How to snap windows on a Mac

Drag a window by its title bar to the left or right edge of the screen and let go: since macOS Sequoia 15 the Mac tiles it to that half, a corner gives a quarter, and the menu bar fills the screen. Rest the pointer on the green button for the same layouts in a menu, or press Globe-Control and an arrow key. To stop windows snapping, turn off the tiling switches in System Settings, Desktop & Dock. macOS has halves, quarters, fill and centre, but no thirds; for those you need an app.

Last updated: October 2026

Written by the developer of Crest, 7 October 2026. Every built-in route was tried that day on a 16-inch MacBook Pro (Mac16,7) on macOS 27.0.1 with a TextEdit test window, and the window sizes below are the frames macOS reported after each move. Rectangle and Magnet are described from their own pages; we did not install them. Crest comes last.

Drag to an edge, a corner or the menu bar

1. Drag a window by its title bar to the left or right edge of the screen, until the pointer touches it. An outline shows where the window will go.
2. Let go. The window fills that half.
3. For a quarter, drag to a corner instead. To fill the screen, drag into the menu bar.
4. Drag the window away from its tile and it returns to the size it had before.

What it did on the test Mac, a 2056 by 1329 point screen: the right edge gave a window 1028 points wide and 1290 high, exactly half, under the menu bar. The bottom right corner gave 1028 by 645, a quarter. The menu bar gave the full 2056 by 1290. Apple’s guide gives one more way: hold Option while you drag a window to tile it. That has its own switch, below.

The green button and the Window menu

Rest the pointer on a window’s green button, without clicking. A menu opens with Move & Resize (left, right, top and bottom halves), Fill & Arrange, and Full Screen.

Rest the pointer on the green button: halves, fill and arrangements, one click each.

The same layouts are in the menu bar, in each app’s Window menu: Fill, Center, and a Move & Resize submenu with Halves, Quarters, Arrange (two or more windows side by side) and Return to Previous Size. Choosing Window, Move & Resize, Left in TextEdit gave the same 1028 by 1290 half as the drag.

Keyboard shortcuts

The Window menu lists them, with the Globe key (fn on older keyboards) and Control:

We read these from the menus on macOS 27, and they match Apple’s list. Our test scripts cannot press the Globe key the way a keyboard does, so we tried each layout from the menu rather than the keys. Without the Globe key, Control and an arrow does something else: Control-Up opens Mission Control and Control-Left and Right switch Spaces.

Turn window snapping off, or on

Open System Settings, then Desktop & Dock, and scroll to Windows.

System Settings, Desktop & Dock, under Windows. Margins are switched off on this Mac; they are on unless you change it.

• Drag windows to left or right edge of screen to tile: turn off to stop the edge snapping. On macOS 15 it is called Drag windows to screen edges to tile.
• Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen: turn off to stop windows filling the screen when they touch the menu bar.
• Hold Option key while dragging windows to tile: leave on to keep tiling only when you ask for it.
• Tiled windows have margins: on by default; off, tiled windows sit edge to edge, as in our measurements.

The menus and the shortcuts keep working with all four off. Tiling arrived in macOS Sequoia 15; on macOS 14 Sonoma and older none of this exists, and you need an app.

Thirds, and snapping at the notch: Crest

Built-in tiling does halves and quarters well, but no thirds. Crest, a Mac notch app, adds them, and its snapping is free with no account. Drag a window up to the notch and hold it there for a moment (0.35 seconds unless you change it): twelve layouts open in the notch.

• The twelve: left and right half, fill, centre, left and right third, the four quarters, and left and right two-thirds.
• What it did on the test Mac: Left third gave a window 676 by 1274 points, a third of the screen with a small margin all round.
• A quick drag past the top does nothing, because the layouts wait for the hold. Settings, Window snapping sets the hold from 0.15 to 1 second, or turns it off.
• It needs Accessibility, which every app that moves other apps’ windows needs. macOS asks on your first drag. Crest runs on macOS 14 and later, so it also brings snapping to Macs without Sequoia.

Rectangle and Magnet

From each app’s own page or App Store listing, 7 October 2026. Only macOS and Crest were tried on this Mac.

Rectangle is free and open source and snaps when you drag to an edge or a corner, with thirds along the bottom edge and many more layouts by keyboard. Rectangle Pro is paid, with a 10-day trial, and adds gestures, custom snap areas and saved app layouts. Magnet costs $4.99 on the Mac App Store and covers halves, quarters, thirds and two-thirds. If you snap windows all day by keyboard, either is a good choice; if you mostly drag, macOS’s own tiling may be all you need.

Sources

• Apple, Mac User Guide: Tile windows on Mac, Mac window tiling icons and keyboard shortcuts, and Change window tiling settings (with its macOS 15 and 26 versions). Read 7 October 2026.
• Rectangle: github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle (README and releases, 2.0.3 of 5 October 2026) and rectangleapp.com/pro. Magnet: its Mac App Store listing. Read 7 October 2026, neither installed.
• Crest 6.4.0, tried on this Mac on 7 October 2026 with a TextEdit window, and its source: WindowSnapper.swift and the snapping settings.

FAQ

Keep reading: Clipboard history on a Mac · Are notch apps safe? · File shelf apps for the notch · Crest vs The Boring Notch · Best Mac notch apps in 2026 · Crest overview