal. It's fast, and feels more intuitive to me than other terminals. It's also very customizable. There are a lot of solid options for terminals, but it really just comes down to personal preference and what you're actually using it for. I definitely recommend trying a few out, at least.

Warp comes with some default themes, but I went ahead and made my own. Nothing fancy but I tend to prefer slightly muted colors.

# Knlrvr.yaml

accent: "#6a9fb5"
background: "#151515"
details: darker
foreground: "#d0d0d0"
terminal_colors:
bright:
	black: "#505050"
	blue: "#b0b0b0"
	cyan: "#8f5536"
	green: "#202020"
	magenta: "#e0e0e0"
	red: "#d28445"
	white: "#f5f5f5"
	yellow: "#303030"
normal:
	black: "#111111"
	blue: "#6a9fb5"
	cyan: "#75b5aa"
	green: "#90a959"
	magenta: "#aa759f"
	red: "#ac4142"
	white: "#d0d0d0"
	yellow: "#f4bf75"

There's a few different customization options for Warp that you can read about here.

Übersicht

Übersicht provides widgets for your desktop. The only widget that I have configured, however, is simple-bar.

simple-bar is the tool I wanted that required the installation of yabai. It's a great little cosmetic addition and gives me a good idea of the happenings of my machine. It's also highly customizable, so you can really make it work for you.

Here's what it looks like -

A screenshot of just the simple-bar. If you're on mobile, I'm so sorry.

Conclusion

I don't think I did as much as I could have, but I really enjoy my experience on my Macbook now. It feels more like I'm using something that belongs to me rather than something that Apple has provided. I don't know that there's much else I would do, but if I find anything, I'll be sure to add updates to this post.

Igor Bedesqui & Nexxel heavily inspired this endeavor, and I highly recommend reading what they have to say about their processes as they're both miles ahead of me.

Let me know what you think! & as always, happy coding!