How to make macOS look and feel like Omarchy
By Dividend Solo
· Updated
Update, September 28, 2026: Merged four Omarchy-on-Mac posts into this one page. The run-Linux options, the ARM answer, and the v4 scorecard now live here.
Ask a chatbot how to make a Mac feel like Omarchy and it hands you a shopping list. AeroSpace, SketchyBar, Ghostty, a prompt, a theme pack, good luck, kid. That is seven weekends of config, and not one of them mentions the parts a Mac flatly refuses to do. I did the seven weekends. You get the page I was looking for when I started: two paths, one stack, one command, and the scorecard nobody else keeps.
What Omarchy is, and why a Mac person cares
Omarchy is DHH's Arch Linux setup with opinions. Hyprland tiling, a top bar, one keybinding grammar, twenty-two themes that flip the whole desktop at once, and a menu tree that retires the settings app for good. It is fast, it is quiet, and it runs on Linux. Only Linux. That last part is where most of the interest dies.
Omarchy has built-in support for Intel Macs with some caveats on T1/T2 models. Apple Silicon is not directly supported: the Omarchy manual says installing on an M-series Mac "is not directly supported at this time." Mine is an M4, so that door is closed.
Because most of the people asking own a Mac. The hardware is fine. The window management is from 2005 and proud of it. Nobody wants a new laptop. They want the workflow. Fair enough.
The two paths
Run Linux on the Mac. Real Omarchy on Mac hardware. Four routes, one line and a link each, checked 2026-09-14:
- Try Omarchy - the upstream Omarchy desktop packaged as a native, hardware-accelerated app for Apple Silicon.
- UTM - virtualize Linux ARM on Apple Silicon and install Omarchy inside the VM. Near-native speed for desktop work, and macOS stays one click away.
- The official Intel install - Omarchy supports Intel Macs out of the box, with caveats on T1/T2 models. Apple Silicon is not directly supported.
- Asahi Linux - install Arch Linux ARM natively on Apple Silicon, then run the Omarchy Mac installer on top. Real Omarchy on real Apple hardware; drivers and some packages are still rough on M-series.
Sources: Omarchy, Try Omarchy, UTM, the Omarchy manual, Asahi Linux, omarchy-mac. Checked 2026-09-14.
Keep macOS, port the feel. Tiling, bar, borders, keybindings, every theme, on top of the OS you already paid for. Your Mac apps keep working. This is the rest of the page, and it is the one I live in every day, so at least one person has tested it. Three options for the macOS path, mine first and the others named so this page stays honest:
- omarchy4mac - my open-source port. 71% of Omarchy 4 scored against the full 35-row table, themes synced from Omarchy's own templates, auto re-theming on the light/dark flip.
- omacosy - an Omarchy-style tiling desktop for macOS with no SIP changes: AeroSpace, Karabiner for the Super key, small Swift binaries for the bar and workspaces.
- The Majestic BTT preset - the Omarchy look and keybindings built from BetterTouchTool presets.
The stack
Each Omarchy piece has a Mac stand-in. None of them are mine, and I am not going to pretend they are. The work was wiring seven strangers into one keybinding grammar and one theme switch, so they stop arguing and start looking like a desktop.
| Omarchy piece | On the Mac | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Hyprland tiling | AeroSpace | Focus, move, swap, resize, fullscreen, five workspaces, multi-monitor |
| Waybar | SketchyBar, laid out like the v4 bar | Workspaces, clock, weather, battery, wifi, audio, agents spend |
| Window borders | JankyBorders | Active-window border in the theme colour |
| Keybindings and menus | Hammerspoon | ⌘⌥Space menu tree, ⌥K overlay, theme chooser |
| Themes | theme script, synced from Omarchy's own templates | All 22 v4 themes; terminal, editor, btop, bar and borders change together, light and dark follow the system |
| Prompt | Starship | Same prompt as Omarchy |
| Launcher, emoji, clipboard | Raycast, free plan | ⌘Space, ⌘⌃E, ⌘⌃V |
| Agent multiplexer (herdr) | herdr from Homebrew | ⌘⌃↩ opens a Ghostty with herdr; how the port went |
Install it
One command. It installs Homebrew if you somehow do not have it, runs the Brewfile, links every config (anything already there gets a dated .bak, I am not a monster), loads the launchd agents, pulls the Omarchy themes, and starts the services.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dividendsolo/omarchy4mac/main/install.sh | bash
macOS will ask you to grant Accessibility to Hammerspoon and AeroSpace. Say yes. It will ask twice. Say yes twice. Then ⌥K for the keybindings, ⌘⌥Space for the menu. Run the same script again to update. --dry-run tells you what it would touch without touching it, for the trust issues.
The repo is omarchy4mac.
What changed in the v4 port
Three weeks after the original port I put a number on it: 40% of the daily feel. Then DHH shipped Omarchy 4 and the number went down without me touching anything. I spent a day on it. The repo became omarchy4mac, tracking v4.0.2, with a changelog so I cannot quietly let it rot again.
Themes come straight from Omarchy's own templates. v4 rearranged the theme repo and started generating app configs from templates instead of shipping them by hand. Fine. theme --sync reads the new layout and renders through the same templates, so when Omarchy adds a theme, the Mac has it the same afternoon. The switch also recolors Claude Code and Obsidian now. It used to stop at the terminal, which is a strange place for a theme to give up.
