I Tried Omarchy and It Changed How I Work

February 18th, 2026

Omarchy had a moment near the end of 2025 when it was fairly new. Many tech Youtubers, influencers were trying and reviewing it. So I jumped on the hype train. This story is neither my thoughts nor a review of Omarchy, though it may include a bit of both.

What is Omarchy?

Omarchy is a beautiful, modern and opinionated Linux operating system. It is an omakase distribution based on Arch (btw) and Hyprland tiling window manager. It is created by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails and some great software at 37Signals. It was born as a reaction to the frustration of Windows and MacOS getting worse with every update. I won't go deep into the philosophy, you can read it if you are curious. My story with Omarchy started with an old Macbook Pro.

What to do with an Old Computer

Around October of last year, my wife decided to update her personal laptop, a 2014 Macbook Pro. It was still in good condition, but Apple however decided to not upgrade its OS for some years. As a result, most apps started to complain about the old OS version and stopped updating as well. It has been more than 10 years since we bought it, so we were happy to update it nevertheless. She bought an M4 Macbook Air and the old one started lying around waiting for its destiny. First we decided to sell it, not because it will make any money but at least it could be useful for someone else. It was around that time, Omarchy was getting popular and caught my attention. I said 'why not give this a try on the old Macbook?' and the story began.

Tiling Window Manager

I haven't tried any Linux operating system before (apart from cloud servers running on Linux which are command line only). After installing it - which was blazing fast and smooth - I was surprised at how nice it looked and how easy it was to get used to. I did a bit of RTFM and in a short while I was working with it comfortably. The computer was also much more performant than with the MacOS version installed. What surprised me the most was how the windows performed. When you first open an app, it fills the whole screen. Then you open another app and the screen gets divided between two. The desktop divides as you open windows automatically. Then you can change the window sizes with keyboard shortcuts easily. When you want another desktop for additional apps, there is workspace 2, and 3, and so on. You can move windows between workspaces, arrange windows however you like. You may say 'you can do that in MacOS as well' and you're right. But not this gracefully and definitely not this fast. The window manager in MacOS is not good at all. I used to use Raycast to easily manage them with keyboard shortcuts. But Hyprland is in another league. Apparently tiling window managers are frequently used on Linux operating systems. I was upset that I got to know them this late.

Help! I Can't Close This Editor

Every setting in Omarchy (and most likely in other Linux distros) is a configuration file. For people like me who haven't seen an operating system other than Windows or MacOS (not counting my DOS days, because of my age), the only way of changing a setting is using a GUI (graphical user interface). I changed configs of applications on terminal before, but this is an operating system. It felt strange and hard at first. Power, monitor, screen resolution settings, everything was managed with config files. And these config files got opened with the default text editor: Neovim.

Ok, I used Vim before a couple of times, every time searching the internet for 'how to quit Vim?'. This is not a joke and there are a lot of memes out there about this. And Neovim is an extensible Vim-based editor, like a modern take on Vim. To be able to use Neovim, you really have to RTFM. It is not a user friendly application at all. At least at the beginning. And Omarchy uses Neovim as its default text editor. As I said earlier, Omarchy is opinionated and this is one of those opinions. So instead of getting upset with DHH about why he didn't use nano instead of Neovim, I tried to understand. I knew that there are developers who absolutely love Vim and even use it for coding (bonkers) and won't use anything else and there are developers who hate Vim. Oh and there are newbies like me who haven't formed an opinion yet. So I tried to learn basic Vim motions (keyboard presses that lets you work with Vim), commands to be able to work with those config files and also to form an opinion about Vim. I could have easily switched the default text editor to be nano and get on with my life. However, as in most decisions in my life, I chose the hard way.

