Do You Still Need Rectangle app Now That macOS Has Window Tiling?
Apple added native window tiling in macOS Sequoia (macOS 15). Drag a window to a screen edge, and it snaps into a half or quarter without any extra software. That single feature covered the most common reason people installed Rectangle mac or Magnet in the first place. It didn’t cover all of them.
What macOS Sequoia’s tiling actually does
Three ways to trigger it:
- Drag to an edge or corner. Move a window to the left, right, or top edge and macOS shows a preview of where it will land; release to tile. Corners require reaching the actual corner, not just the edge.
- Hold Option while dragging. This triggers the same tiling preview without needing to reach the screen edge, useful on a large display where dragging all the way to the edge is inconvenient.
- The green button menu. Hover over the green full-screen button (don’t click it) and a menu appears with Move & Resize options — halves and quarters — and Fill & Arrange options for placing two or more windows automatically.
- The Window menu and keyboard shortcuts. Opening the Window menu in any app’s menu bar shows the same tiling commands, several of which have default keyboard shortcuts built around the Fn and Control keys (for example, filling the screen or moving to a half).
Three settings control the behavior, all under System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Windows:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tile by dragging windows to screen edges | Turns edge-drag snapping on or off |
| Hold Option key while dragging windows to tile | Turns Option-drag snapping on or off |
| Tiled windows have margins | Adds or removes the roughly 8-pixel gap macOS inserts by default between tiled windows and screen edges |
Turning off margins applies immediately to windows already tiled, not just future ones.
What it doesn’t do
No default shortcuts for quarters. Halves have keyboard shortcuts out of the box; quarters don’t. You can add your own under System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, but you have to type the exact menu item name (for example, “Top Left”) for each one, per app, since macOS’s App Shortcuts feature isn’t system-wide by default.
No thirds. There’s no built-in way to split a screen into three columns or place a window in the first, center, or last third. This is the single biggest functional gap compared to Rectangle app or Magnet, both of which build thirds in as a default action.
No repeatable cycling. Rectangle’s pattern of pressing the same shortcut again to cycle between related positions (first third → center third → last third) has no equivalent in the native feature.
Inconsistent behavior across apps. Some system apps have fixed or minimum window sizes that don’t cooperate with tiling. Reports note that Calculator and System Settings can’t shrink to a quarter’s width, and apps like Notes or Calendar refuse to go below their minimum size at all, which can leave a “tiled” window overlapping its neighbor instead of fitting cleanly.
No cross-display shortcut. There’s no built-in keyboard command to move the active window to another display the way Rectangle’s Next/Previous Display shortcuts do; you still drag it there by hand.
Keyboard shortcut reliability varies by keyboard. The default Fn-Control shortcuts assume a Mac keyboard’s Globe/Fn key behavior. Third-party keyboards, including some with Mac layouts, have been reported not to trigger them at all, which pushes those users toward the Window menu or the green-button menu instead.
Where the two approaches actually overlap
If your daily habit is putting two windows side by side — a document and a reference, or code and a terminal — native tiling covers that completely, with no installation and no Accessibility permission prompt. Drag to the left and right edges, or use the Window menu, and you’re done. For that specific workflow, there’s no real argument for adding a third-party app.
When Rectangle is still worth installing
Rectangle earns its place on top of native tiling for a specific list of things Apple’s version doesn’t do:
- Thirds and two-thirds splits as first-class, default actions rather than something you build yourself.
- One shortcut per position, no per-app setup. Rectangle’s shortcuts work everywhere immediately; native quarter shortcuts require manually naming the menu item in every app you want them to apply to.
- Cycling through related positions with a single repeated shortcut.
- Moving windows between displays with a keyboard shortcut, not a drag.
- A per-app ignore list, so a conflicting app’s own shortcuts keep working without you having to remap anything in Rectangle.
- Scriptable actions through a URL scheme, for people wiring window placement into Alfred, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, or a Stream Deck.
- A visible, exportable configuration — Rectangle’s settings can be backed up as JSON and restored on another Mac; the native feature’s per-app custom shortcuts live scattered across System Settings with no export.
A practical way to decide
Use native tiling for two weeks before installing anything. If halves through the Window menu or edge-dragging cover what you actually do — most single-monitor, two-app workflows will be fully covered — stop there; you don’t need a menu bar utility running in the background. If you find yourself repeatedly fighting for a third column, reaching for a shortcut that doesn’t exist, or wanting a window on the other display without a drag, that’s the specific gap Rectangle fills, and it costs nothing to add.