Magnet has been the App Store's go to snapping app for years: drag a window to an edge and it snaps into place, no configuration file, no learning curve. It does that job well. If you are shopping for an alternative, the honest options are below. But a lot of people searching for a Magnet alternative are not actually unhappy with the snapping. They are unhappy that their windows keep landing in the wrong spot after a monitor change, which Magnet was never built to prevent.
Real alternatives for snapping
Rectangle. The free, open source pick, and the one most often recommended in place of a paid app. It matches Magnet's core drag and shortcut snapping and adds more layout options for people who want thirds and sixths as well as halves.
Native Sequoia tiling. Built directly into macOS since Sequoia: drag a window to a screen edge or corner and it snaps into a half or a quarter with nothing installed. Worth trying first if all you use Magnet for is basic halves.
Moom. A step up in complexity: beyond snapping, Moom lets you design a custom grid and save whole arrangements to recall later. A good fit if Magnet's fixed set of positions feels limiting.
| Tool | Job | Price model |
|---|---|---|
| Magnet | Snapping, App Store app | One time App Store price |
| Rectangle | Snapping, halves/thirds/corners | Free, open source |
| Native Sequoia tiling | Snapping, halves and quarters | Built into macOS |
| Moom | Snapping plus saved custom grids | One time fee |
| Putback | Restores your layout after a display change | $19 once, 7 day trial |
Based on each tool's public listing; prices and offers change, check their sites for current details.
The problem no snapping app touches
Here is the pattern: you drag a window to the edge, Magnet snaps it, everything looks tidy. Then you head into a meeting with your laptop, come back, plug the monitor back in, and the same windows are piled in the middle of one screen. Magnet did not fail. It was never asked to remember anything, and neither is any other snapping tool. Snapping only ever acts on the window you are touching right now, at the moment you touch it.
Restoring a layout after a display change is a separate job, done by a separate kind of tool. Putback watches how your windows are arranged while you work, whether that arrangement came from Magnet, a drag, or nothing at all, and keeps a private memory for every display setup you use. Reconnect a monitor and it puts every window back in about 0.4 seconds. It never snaps or tiles anything itself, so keeping Magnet installed alongside it changes nothing. The full comparison against Rectangle, Stay and Moom lives in Putback compared with every Mac window tool, and if you want the wider map of which kind of Mac window tool solves which problem, start with Mac window managers: which kind you actually need.
