macOS window managers, compared

Search for a Mac window manager and you get one list containing three unrelated kinds of tool: things that arrange the window in front of you, things that arrange every window by algorithm, and things that remember an arrangement and put it back. Picking the wrong kind is the single most common reason people install something, use it for a week, and still have the problem they started with. Here are sixteen tools, what each one actually does, and what its own documentation says it does not do.

The full comparison

Prices and macOS requirements below come from each tool's own site or App Store listing, checked on 4 August 2026. The last column is the one usually missing from comparisons of these tools, and it is the reason this page exists.

Three jobs, not one category

The word “window manager” came to the Mac from Linux, where it means one specific thing. On macOS it now covers three, and they barely overlap.

Snapping arranges the window you are pointing at

You trigger it, once, on one window: drag to an edge, press a shortcut, or pick a position from a menu. macOS Sequoia does this built in, and Apple documents the mechanism plainly. Hold the pointer over the green button and you get a Move & Resize menu; drag a window near another and “it aligns without overlapping”. Rectangle, Magnet, Moom, Loop, Swish, Raycast and Tiles all do the same job with more layouts and better shortcuts. Snapping itself keeps no record of what it did, which is why the free snappers offer nothing when a display changes. Two of the paid ones bolt a save on top: Moom saves layouts you recall, and Rectangle Pro can reapply a saved workspace when a display connects. Both put back the arrangement you last saved rather than the one you had.

Tiling arranges every window, continuously, without asking

A tiling window manager places all your windows by algorithm and keeps them placed. You navigate with the keyboard and the mouse becomes optional. On macOS the three real options are Amethyst, AeroSpace and yabai, all free and MIT licensed. The trade is that you give up deciding where things go, which is the point, and it is genuinely liberating for some people and immediately intolerable for others. Try one for an afternoon rather than reading about it.

Restoring reproduces an arrangement you already had

This is the category most people do not know exists until a monitor unplug ruins their desk. macOS moves windows when a display disappears, because the pixels they were sitting on stopped existing, and it does not put them back when the display returns. Restoring tools record where every window was, keep a separate record per display setup, and reproduce it. Stay has done this for years and Putback is our attempt at it. Neither snaps or tiles anything, which is exactly why they run alongside a snapper rather than instead of one.

The important part: a tiler is not a restorer with extra steps. Unplug a monitor while running yabai or AeroSpace and you get a correct, freshly computed tiling of whatever windows remain. What you do not get is the arrangement you had built, because it was an output of the algorithm rather than something stored. If your arrangement carries meaning an algorithm cannot infer, that difference is the whole ballgame. The mechanism is in why your Mac windows move when you unplug a monitor.

If you want to snap windows by hand

Rectangleis the default recommendation and deserves to be: free, open source, macOS 10.15 and later, more layouts than the built in tiling, and a paid Pro tier if you outgrow it. Pro is also the only free-tier snapper whose paid version touches restoring: its comparison page lists saving entire workspaces and restoring them “using window throw, keyboard shortcut, or on display connected”. Full review here. Start with the free version before you spend anything.

Magnet is $4.99 on the App Store, requires macOS 13.0 or later, and supports up to six external displays. It is the polished paid equivalent of Rectangle, and the honest case for paying is App Store convenience rather than capability. More on Magnet, or the three way choice in Rectangle vs Magnet vs Moom.

Moomis $6.99 on the App Store from Many Tricks, needs macOS 10.13 or later, and is the one snapper that crosses into restoring territory: it saves window layouts, and Many Tricks states saved layouts “try their best to adjust to different display sizes when used on displays that differ from those where they were created”. That is a real feature and worth knowing about. The distinction from a restorer is who triggers it and how the arrangement got recorded. Moom compared to Putback.

Loop is free under GPLv3 and needs macOS 13 or later. It uses a held trigger key with a radial menu, which is a genuinely different feel from shortcut based snapping and worth trying if shortcuts never stuck for you. Its own README comparison table marks Save Workspace as something it does not do.

Swish is $16 with a 14 day trial and runs on macOS 10.13 and above. It is the trackpad one: pinch in to close, swipe down to minimise, pinch out for fullscreen. If you live on a trackpad it is the most natural tool here, and it is the one least like everything else on this page.

Raycast is free to download and includes window management among its core commands, covering halves, thirds, quarters, centre, maximise and moving between displays. If Raycast is already your launcher, you may not need a separate snapper at all. Its Restore command restores one focused window to its last position, which is not the same thing as restoring a layout.

Tiles from FreeMacSoft states no price, offers a donation link, and runs on macOS 10.14 and later, which is further back than anything else current. Despite the name it is a snapper rather than a tiling window manager. Full review. The whole snapping category is covered in window snapping on Mac and split screen on Mac.

If you want automatic keyboard driven tiling

All three are free, MIT licensed, and cost an afternoon rather than money to evaluate. The practical ordering is Amethyst first because it asks least of you and supports macOS 10.15 and later, AeroSpace if you want i3 style workspaces and a TOML file you can keep in dotfiles, and yabai if you want the deepest control available and have decided the System Integrity Protection trade is acceptable on your machine.

That SIP question is the fork in this category and it gets stated carelessly everywhere. To be precise about it: yabai runs with SIP fully on, but its documentation states SIP “can be (partially) disabled for yabai to inject a scripting addition into Dock.app for controlling windows with functions that require elevated privileges”. AeroSpace, by contrast, states it “will never require you to disable SIP”. If that sentence decides it for you, it decides it, and there is nothing wrong with that.

If your layout keeps getting destroyed

Three tools claim anything here, and we build one of them, so read this section knowing that.

Stayis the long standing option and the most direct comparison to what we make. Cordless Dog states it “ensures that your windows are where you want them, even as you connect and disconnect displays”, that it “can store a set of windows for every combination of displays that you use with your computer”, and that it “can also be configured to automatically restore windows as displays are connected and disconnected”. That is the same job described in nearly the same words as ours. The one hard constraint to check first is that Stay 1.5.1 requires macOS 14.6 or later. We have a longer side by side at Putback vs Stay, and it is written knowing you should discount our opinion of a competitor.

Moom covers part of this from the snapping side, as above: you build a layout, save it, and recall it, and Many Tricks says saved layouts adjust as best they can to displays that differ from the ones they were made on.

Putback is ours, $19 once for one Mac with a 7 day trial, macOS 14 and later. It learns where your windows sit while you work rather than asking you to define a layout, keeps a separate memory for each display setup, and puts everything back when your displays change. It never snaps or tiles a window on its own initiative, so it does not fight whatever else you run. If your windows only ever move when you move them, you do not need it, and we would rather say that than sell you something.

What macOS gives you before you install anything

Worth knowing, because a chunk of people asking this question need nothing at all. Sequoia added drag to edge tiling. Every window's green button hides a Move & Resize menu with side, top and bottom options. Windows align to each other when dragged close. Mission Control (F3, or three fingers up on the trackpad) shows every window and Space at once. Stage Manager, in Control Centre, stacks your open windows down one side. Every method macOS offers for getting between windows is in how to switch windows on a Mac.

The gap is consistent across all of it: nothing built into macOS remembers an arrangement and reproduces it later. Apple's own window documentation does not address what happens to your layout when a display is connected or disconnected.

Snap them however you like. Get them back regardless.

Putback keeps a separate memory for every display setup and puts each window back where you had it when your displays change.

Download for macOS →

Free for 7 days · then $19, once · macOS 14+