Using aerospace as a launcher/manager

[wschenk]

I don't know if this is the "right" way to use Aerospace, but I wanted to share my new style of using it, which I find to be incredibly productive. I almost always use full screen apps. Sometimes side-by-side, but really ohter than the Finder I want everything to take up as much real-estate as possible. That's just me.

I'm sharing this with the idea of getting some new ideas of things to do.

Basically I'm using alpha workspaces as a nemonic. For example "M" is for Mail, "B" is for Browser, "T" is for Terminal, etc.

alt-s = ['exec-and-forget open /Applications/Slack.app', 'workspace S'] # Slack workspace

So whenever I press that key stroke, I'm looking at slack. It opens if it's not there, otherwise it just zipps over.

I also use on-window-detected to move initial windows to their "home" workspace. So I want all my AI related things on A, and of course I can move them if I want to.

  # ChatGPT and Claude to workspace A
  [[on-window-detected]]
  if.app-name-regex-substring = 'ChatGPT'
  run = ['move-node-to-workspace A']

  [[on-window-detected]]
  if.app-name-regex-substring = 'Claude'
  run = ['move-node-to-workspace A']

https://willschenk.com/howto/2025/how_to_turn_aerospace_into_an_application_launcher/