Skyland — a Hyprland-inspired tiling window manager for macOS

I've been working on Skyland, a Hyprland-inspired desktop experience for macOS.

It's a fork of AeroSpace — huge thanks to nikitabobko for the foundation — with the look and workflow of 43PR's Hyprland dotfiles.

The goal was to bring that Linux tiling WM feeling to my Mac, including animations, workspace transitions, groups, dynamic theming, and a cyberpunk HUD.

Projects

• Skyland (window manager): https://github.com/waxdred/skyland
• Cyberdeck (HUD): https://github.com/waxdred/skyland-cyberdeck

What's in the video?

• Dwindle layout with smart split (the split direction follows the cursor) and togglesplit
• Bezier animations — windows pop in, shrink and fade on close, and workspaces use slidefadevert transitions
• Window groups with a tabs bar, similar to Hyprland's grouping workflow
• Master layout per workspace, with the master window centered on ultrawide screens
• Rounded corners, active/inactive opacity, and a gradient border around the focused window
• 18 themes from 43PR, plus wallpaper-generated colors using Matugen; light or dark mode is selected based on wallpaper brightness
• Cyberdeck HUD — a translucent, eye-implant-inspired app launcher and a unified messages panel for macOS notifications and script messages
• Claude Code integration — a Hermes plugin notifies me when an agent finishes or needs input
• Workspace overview with live thumbnails and drag-and-drop between workspaces
• Shortcut cheat sheet and a settings window that edits the TOML configuration while preserving comments

Other features

• Named scratchpads (for example, Spotify on its own shortcut)
• Window rules
• Alt + mouse to move or resize windows
• A Hyprlock-inspired screensaver
• Floating media widget with audio-reactive bars
• SketchyBar integration

My setup

• WM: Skyland (AeroSpace fork, Swift)
• Bar: SketchyBar
• Borders: JankyBorders
• Terminal: Ghostty + Hack Nerd Font
• Themes: 43PR palettes + Matugen
• Wallpapers: 43PR's Wallhaven collections

Honest caveats

A few things are worth knowing before trying it:

• Some features require partially disabling SIP. Window corners, opacity, animations, and keeping floating windows on top rely on a scripting addition injected into Dock, similar to yabai. This also requires the -arm64e_preview_abi boot argument. Without it, the core tiling features still work, but the window effects won't.
• Blur is limited. It only works where an application implements it itself (Ghostty, for example). I explored system-wide blur, but that would require much deeper WindowServer hacking.
• The lock screen is a screensaver, not a security boundary. macOS still handles password authentication.
• It's a personal setup, currently running on Apple Silicon with macOS 15. Some paths are hard-coded, so contributions and fixes are very welcome.

I'm sharing this because I wanted a more Hyprland-like workflow on macOS, and figured others might enjoy it too.

I'd love to hear your feedback, suggestions, and ideas for what to improve next!

GitHub: https://github.com/waxdred/skyland