The Best Mac Window Managers (From Someone Who Built One)
Most “best Mac window manager” lists rank five tools 1 through 5 as though they’re competing at the same thing. They aren’t. These tools disagree fundamentally about what window management is — a keyboard shortcut, a drag target, a saved layout, or an automatic tiling algorithm — and the right pick depends entirely on which of those matches your brain.
I make one of the apps below, which is a conflict of interest you should factor in. So here’s the useful version: grouped by how you work, with the honest caveats.
First: what all of these have in common
Every tool here needs macOS Accessibility permission, because that’s the only API Apple provides for one app to move another app’s windows. You’ll grant it during setup. This is normal and unavoidable — a window manager that doesn’t request it cannot function.
macOS also has built-in window tiling: drag a window to a screen edge, or hold the pointer over the green button for a tiling menu. Recent versions do more here than they used to. Try the built-in behavior before installing anything, because for a two-window split on a laptop it may be all you need.
If you think in keyboard shortcuts: Rectangle
Rectangle is the default recommendation for most people, and I’d say that even though it competes with what I built. It’s free, open source, and driven by keyboard shortcuts — ⌃⌥← for the left half, and so on through halves, quarters, thirds, and maximize.
It’s mature, widely used, and the edge cases have been found by other people already. If “put this window on that side, without touching the mouse” describes what you want, install Rectangle and stop shopping. There’s a paid Rectangle Pro if you later want more.
Caveat: it works on the focused window, one at a time. Arranging five windows is five actions.
If you want to drag to the edges: Magnet or BetterSnapTool
Magnet and BetterSnapTool both center on dragging a window toward a screen edge or corner to snap it there, with keyboard shortcuts as a secondary path. Both are paid, both are on the Mac App Store, and both are inexpensive — check current pricing, since it changes.
They’re a good fit if the Windows-style “drag to snap” gesture is what you’re missing, and if you’d rather buy something from the App Store than configure an open source tool.
Caveat: you’re paying for something Rectangle largely does free. The gesture and the polish are the difference. Try Rectangle first and see whether you actually miss the drag.
If you want saved layouts: Moom
Moom (Many Tricks) takes a different angle: hover the green zoom button and you get a grid popover to pick a size, and — the real feature — you can save layouts and recall them, including layouts that apply to multiple windows.
That last part makes Moom the closest thing on this list to what Staged does, and it’s a genuinely good tool with a long history. If you have three or four fixed workspace arrangements you return to, Moom’s saved layouts are an excellent fit.
Caveat: it’s paid, and setting up saved layouts is configuration work you do up front. The payoff comes later.
If you want real tiling: Amethyst or yabai
These are a different category: automatic tiling window managers, in the Linux tiling-WM tradition. Windows never overlap; opening a new one re-tiles everything according to the current algorithm.
Amethyst is the more approachable one and doesn’t require compromising system security. yabai is more powerful and more configurable, but be aware that some of its features require disabling System Integrity Protection, which is a real security trade-off you should understand before doing it — not a checkbox.
Caveat: both have a genuine learning curve and they change how using your Mac feels. If you love tiling WMs you already know that. If you don’t know what a tiling WM is, this is probably not where to start.
If you rearrange the whole screen at once: Staged
This is mine, so discount accordingly.
Staged differs from everything above in the unit of work: one click from the menu bar and every visible window moves into a layout simultaneously. It reads how many windows you have open and offers only the layouts that fit that number, out of 27. Clicking the same layout again rotates which window sits where.
The specific thing it does that I couldn’t find elsewhere: you set a left margin for the Stage Manager strip and a bottom margin for the Dock with a visual editor, and layouts tile into the space that’s actually left rather than the raw screen rectangle. If you use Stage Manager on a large display, that’s the gap — see Stage Manager on a large display for why.
Caveat: it’s menu-driven, not keyboard-driven. For “move this one window” a Rectangle shortcut is faster and always will be. It’s also newer than everything else here, which means fewer miles on it. There’s a fuller Staged vs Rectangle comparison if that’s the choice you’re weighing.
The short version
| You want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Free, keyboard-driven, safe default | Rectangle |
| Drag-to-edge snapping, App Store | Magnet or BetterSnapTool |
| Saved multi-window layouts | Moom |
| True automatic tiling | Amethyst (or yabai, with the SIP caveat) |
| Whole screen rearranged in one click, Stage Manager aware | Staged |
If you have no strong opinion, install Rectangle. It’s free, it covers the common case, and you’ll learn from using it what you actually want. Come back to this list when you hit its limits — you’ll know exactly which limit you hit, which makes the next choice easy.