dotfiles

My personal dotfiles for macOS, managed with Git and symlinks.

What's included

Package	Config path	Description
yabai	~/.config/yabai	yabai tiling window manager (current WM)
skhd	~/.config/skhd	skhd hotkey daemon (yabai keybinds)
borders	~/.config/borders	JankyBorders — active-window border
sketchybar	~/.config/sketchybar	sketchybar status bar
yabai-spaces	(menu-bar app)	YabaiSpaces — Desktop switcher + ⌃⌥Space window search for yabai
aerospace	~/.config/aerospace	AeroSpace window manager (kept as a fallback)
alacritty	~/.config/alacritty	Alacritty terminal
firefox	~/Library/...	Firefox userChrome & Sidebery layout
ghostty	~/.config/ghostty	Ghostty terminal
kitty	~/.config/kitty	Kitty terminal
nvim	~/.config/nvim	Neovim (lazy.nvim)
tmux	~/.tmux.conf	Tmux
zsh	~/.config/zsh, ~/.zshenv	Modular Zsh + Starship prompt

Window manager stack

yabai (tiling) + skhd (hotkeys) + borders (active-window border) + sketchybar (status bar) form the window-manager setup, mirroring the old AeroSpace/Glide keybindings. The full guide — install, the SIP / scripting-addition steps, keybindings, naming your Desktops, and theming — lives in yabai/README.md.

setup.sh installs the brew packages (yabai, skhd, borders, sketchybar) and the required fonts (font-meslo-lg-nerd-font, font-sketchybar-app-font).

YabaiSpaces — the menu-bar companion

yabai-spaces/ is a small native macOS menu-bar app built to sit on top of the yabai config in this repo — the two are meant to be used together:

• the status item shows the name of the Desktop you're on (main, term, code, … — the same names yabairc assigns and skhdrc binds to alt-1/i/c/…),
• clicking it lists every Desktop with the apps on it; click one to focus it,
• ⌃⌥Space opens a fuzzy window switcher across all Desktops.

Everything it shows comes from yabai -m query, so it stays in sync with the window manager automatically and needs no extra permissions. It's the lightweight alternative to running sketchybar just for the spaces widget — which is why yabairc in this repo ships with the sketchybar signals commented out.

cd yabai-spaces && ./build.sh && open build/YabaiSpaces.app

How it works

Each package folder mirrors the path it would live at under ~. For example, nvim/.config/nvim maps to ~/.config/nvim. Symlinks are created from the real config locations to these files so that any edit is automatically tracked by Git.

Quick setup (automated)

Clone the repo and run the setup script — it will create all symlinks for you:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/amiralibg/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
chmod +x setup.sh
./setup.sh

Manual setup (step by step)

1. Clone the repository

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/amiralibg/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles

2. Create config directory if it doesn't exist

mkdir -p ~/.config

3. Create symlinks for each package

# AeroSpace
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/aerospace/.config/aerospace ~/.config/aerospace

# Alacritty
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/alacritty/.config/alacritty ~/.config/alacritty

# yabai
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/yabai/.config/yabai ~/.config/yabai

# skhd
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/skhd/.config/skhd ~/.config/skhd

# Borders
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/borders/.config/borders ~/.config/borders

# sketchybar
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/sketchybar/.config/sketchybar ~/.config/sketchybar

# Ghostty
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/ghostty/.config/ghostty ~/.config/ghostty

# Kitty
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/kitty/.config/kitty ~/.config/kitty

# Neovim
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvim

# Tmux
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/tmux/.tmux.conf ~/.tmux.conf

# Zsh (ZDOTDIR mode)
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/zsh/.config/zsh ~/.config/zsh
ln -sf ~/dotfiles/zsh/.zshenv ~/.zshenv

4. Verify symlinks

ls -la ~/.config | grep dotfiles
ls -la ~ | grep dotfiles

Day-to-day workflow

Edit a config — just edit the file directly inside ~/dotfiles/ (or through the symlink, it's the same file). Changes are live immediately.

Save changes to Git:

cd ~/dotfiles
git add .
git commit -m "describe your changes"
git push

Pull latest changes on another machine:

cd ~/dotfiles
git pull

Symlinks don't need to be recreated after a git pull — they keep pointing to the same files.