The Power of the Keyboard

Back in the days I was working as a financial controller, I was spending 80% of my time in MS Excel. I became so productive that I was able to work for hours without touching the mouse. Yes, not using the mouse has always been a measure of productivity for me. It is for developers too, as I later discovered. And Omarchy was also built by a developer who understands this. That's why it is a keyboard centric operating system. I already used lots of keyboard shortcuts with MacOS, VS Code and other frequently used apps. Some of them I set up with Raycast and some with keyboard settings on Mac. But to have an out of the box experience felt really nice. The opinion about the default text editor, as it turned out to be, was based on this keyboard centric philosophy as well. Vim's own philosophy is using the editor without moving your hands on the keyboard, not even reaching for the arrow keys. And once you get used to it, you really can't replace it with anything else. The learning part was hard, frustrating, slow, unproductive. But after some time, you become much more productive and all the hard work you put into learning pays off.

Tweaking My Own Workflow

I was impressed by Omarchy's philosophy and its simplicity. However that computer wasn't my main computer. Was I so impressed that I was willing to replace the OS on my Macbook with Omarchy? No, I wasn't. I liked MacOS despite its many shortcomings. So I decided to take the good parts of Omarchy and put them into MacOS as best as I can. I started with tiling window managers and after a bit of research, started using Aerospace, an open source app for MacOS that is actively maintained. It instantly changed how I work in a positive way. Next up was Neovim. But to use Neovim, you need to have a good terminal emulator. By the time I used Omarchy, it was using Alacritty as its default terminal emulator. But after some research and trials, I decided to use Ghostty as my terminal emulator (new versions of Omarchy switched to Ghostty as well). And it has become the center piece of my workflow so far. I started using Neovim by installing Lazyvim. Let me explain as concisely as possible. Developers use an IDE (integrated development environment) to code. What separates an IDE from a text editor is its ability to format code, find typos and syntax errors with the help of language server protocols, debug code, run code and add functionality with various plugins. Neovim, in its default form is only a text editor, but it can be extended and improved with plugins and scripts that turn it into an IDE. Lazyvim is just an opinionated collection of these plugins bundled together that makes Neovim an IDE out of the box. Additionally it loads the plugins lazily as you need them, so it becomes even faster. But let me be clear and warn you; configuring Neovim and learning how to use it efficiently is not easy and it is time consuming. I have spent months using Neovim instead of VS Code in a very unproductive way and always having to change some configuration, tweak some setting. I tried using VS Code with the Vim plugin so I can use Vim motions in VS Code, but it wasn't the same experience. What I found instead was Zed. Another IDE that is blazing fast and becoming more popular every day. It has built in Vim support and it is a joy to use. Now after a few months, I mainly use Neovim and I sometimes use Zed as my IDE.

Using Neovim means using the terminal. And while using Ghostty is pretty fun, I ran into a problem with it. Ghostty uses tabs to create multiple terminal windows and panes to create multiple terminal sessions inside windows. You can divide one Ghostty window into as many terminals as you like. It is wonderful because you can open Neovim in one pane, terminal in another and claude code or opencode in another pane and work. But Ghostty uses native MacOS tabs to implement its tab functionality and it acts like a separate window on MacOS. That's why Aerospace tiling doesn't work when you open multiple tabs. In order to overcome that problem, I came across a much better solution that is called tmux. Tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it does what Ghostty does and a lot more. I now open multiple projects each in its own window, each window divided into panes that makes sense for the purpose of the task I want to do. The best part of this whole thing is, you don't lose your setup even when you shut your laptop down. I now turn on my laptop, open Ghostty, type 't' (alias for tmux) and all the previous windows, tabs, terminal sessions and all Neovim windows open, just the way I left them, ready to work. And all of this happens much quicker than a single VS Code window opening. Mind blowing.

Was It Worth It?

I spent a significant amount of time learning Vim motions, Neovim and other CLI tools and configuring these tools to be as productive as I can be. In return, I learned how to use the terminal better, how to do more work in less time and how to get more efficient with the keyboard. I even browse the web with Vim motions now, thanks to the Vimium Chrome extension. I think the most important outcome of this story is that I use the terminal as the center of my workflow now. With agents and agentic coding coming back to the terminal, it was a well timed coincidence. But this is a topic for another story.

I know I could have spent this time working on new projects, building new products, learning to work better with agents. Maybe they were much better choices for me in the long run. Nevertheless, the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy, as Derek Sivers writes beautifully in "It's about being, not having".