In this guide
Cycling: one shortcut, several sizes
Press the left-half shortcut once and the window takes the left half. Press it again and — with cycling enabled — it becomes a left third. Press once more and it becomes two thirds. One key combination therefore reaches three widths, and you choose by how many times you tap rather than by remembering which letter maps to which fraction.
This matters more than it sounds. The main obstacle to adopting a window manager is memorising a dozen combinations; cycling collapses that to a handful of directions plus repetition, which is a far lighter cognitive load. Enable it in the settings of Rectangle and give it a week before judging.
Cycling has one trade-off: your layout becomes dependent on how many times you pressed, so an absent-minded extra tap changes the width. People who value absolute predictability sometimes prefer explicit shortcuts. Both are defensible; try cycling first because it is easier to learn.
Snap areas for the times you are already holding the mouse
Dragging a window to the screen edge triggers a snap — left edge for the left half, top for maximise, corners for quarters. Keyboard purists tend to dismiss this, but there is a genuine case for it: when your hand is already on the trackpad because you were dragging a file, reaching for the keyboard is the slower option.
The useful configuration detail is that the snap regions are adjustable. If you find windows maximising when you meant to move them near the top of the screen, shrink the top region rather than turning the feature off entirely. Rectangle app exposes these thresholds directly in preferences.
Gaps, and why a few pixels help
A gap setting inserts a small margin between snapped windows and the screen edges. It looks purely decorative and is not. With windows flush against each other, the boundary between two documents is a single hairline, and on a dense display the eye occasionally loses track of which pane it is reading. Six to ten pixels of separation removes the ambiguity.
There is a practical benefit too: a visible strip of desktop between panes gives you somewhere to drop a file without first shuffling a window out of the way. Set gaps once, at a value that looks like breathing room rather than a border, and forget about them.
The commands that are not on the cheat sheet
Restore is the one that changes behaviour most. It makes every other command safely reversible, which is what allows people to experiment instead of arranging cautiously. Move to next display is essential in any docked setup — shuffling a window across monitors with a trackpad is one of the genuinely unpleasant interactions in macOS. Almost maximise deserves a mention too: slightly smaller than full screen, it keeps a sliver of desktop visible so you never lose the sense of what is behind.
There is also a mode that pins one window to a narrow column on the right and tiles everything else beside it — useful for a task list or chat panel you want permanently visible. It is niche, but for people who live in a checklist it replaces a separate app entirely.
Sensible settings for a first week
- Enable cycling, disable it later if it annoys you.
- Set gaps to around eight pixels.
- Turn off any overlapping window commands in your launcher.
- Confirm the app launches at login — a window manager that is not running looks exactly like a broken one.
- Leave the default Control-Option scheme alone until you have a specific conflict to solve.
The last point is worth emphasising. Most people who rebind everything on day one end up with a scheme they cannot remember and a collision they did not anticipate. Learn the defaults of the Rectangle window manager first; customise only in response to a real problem.
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
What exactly does cycling do?
Repeated presses of the same shortcut move the window through related sizes — half, then third, then two thirds — instead of doing nothing on the second press.
Can snap areas be turned off?
Yes, entirely, or region by region. Many keyboard-first users disable the top region only, since accidental maximising is the most common complaint.
Do gaps affect performance?
No. They are purely a positioning offset applied when a window is placed.