Hummingbird is a macOS app to allow easy moving and resizing of windows by pressing modifier keys and moving your mouse pointer. Windows do not require focus, nor do you need to find the window edges.
Hold down a modifier key combination like ⌃⌥ (control + option) and move you mouse pointer over a window to "grab" it anywhere to move it. Similarly, hold down another modifier key combination to resize the window as if you were dragging from the bottom right window corner from within anywhere in the window.
Hummingbird brings the move and resize behaviour known from Unix window managers to macOS.
In the video above, holding fn and ctrl while moving the mouse moves the window, and holding alt in addition allows the window to be resized simply by moving the mouse pointer. This is great for mouse users but is particularly helpful when using a trackpad, where clicking and holding can be a harder gesture to perform precisely.
- Download the latest release from the Hummingbird home page
- Unzip and run!
Or use Homebrew:
brew tap finestructure/Hummingbird
brew install finestructure/hummingbird/hummingbird
Hummingbird has been tested on macOS 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina but it should run on earlier macOS versions as well (macOS 10.11 or higher).
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After launching, Hummingbird is accessible via a menu bar item:
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However, on first use you will need to grant permissions for Accessibility Access. This is required so Hummingbird can move and resize windows. You will see an alert directing you to System Preferences:
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In System Preferences / Security & Privacy / Privacy, please authenticate and make sure the entry for "Hummingbird" under "Accessibility" is checked as indicated below.
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You can configure the move and resize keyboard shortcuts in Hummingbird's preferences:
Hummingbird is open source but if you'd like to support the app or simply don't want to bother building it yourself, please head over to https://hbird.app to download the commercial version. It comes with a 14 day free trial and you can purchase a license through the website or from within the app.
Every sale helps me to keep working on Hummingbird and if you find it useful, please spread the word!
Hummingbird is using the macOS Accessibility APIs in order to discover windows and update their position and size. Some apps seem to be creating windows that don't participate in this mechanism and therefore are invisible to Hummingbird. See issue #5 for more details in what apps might be affected.
Contributions welcome!
This project is a fork of the original project by Daniel Marcotte. His project uses mouse click based tracking, which I modified to use mouse moving instead.
Daniel suggested to fork and rename the project to avoid confusion.