It’s Time To Get Your Mac Geek On With The Most Customizable App Window Manager

As a bona fide Mac geek I’m prone to using up a lot of RAM with a dozen or two open apps running on my Mac at any one time. Maybe it’s a personality quirk, but I like having an app pop front and center with a click.

That is, when I can find the app I want. My main Mac is a fully loaded MacBook Air which travels with me throughout the day. One disadvantage to a small and light Mac is the limited screen space. To tame the app window chaos I use a customizable window manager.

Cool. Not Easy. Free.

Among the half dozen or so Mac app windows managers, Slate is the one that’s cool because it’s customizable, easy to setup and use, and it’s free.

Use Slate to setup custom keystrokes to move and resize windows, putting them exactly where you want them.

Slate also remembers where an app’s window went. Controls come with preset layouts to get you started.

And, depending on your Mac’s display or extra display options, Slate can handle putting app windows in different locations, depending upon the attached displays.

There’s nothing to not like about how easy Slate is to use. That’s use, but configuration takes a little work.

Once installed into the Mac’s Menubar, simple select the Take Snapshot menu.

See? Simple enough, right?

Uh, almost.

Managing a screen full of app windows is daunting enough as it is. Slate can help, but it itself is a daunting app.

Here’s how Slate describes itself.

Slate is a window management application similar to Divvy and SizeUp (except better and free!). Originally written to replace them due to some limitations in how each work, it attempts to overcome them by simply being extremely configurable. As a result, it may be a bit daunting to get configured, but once it is done, the benefit is huge.

Daunting? Indeed.

Get your Mac geek on by editing the slate.js javascript file. This gives you a wealth of configuration options, but there’s no point and click to get there.

Think code. Think programming. Think expressions, parameters, strings, and values.

If you don’t mind wading through all that Slate is not, you’ll end up with the most configurable, customizable Mac app window manager on the planet.

If you’re short on the geek gene, you might be inclined to wonder which planet Slate came from, as it doesn’t appear to be of this earth.

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