Free Alternative to Magnet

Rectangle is the app I install first on any new Mac. It is a free, open-source replacement for Spectacle, which was abandoned by its developer years ago. Rectangle does exactly what Magnet does without costing a dime. I use it daily to snap windows into halves, quarters, and thirds using keyboard shortcuts. The default keybindings perfectly mirror Magnet. You can switch over in about thirty seconds without retraining your muscle memory.

In my testing, Rectangle idles at around 16MB of RAM. It never crashes. It handles multiple monitors perfectly. When I disconnect my MacBook from my studio display, Rectangle gracefully resizes my open windows to fit the smaller laptop screen. You can drag windows to the screen edges to snap them, just like in Windows 11. The developer updates the app constantly. Version 0.79 recently improved compatibility with Stage Manager. I honestly cannot find a reason for the average user to look anywhere else.

Amethyst fundamentally changes how macOS operates. It is an automatic tiling window manager heavily inspired by xmonad on Linux. When you open a new app, Amethyst automatically resizes your existing windows to make room. You never drag a window. You never manually resize a corner. The software handles the geometry.

Using Amethyst takes serious getting used to. I spent my first two days fighting the application. Every time I opened Finder, my browser shrank to half its size. Once I learned the keyboard shortcuts to cycle through layout modes, things clicked. The 'Tall' layout keeps my main application large on the left while stacking secondary apps on the right. Version 0.20.0 introduced much better multi-monitor support. It shifts entire workspaces across displays instantly. Amethyst runs perfectly fine on Apple Silicon, but it occasionally stutters when resizing heavy apps like Adobe Premiere Pro.

Yabai is not for the faint of heart. It is a command-line utility that deeply modifies the macOS WindowServer. To get the most out of Yabai, you have to boot your Mac into Recovery Mode and partially disable System Integrity Protection. I understand that is a dealbreaker for many people. If you are willing to take the risk, Yabai offers unparalleled control.

It uses a binary space partitioning algorithm to tile windows. Every time you open an app, the screen splits perfectly in half. Yabai removes window shadows to save pixel space. It lets you switch spaces instantly without Apple's slow sliding animation. I paired Yabai with a hotkey daemon called skhd. The resulting setup allowed me to throw windows across three monitors faster than I could move my mouse. The configuration happens entirely in a text file. You will spend hours tweaking your yabairc file to get things right.

Raycast is primarily an application launcher designed to replace Spotlight. It also includes a remarkably capable window management engine built directly into the core app. I stopped using dedicated window managers on my MacBook Air because Raycast handles the job perfectly.

You trigger Raycast, type 'Left Half', and hit Enter. The active window snaps. You can assign global hotkeys to these commands in the Raycast settings. It supports halves, quarters, maximizing, and moving windows between displays. Raycast feels incredibly fast. It is written in Swift and optimized for Apple Silicon. I mapped Option-Left Arrow to snap windows to the left. It responds instantly. You do not get drag-to-snap zones with Raycast. You have to use the keyboard. For users trying to minimize the number of background apps running on their Mac, Raycast is the logical choice.

Hammerspoon is a bridge between the macOS operating system and a Lua scripting engine. It is an empty sandbox. Out of the box, Hammerspoon does nothing. You have to write scripts to tell it how to behave. I spent a Saturday afternoon writing a script that snaps my windows into a grid.

The beauty of Hammerspoon is context awareness. I wrote a function that checks my current Wi-Fi network. If I am connected to my office network, hitting a hotkey moves Slack to my left monitor and Xcode to my right monitor. If I am on my home Wi-Fi, the same hotkey closes Slack and maximizes Safari. No other app on this list can do that. Hammerspoon requires basic programming knowledge. You will be reading API documentation. If you enjoy tinkering with your machine, Hammerspoon is the most capable automation tool on the Mac.

Loop takes a completely different approach to window management. It uses a radial menu. You hold down a trigger key, usually the Caps Lock or Function key. A sleek circular menu appears on your screen. You flick your mouse or trackpad in the direction you want the window to snap, and you release the key. The window flies into place.

I tested Loop on a 14-inch MacBook Pro while sitting on a couch. It is the most fluid way to manage windows without a full keyboard setup. The animations are gorgeous. The developer clearly cares about macOS design guidelines. The settings menu lets you customize the blur radius of the radial menu and the exact speed of the window animations. Loop is relatively new to the open-source scene. It feels incredibly polished for a free application. It requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer.

AeroSpace is the newest app on this list. It is an ambitious project written entirely in Swift. It attempts to bring the exact behavior of the popular Linux i3 window manager to the Mac. AeroSpace does something radical. It completely ignores Apple's native Mission Control and Spaces system. It uses its own virtual workspace implementation.

This means workspace switching is truly instant. There is no sliding animation. I set up AeroSpace with ten virtual workspaces. I mapped them to Option 1 through Option 0. Hitting Option-4 instantly snaps my view to my terminal workspace. It uses a tree-based tiling approach. You can stack windows like a deck of cards or tile them side-by-side. I found AeroSpace to be much more stable than Yabai because it does not require disabling System Integrity Protection. It plays by Apple's rules while completely subverting the macOS desktop experience.

Tiles is a freeware application developed by Sempliva. It is not open-source, but it is completely free to use. Tiles focuses entirely on the drag-to-snap experience. You grab a window title bar, drag it to the top edge of your monitor, and the window maximizes. Drag it to a corner, and it takes up exactly one quarter of the screen.

The app places a tiny icon in your menu bar and stays out of your way. I tested Tiles on an older Intel Mac mini. It uses almost zero CPU cycles in the background. It feels slightly less customizable than Rectangle. You cannot tweak the exact pixel width of the snap areas. Tiles simply works. It is the app I install for my parents when they complain about messy windows on their iMac. It has not received a major update in over a year, but it continues to function perfectly on macOS Sonoma.