The v4 menu. ⌘⌥Space opens the same tree Omarchy 4 does: Apps, Learn, Trigger, Style, Setup, Install, Update, System. Nested, searchable. ⌘Esc drops you straight into System, for the days when you know exactly what you're about to break.
The v4 bar. Logo on the left, opens the menu. Workspaces beside it. On the right: indicators, weather, a Homebrew updates badge, and an agents widget that shows what Claude Code cost you today. You did not ask for that number. You should look at it anyway. Every display gets its own bar.
Web apps as real windows. Omarchy binds a dozen sites to ⌘⇧ + letter as chromeless windows that tile like anything else. The port does the same with Brave: HEY mail and calendar, Google Photos, YouTube, Grok, Google Chat. Tabs are where web apps go to hide. These don't get to.
The screensaver. Omarchy 4 runs ttfx ASCII art after 150 seconds idle. So does the Mac now, one window per display, off a Hammerspoon idle timer. Yes, it is completely unnecessary. Yes, it is the first thing people ask about.
Shell defaults. The Omarchy 4 aliases and environment, eza, bat, fzf, zoxide, the git shorthands, as one file you source from .zshrc. One line, and your shell stops being a stranger.
Utility keys. Emoji picker, clipboard history, keep-awake with a bar indicator so you can see you left it on, lock, and a coding agent in a fresh terminal on ⌘⇧⌃A.
Bonus features
A few things the Mac does that Omarchy doesn't. Not because I'm clever. Because macOS handed them over and it would have been rude not to take them.
- Auto re-theme on the light/dark flip. Flip macOS appearance and the whole desktop picks a random theme from the matching bucket. Light system, light theme. Dark system, dark theme. Terminal, editor, bar, btop, Claude Code, Obsidian, all at once. Hyprland has no system appearance to follow, so Omarchy can't do this. The Mac can. Small victories.
- ⌥T shuffles within the bucket. Random theme, never the current one, never a dark theme on a light system. Nobody wants that surprise.
- Theme reaches Claude Code and Obsidian. Omarchy stops at the terminal and the editor. I didn't.
- Crash watchdog. AeroSpace can quit itself on macOS 26 without asking. A launchd agent brings it back, and it knows the difference between a crash and you closing it on purpose.
- Gaming mode. One key quits every Dock app, drops Tailscale if you have it, and launches Steam. The reverse is a normal quit. I'm not going to pretend this was hard.
How close is it? The scorecard
71% of Omarchy v4.0.2, scored on the full 35-row table in the README. The table below groups the same items. ✅ we have it, or the Mac stand-in does the same job. ⚠️ partly there, with a plan. ❌ missing, nothing planned. Counts 1, half, and zero. Not a grading curve. The Mac does not get one.
| Omarchy Quattro has | omarchy4mac uses | omarchy4mac lacks | Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Tiling, workspaces, monitors | AeroSpace | ||
| ✅ | Bar | SketchyBar | ||
| ✅ | Borders | JankyBorders | ||
| ✅ | 22 themes from the v4 templates | all 22 | ||
| ✅ | Theme chooser | Hammerspoon | ||
| ✅ | Menu tree | Hammerspoon | ||
| ✅ | Keybinding overlay | Hammerspoon | ||
| ✅ | Web apps as windows | Brave | ||
| ✅ | Screensaver (ttfx) | ttfx in Ghostty | ||
| ✅ | Shell aliases | zsh file | ||
| ✅ | Wallpaper per theme | script + key | ||
| ✅ | Emoji, clipboard, keep-awake, lock, agent keys | AeroSpace binds | ||
| ✅ | Screenshots, notifications | macOS | ||
| ✅ | Launcher (walker) | Raycast (free plan) | ||
| ✅ | Voice typing | FluidVoice | ||
| ✅ | One-command install and update | install.sh, rerun to update | ||
| ✅ | Theme wallpapers auto-download | theme --sync | ||
| ⚠️ | Theme in tmux, lazygit, VS Code | tmux, lazygit, VS Code | tmux when daily | |
| ⚠️ | Night light key | night light key | Night Shift via osascript | |
| ⚠️ | OCR capture | Live Text by hand | one-key OCR | Vision script |
| ⚠️ | Bar hide/show key | the key | one SketchyBar line | |
| ❌ | Theme colors on the volume/brightness indicator (the box when you press a volume key) | theme colors on it | no | |
| ❌ | Control panels | System Settings links | panels | none, Quickshell only |
| ❌ | Themed lock screen | macOS lock | themed lock | none, cannot restyle |
| ❌ | Groups, pin, opacity, gap toggle | all four | none, no AeroSpace hook | |
| ❌ | Scratchpad | scratchpad | fake with a workspace, if asked | |
| ❌ | Chromium live theming | live theming | none, needs their fork | |
| ❌ | Plugins | plugins | none, Quickshell only |
The missing 30 percent is mostly Apple standing in the doorway with its arms folded, and no amount of config gets past that.
Keep it going
omarchy4mac is free and stays free. If it saved you the seven weekends, GitHub Sponsors is open. No pressure. Some pressure.
Read next
- Herdr on the Mac: the agent multiplexer the parity doc got wrong.
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