Mac Magnet – the Windowing Tool I Desperately Needed
We’ve seen several different Windows-style windowing tools for Macs over the years, but none of them have ever worked well for my workflow. Magnet is an app that has been around for a while, but a few recent updates have finally made it the app I need.
At first glance, Magnet ($ 4.99, but now retails for 99 cents) is like any snapping tool. You can neatly arrange windows side by side, full screen, in quarters, thirds, or any combination of these. You can manipulate windows by dragging and dropping them, customizing keyboard shortcuts, or using the menu bar. This alone is helpful for someone like me who usually has dozens of open windows of varying sizes, all stacked in an unorganized way, which forces me to spend more time in the app switcher than I would like. If I’ve ever bothered to manually resize a window, it’s usually just to make it big enough to stand out from the other application stack.
What sets the Magnet apart from other options is its sheer amount of polish. It doesn’t mind having multiple displays (and actually supports up to six external displays), and you can customize the keyboard shortcuts to suit your needs. It also supports any combination of window areas. For example, you can squeeze one window into the upper-right corner, another into the lower-right corner, and then expand one window to occupy the other half of the screen. The magnet also just added left / center / right thirds options, which turned out to be the feature I was really looking forward to.
What’s especially nice about Magnet is that it doesn’t force you to do specific things. Whether you are a hotkey person, a menu user, or a mouse user, you can make a Magnet user. Let’s see how all of these options look in action.
Organize windows by dragging and dropping them
If you prefer to navigate your Mac with your mouse, Magnet has a system where you activate different corners of the screen to lock the window in place:
- Move the window to any of the four corners and it will shrink to a quarter size in that corner.
- Move the window to the left or right and it will take up half of the screen vertically.
- If you move a window to the top or bottom, right or left, it expands to half the screen horizontally.
- Move the window to the top center to switch to full screen mode.
- You can move the window to the three parts of the bottom of the screen to split it into three parts.
It takes a while to get used to dragging windows, but it becomes quite intuitive once you get the hang of it. It’s implemented well enough to feel like a standard feature in macOS.
Organize Windows with keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are even better than dragging and dropping windows. You can tweak them however you want, but the default settings are pretty easy to get used to:
- Ctrl + Alt + D / F / G splits the window into three parts.
- Ctrl + Alt + E / T splits windows in two thirds.
- Ctrl + Alt + U / I / J / K splits the window into four parts.
- Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow / Left Arrow halves vertically.
- Ctrl + Alt + Up Arrow / Down Arrow halves horizontally.
Once you master keyboard shortcuts, you can easily manipulate windows.
Organize windows from the menu bar
Finally, if you can’t remember keyboard shortcuts or drop locations, you can always just click a few things on the menu bar. As you would expect, you can move windows anywhere by simply clicking the appropriate option in the menu bar.
I searched for a windowing tool like Magnet for a while, but I was always put off by the fact that most options only supported half the screen or quadrants. Worse, many of these utilities seemed to be cracked together, while Magnet is very similar to being part of macOS itself.
I usually leave two Chrome windows open side-by-side on the left, and a third set for various chat apps on the right. If I’m working on a video, it’s also a good idea to put Screenflow in the window for two thirds, while keeping track of work things in the other third. There are countless options here, so you have to experiment a little to find what works best for you, but it is worth putting in the minimum effort to finally clear your screen. There are many other similar options, including BetterSnapTool (free), Spectacle (free), and HyperDock ($ 9.95), all of which do a great job. The magnet was the one who finally clicked for me.