This is one of the keyboard shortcuts we find ourselves a lot so it’s worth learning. We can also use the keyboard shortcut Control(⌃) + Option(⌥) + Enter. To use Rectangle to maximize our window we can drag it to the center top of our screen. The nice thing about the snapping feature is that it highlights where the window will go when we let go of it so we won’t be surprised.Ī lot of the time as we’re using an application we want it to take up as much of the screen as possible so we can maximize the viewable information. The snap positions are fairly logical so it shouldn’t take too much effort to figure them out when needed even if we don’t memorize them. We’ll go over some of the more common options for how we might want to organize our windows and provide both the keyboard shortcuts and the position of the cursor to get the windows into those spots. Rectangle supports dragging our cursor to a specific hotspot on our screen and having it then snap the window into a portion of the display. The keyboard shortcuts Control(⌃) + Option(⌥) + Command(⌘) + right arrow and Control(⌃) + Option(⌥) + Command(⌘) + left arrow move a window to the next or previous monitors (the order is based on their arrangement in System Preferences). The most useful feature of Rectangle for those of us who have multiple monitors is the ability to move a window to a different monitor by using keyboard shortcuts. Looking at this list can be a little overwhelming but we’ll go through them now to help you. Most of the shortcuts for Rectangle are Control(⌃) + Option(⌥) + something but to get a reference of what the shortcuts are we can click on the Rectangle icon in the menu bar. To that end, we’re going to discuss how we can use the mouse features of Rectangle but also what the keyboard shortcuts are to perform the same action. Learning the keyboard shortcuts for Rectangle is a huge performance multiplier because it can be applied to all of the applications we use every day. The time savings that can be made by not switching between our keyboard and our mouse can make a huge difference in our productivity. It’s best to pick the Recommended shortcuts as it will give us a more unified experience using Rectangle.Īs we’ve discussed before it’s important to learn the keyboard shortcuts to any application that we use all the time. It’s very important to do this because without Rectangle being checked in this preference pane Rectangle will not work.Īfter this has been done we’ll get a question about shortcuts. Rectangle will prompt us and bring us to the correct screen. The first thing we need to do is to allow Rectangle to control our computer in the “Accessibility” section of the “Privacy” tab in the System Preferences. Now that we’ve installed the application we’re going to launch it for the first time. Once the DMG has been verified and opened it will open a new Finder window so we can drag Rectangle into the Applications directory. Drag application into Application Directory The first step is to download the DMG file from and then open it. Installing Rectangle is a simple process. We’re mentioning Spectacle because there are references to it in Rectangle and we wanted to give some background information on it for when we encounter those references. Spectacle is no longer in active development and Rectangle does everything Spectacle did and more so we’re recommending it now. It was usually the second application installed on any new computer. A Note About Spectacleįor years we’ve used Spectacle to manage our application windows. This post is an adaptation of Using Rectangle to Manage macOS Windows on our YouTube Channel. This post will discuss Rectangle only but if you want to support Ryan and the future development of Rectangle and Hookshot you can purchase a copy through the website. The big difference between the two appears to be the fact that we have better control over window placement using our mouse in Hookshot. At the time of this writing, there’s a 10-day free trial and then it’s $7.99 USD for a license. Ryan also develops Hookshot which is a utility built on Rectangle with some additional bells and whistles. Rectangle allows us to manage our application windows using keyboard shortcuts and mouse hotspots. Rectangle is a free and open source application built by Ryan Hanson and distributed on. By using Rectangle we can operate more effectively and in turn generate code faster. This can take up a lot of time during our day and can be compounded if we have large or multiple monitors. As knowledge workers, we spend a lot of time managing windows on our computers.
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