In this guide
Four stages, four screens
Writing is not one activity and does not want one layout. Gathering material is an expansive, multi-window task. Drafting is the opposite — additional windows are actively harmful, because every visible source is an invitation to stop composing and start verifying. Revising is comparative. Fact-checking is expansive again.
The practical consequence is that you need three or four arrangements and a fast way to move between them. That is a mechanical problem with a mechanical solution: a handful of shortcuts in Rectangle, each producing a known screen state.
| Stage | Layout | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Research | Source two thirds, notes one third | Reading dominates |
| Drafting | Single centred window | Nothing to look at but the sentence |
| Revising | Halves: draft and feedback | Comparison task |
| Checking | Draft half, source half | Verification needs both |
Drafting: the centred window
A maximised text window on a 27-inch display produces lines around two hundred characters long. Reading them requires large horizontal eye movements and your eye regularly loses its place returning to the left margin. Every typographer's rule of thumb puts comfortable measure at somewhere between forty-five and eighty characters.
Centring the window at roughly half to two-thirds width fixes this, and the visible desktop on either side is not wasted — it is negative space, and it makes the text feel like a page rather than a wall. The centre command in Rectangle app for Mac does this in one keystroke, and restore brings back the research layout afterwards.
Many writing applications have their own focus or typewriter mode. Use both: the application handles the interface chrome, the window manager handles how much of the screen the application occupies. They solve adjacent problems.
Research without losing the thread
During research the risk is not distraction but disorganisation — twenty tabs, a notes document somewhere behind them, and no record of which source said what. The layout that helps is source on the left two thirds, notes permanently visible on the right third. Because the notes window never disappears, capturing a quotation is a click and a paste rather than a hunt.
Keep the notes window in the same position every session. This sounds trivial and is the whole point: when the capture target is always in the same place, capturing becomes frictionless, and frictionless capture is the difference between research that produces usable notes and research that produces a browser full of tabs you will never revisit.
Revising against feedback
Working through an editor's comments is a two-document task and should be an even split: the draft on one side, the comments or marked-up version on the other. Trying to do this in a single window — scrolling between the comment and the passage — is slower and produces more missed items, because you are holding the comment in memory while you look for the text.
For structural edits, a third window helps: draft, feedback, and an outline. The outline goes in a corner quarter, where it is visible enough to keep the shape of the piece in mind without competing for attention with the sentence you are rewriting.
Long projects and per-Space setups
For a book, thesis or long report, dedicate a macOS Space to the project and leave its layout permanently arranged. Switching to that Space becomes a single gesture that restores the entire working context — draft, sources, notes, all where you left them. This works considerably better than reopening windows each session, because the arrangement itself becomes part of the cue to start writing.
Everything here works in the free build of the Rectangle window manager; none of these layouts require a paid tier. The genuinely valuable part is not the software but the habit of matching the screen to the stage of work rather than using one arrangement for all of them.
Rectangle is free and open source
Halves, thirds, quarters and sixths from the keyboard, on any Mac. No trial, no account.
Download Rectangle for Mac →Frequently asked questions
Does this work with Scrivener, Ulysses or iA Writer?
Yes. They are ordinary macOS windows; their internal focus modes are complementary.
What width should a drafting window be?
Aim for a line of sixty to eighty characters at your usual font size. On a 27-inch display that is usually somewhere between a half and two thirds.
Is a second monitor worth it for writing?
Less than for most professions. Writers benefit more from having fewer things visible while drafting than from more space.