Staged vs Rectangle: Which Mac Window Manager Do You Need?
These two tools get compared because they’re both “Mac window managers”, but they solve different problems, and the honest answer to “which one” depends on a single question: do you move one window at a time, or rearrange your whole screen at once?
I built Staged, so read everything below with that in mind. I’ll be specific about where Rectangle is the better choice, because for a lot of people it is.
The actual difference
Rectangle is a per-window positioner driven by keyboard shortcuts. You press ⌃⌥← and the focused window snaps to the left half. Press it for another window and that one snaps too. The unit of work is one window, and the trigger is a keystroke.
Staged is a whole-screen arranger driven by a menu. You click a layout and every visible window moves into a slot in that layout simultaneously. The unit of work is the entire screen, and the trigger is one click.
That’s the whole distinction. Everything else follows from it.
Where Rectangle is the better pick
I want to be straightforward about this, because “the tool I built is better” would be a useless article.
It’s free, and open source. Rectangle costs nothing and its source is public. That’s not a limited trial or a loss-leader — the full tool is free. If it does what you need, paying for anything else is a waste of your money.
Keyboard shortcuts beat menus for single moves. If you already have the muscle memory, ⌃⌥← is faster than any click. It’s faster than Staged, and it always will be, for the specific action of “put this one window on that side.”
It’s mature and widely used. Years of releases, a large user base, and the edge cases have been found by other people already.
Rectangle Pro exists if you outgrow the free version, so there’s a paid upgrade path inside the same tool rather than a jump to something unfamiliar.
If you read that list and thought “yes, that’s me” — use Rectangle. Genuinely. You don’t need this page.
Where Staged does something Rectangle doesn’t
Two things, and they’re narrow but real.
All windows at once. Rectangle arranges the focused window. With five windows open and a layout in mind, you perform five separate actions and hold the arrangement in your head while you do it. Staged takes all five and places them in one click. This is the entire reason the app exists, and it’s the difference you feel immediately on a large display.
It reserves space for Stage Manager and the Dock. Rectangle’s “left half” means half of the screen. If you use Stage Manager, its thumbnail strip occupies part of that screen, so “left half” puts your window partly underneath it. Staged lets you set a left margin for the strip and a bottom margin for the Dock in a visual editor, then tiles into the space that’s actually left. If you run Stage Manager on a big monitor, this is the gap nothing else was filling — there’s a longer write-up in Stage Manager on a large display.
Two smaller things that follow from arranging everything at once:
- The menu only shows layouts that fit. With two windows open you see two-window splits; with four you see four-window grids. You own all 27 layouts, you just never scroll past the inapplicable ones.
- Clicking the same layout again rotates positions. Change which window holds the big slot without re-dragging, so your spatial memory survives.
Side by side
| Rectangle | Staged | |
|---|---|---|
| Windows per action | One (the focused one) | All visible windows |
| Primary trigger | Keyboard shortcut | Menu bar click |
| Price | Free (Pro version paid) | Free |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Stage Manager margins | No | Yes, visual editor |
| Layout cycling | No | Yes |
| Learns per-app sizes | No | Yes |
| Requires Accessibility permission | Yes | Yes |
Both need macOS Accessibility permission, because that’s the only API macOS provides for moving another app’s windows. Any tool in this category needs it; a tool in this category that doesn’t ask for it can’t actually work.
Can you run both?
Yes, and it’s a reasonable setup. They don’t conflict — both simply call the Accessibility API to move windows, and neither holds exclusive control. Keep Rectangle’s shortcuts for one-off adjustments, use Staged when you want the whole screen rearranged. I run both.
The one thing to watch is that if you set Staged’s margins for the Stage Manager strip, Rectangle won’t know about them, so a Rectangle “left half” will still slide under the strip. That’s not a bug in either tool, just two different ideas of where the screen edge is.
The decision
Pick Rectangle if you think in keyboard shortcuts, you mostly adjust one window at a time, you want free and open source, or you’re not sure — it’s the sensible default and it costs nothing to try.
Pick Staged if you have a big display with several windows open at once, you use Stage Manager and want your layouts to respect the strip, or you’re tired of doing the same four drags every time you switch tasks.
Pick both if you want shortcuts for single moves and one click for the full rearrange.
If you’re still unsure, install Rectangle first. It’s free, and if it solves your problem you’ve saved yourself an evaluation.