Tabs Being Treated Like Windows in Quip

[AlJohri]

I am running into an issue with the Quip where the tabs are being treated as windows. You can see in the video below that as I open new tabs, yabai is treating them like separate windows and moving the window around:

Screen.Recording.2023-08-15.at.7.56.49.AM.mov

When I have two tabs open, here is the output of querying for the windows in yabai:

❯ yabai -m query --windows | jq '.[] | select(.app == "Quip")'
{
  "id": 249724,
  "pid": 56419,
  "app": "Quip",
  "title": "Folders",
  "frame": {
    "x": 20,
    "y": 694,
    "w": 1001,
    "h": 615
  },
  "role": "AXWindow",
  "subrole": "AXStandardWindow",
  "display": 1,
  "space": 1,
  "level": 0,
  "opacity": 1,
  "split-type": "horizontal",
  "split-child": "second_child",
  "stack-index": 0,
  "can-move": true,
  "can-resize": true,
  "has-focus": false,
  "has-shadow": true,
  "has-border": false,
  "has-parent-zoom": false,
  "has-fullscreen-zoom": false,
  "is-native-fullscreen": false,
  "is-visible": true,
  "is-minimized": false,
  "is-hidden": false,
  "is-floating": false,
  "is-sticky": false,
  "is-topmost": false,
  "is-grabbed": false
}

Any ideas what could be going on here? Is there an option I can enable to potentially fix this?

[jonatan-branting]

This is a known issue: #68

I'd personally solve it by simply making Quip always float:

yabai -m rule --add app='^Quip$' manage=off

[AlJohri]

Thanks! I didn't realize this was a larger issue. Going to try a few of the potential workarounds mentioned in #68:

1. As suggested here, I tried globally disabling tabs. As mentioned in the comment edit, it only worked for some applications like Finder, not Quip. Handle native tabs properly #68 (comment):

   defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowTabbingEnabled -bool false
   

2. Tried changing the layout to float and then back to BSP. This does seem to reset the layout properly. Handle native tabs properly #68 (comment)

   yabai -m space --layout float && yabai -m space --layout bsp
   

3. Wanted to try this approach (Handle native tabs properly #68 (comment)) of switching spaces and back and forth to "refresh" yabai, but I was unable to test it since it requires the scripting addition.

   ❯ yabai -m space --focus next
   cannot focus space due to an error with the scripting-addition.
   
   ❯ yabai -m space --focus recent
   cannot focus space due to an error with the scripting-addition.
   

4. I was able to replicate the above approach using skhd to trigger pressing ctrl - right and then ctrl - left, but its very janky and not enjoyable to use.

   yabai -m signal --add event=window_created app="^Quip$" \
       action="skhd -k 'ctrl - right' && sleep 1 && skhd -k 'ctrl - left'"
   

5. Setting manage to false as suggested Tabs Being Treated Like Windows in Quip #1826 (comment) certainly works, but also isn't ideal.

   yabai -m rule --add app='^Quip$' manage=off
   

6. For me the best solution in this case was to just stop using the Quip app and switch to use Chrome to "Create Shortcut" and "Open as window" so that it looks and feels like an app:

   

UPDATE 2023-09-01: Instead of using a Chrome Shortcut, an even nicer solution has been using Coherence X4 to turn the Quip website into a tabbed desktop application and then using Choosy to force quip links to open in the desktop app. You can also use browser plugins like autochoosy to force certain patterns of links (i.e. quip links) to get redirected to the desktop app instead of opening in the default web browser.

Hopefully there will be a better solution someday in the future. Closing as a duplicate of #68 for now.

[AlJohri]

Linking this here as if you use Quip, you likely use Chime too: #2183