felixkratz/dotfiles — explained in plain English
Analysis updated 2026-08-12 · repo last pushed 2025-10-04
Replicate the author's exact macOS desktop setup by running the automated install script.
Use the configuration as a reference to build your own custom SketchyBar menu bar in Lua.
Learn how SketchyBar, JankyBorders, yabai, and skhd work together to create a tiling desktop environment.
Pull just the SketchyBar configuration with a one-line command to try the custom status bar independently.
| felixkratz/dotfiles | ellisonleao/gruvbox.nvim | atcold/torch-video-tutorials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 2,024 | 2,594 | 603 |
| Language | Lua | Lua | Lua |
| Last pushed | 2025-10-04 | 2026-04-15 | 2025-12-29 |
| Maintenance | Quiet | Maintained | Quiet |
| Setup difficulty | moderate | easy | moderate |
| Complexity | 3/5 | 2/5 | 1/5 |
| Audience | developer | developer | researcher |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Requires macOS, Homebrew, and comfort with the terminal to install multiple tools like SketchyBar, yabai, and skhd.
This repository is FelixKratz's personal macOS desktop configuration. In practical terms, it's a set of files that, when applied to a Mac, transform the standard macOS experience into a heavily customized desktop environment with a custom menu bar, window borders, keyboard-driven window management, and other modifications. The screenshot in the README shows the end result, a clean, minimal interface that looks quite different from a default Mac setup. The configuration ties together several open-source tools: SketchyBar (a custom status bar replacement), JankyBorders (which adds colored outlines around the active window), SketchyVim (brings Vim-style navigation into macOS), yabai (a tiling window manager that auto-arranges windows), skhd (a keyboard shortcut tool), and nnn (a terminal-based file manager). The SketchyBar portion of the config is written entirely in Lua, using a custom bridge called SbarLua that the author also maintains. Most of the setup process is automated through an install script, and there's even a one-line command to pull down just the SketchyBar configuration. The primary audience is Mac users who want to replace the standard macOS interface with something more minimal and keyboard-driven, think developers, power users, and productivity enthusiasts who admire the "tiling window manager" aesthetic common in Linux communities but want it on macOS. Someone might use this repo as-is to replicate the author's exact setup, or more likely, as a reference and starting point for building their own customized desktop. The previous setups linked in the README also show how the configuration has evolved over time, which can be useful for understanding different approaches. What stands out is that the author didn't just configure existing tools, he also built several of them. SketchyBar, JankyBorders, and SketchyVim are all FelixKratz projects, which means this dotfiles repo serves as a showcase for how those tools are meant to be used together. The README itself is fairly sparse and doesn't walk through every detail of the setup, so users will need some comfort with the terminal and package managers like Homebrew to get it running.
A macOS desktop configuration that replaces the default interface with a custom menu bar, window borders, keyboard-driven window management, and a minimal tiling aesthetic, doubling as a showcase for the author's own open-source macOS tools.
Mainly Lua. The stack also includes Lua, SketchyBar, JankyBorders.
Quiet — no commits in 6-12 months (last push 2025-10-04).
No license is mentioned in the repository, so default copyright applies, you can read and reference the files but technically need permission to redistribute them.
Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.
Mainly developer.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
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