Three snapping tools that get compared constantly, and one of them is free. Here is what separates them in practice, what Rectangle Pro adds to the argument, and whether the tiling already in macOS makes the whole question moot. Prices and macOS requirements were read from each tool's own listing on 4 August 2026.
The short answer
Install Rectangle first. It is free, open source, runs back to macOS 10.15 and covers more layouts than either paid option. Buy Magnet at $4.99 only if you specifically want an App Store purchase, and note it needs macOS 13.0. Buy Moom at $6.99 if you want a grid you draw yourself and saved layouts you can recall, which is the one thing no free snapper here does. If you are weighing Moom against Rectangle Pro, they overlap heavily and the deciding feature is usually Pro's workspace restore on display connect.
The comparison in one table
| Tool | Price | Needs macOS | Layouts it offers | Puts a layout back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| macOS built in tiling | Included | Sequoia added drag to edge tiling | Halves, quarters, and a Move & Resize menu on the green button | No |
| Rectangle | Free, open source. Pro is a separate paid app | 10.15 and later, Intel and Apple silicon | Halves, quarters, thirds, fourths, sixths, maximise, centre, move between displays | Free version no. Pro restores a saved workspace, including “on display connected” |
| Magnet | $4.99 on the Mac App Store | 13.0 and later | Halves, quarters, thirds, and drag to edge. Up to six external displays | Not documented |
| Moom | $6.99 on the Mac App Store | 10.13 and later | A grid you draw yourself, plus a palette on the green button | Saves layouts you recall, which “try their best to adjust to different display sizes” |
Rectangle vs Magnet
These two do the same job, and the honest summary is that Rectangle does slightly more of it for nothing. Rectangle is free and open source, states support for “macOS 10.15+, Intel and Apple Silicon”, and its free tier covers halves, quarters, thirds, fourths and sixths, maximise, centre, and moving a window to the next or previous display. Magnet is $4.99 on the Mac App Store from BOOTCODE A.S., requires macOS 13.0 or later, and advertises support for up to six external displays.
The case for paying is not capability, it is distribution. Magnet arrives through the App Store, so it is sandboxed, tied to your Apple account, updated with everything else, and reinstallable on a new Mac without thinking about it. Some people also prefer a paid app with a company behind it to a volunteer maintained one. Those are real reasons. They are just not feature reasons.
One practical filter: Magnet's macOS 13.0 minimum is four major versions newer than Rectangle's. On an older Mac the choice may already be made for you. More on Magnet and more on Rectangle.
Rectangle vs Moom
This is a different comparison, because Moom is not trying to be a better Rectangle. Moom is $6.99 on the Mac App Store from Many Tricks, runs on macOS 10.13 and later, and its signature features are a grid you draw with the pointer and a palette that appears when you hover the green button. Rectangle is keyboard first and deliberately narrow.
The feature that actually changes the decision is Moom's saved layouts. You arrange your windows, save the arrangement, and recall it later, and Many Tricks states that saved layouts “try their best to adjust to different display sizes when used on displays that differ from those where they were created”. Nothing in free Rectangle does that. If the reason you are shopping is that your arrangement keeps getting destroyed, that sentence is why Moom keeps coming up.
The catch is the save step. A saved layout is a snapshot you maintain, so what comes back is the arrangement you last recorded, not the one you had five minutes ago. Moom compared to Putback goes into that difference properly.
Moom vs Rectangle Pro
Once Rectangle Pro is in the conversation the two apps overlap heavily, which is why this comparison gets searched. Both go beyond halves and quarters, both offer custom sizes and positions, and both can put back an arrangement spanning several apps.
What Rectangle Pro brings
Its own site describes Pro as adding “quicker window snapping, custom shortcuts for any size & position, and a lot more”. Concretely, its comparison page lists reaching many window sizes and positions from a single key combination, configurable snap targets and a snap panel, window throwing, stashing windows along a screen edge, pinning apps to a side, key remapping, gestures, and syncing your configuration through iCloud. It is offered free for 10 days, and one licence “can be active on 3 devices at a time”.
The feature that usually settles it
Pro lists the ability to “save off entire workspaces with multiple applications shortcuts, restore using window throw, keyboard shortcut, or on display connected”. That last clause is the one worth reading twice: Pro can reapply a saved workspace when a monitor comes back, without you triggering it. Moom's documentation describes recalling saved layouts, not watching for a display. If a dock is the reason your windows keep moving, that difference matters more than any grid.
Where Moom still wins
Price transparency, for one: Moom is $6.99 on the App Store, and Rectangle Pro's price is not stated anywhere in the page source we read, because its checkout is rendered in JavaScript. Reach, for another: macOS 10.13 against Rectangle's 10.15. And the drawn grid genuinely has no equivalent in Rectangle Pro if that is how your brain works.
Rectangle vs the tiling built into macOS
Worth asking before you install anything. macOS Sequoia added drag to edge tiling, and Apple documents the rest of it plainly: hold the pointer over the green button for a Move & Resize menu, and “drag a window close to another one—as the window nears the other one, it aligns without overlapping”.
For halves and quarters that is enough, and a lot of people who installed a snapper years ago no longer need one. A third party snapper still earns its place for thirds and sixths, cycling through sizes by pressing the same shortcut repeatedly, portrait displays, a broader shortcut set than Apple exposes, and any Mac too old for native tiling. The whole category is covered in window snapping on Mac and split screen on Mac.
None of these is the tool for a display change
One reason people cycle through all three of these apps and stay unhappy: their actual complaint is not that arranging windows is slow, it is that the arrangement keeps getting destroyed when a monitor is unplugged or a dock drops out. Snapping does not address that, because snapping acts on the window in front of you when you ask it to and keeps no record afterwards.
Rectangle Pro and Moom both reach toward the problem with saved layouts, and for some people that is enough. The limit is the same for both: a save is a snapshot, so it goes stale the moment your real layout moves on. Apps built for the job instead record where your windows actually are, and put them back. Stay, BetterStage and ScreenPlace do it with layouts you save per display setup; Putback, which we make, learns the layout while you work so there is no save step at all. The full field is in Putback compared with every tool named here, the mechanism is in why your Mac windows move when you unplug a monitor, and the map of all three categories is in Mac window managers, compared.
