Window Snapping on Mac: Halves, Quarters, Grids and Saved Layouts

Updated July 20, 2026 · 7 minute read

Window snapping (dragging a window to a screen edge and having it fill exactly half, a quarter, or some other zone) arrived on Windows in 2009 and became a reflex. On the Mac it has historically been third-party territory, and even now that macOS tiles windows natively, the built-in version stops well short of what snapping tools offer. Here is what macOS gives you for free, where it runs out, and how Crumble Snap fills the rest.

What macOS gives you natively

Since macOS Sequoia, dragging a window against a screen edge offers to tile it, and the Window menu's Move & Resize commands place windows into halves, quarters and a handful of arrangements, with keyboard shortcuts and an optional margin between tiled windows. For occasional side-by-side work it is genuinely fine, and it costs nothing.

Where the native tiling stops:

• No custom zones: you get the built-in arrangements and nothing else.
• No saved layouts: it cannot remember "browser left, editor right, Slack on the second display" and restore that with one keystroke.
• No cycling: you cannot tap a shortcut repeatedly to step a window through half, third and two-thirds widths.
• No grid: there is no way to file a window into an arbitrary cell of a 3×3 grid mid-drag.
• No stashing: parking a window just off the screen edge is not a concept.

How Crumble Snap works

Crumble Snap is one of the two core modules of AppleCrumble (the other is the Crumble Bar taskbar). Every Snap feature combines the same two ingredients: passive event monitors watch your drag or shortcut, and the macOS Accessibility API moves the window. That is the identical mechanism Rectangle, Magnet and every other serious Mac window manager uses; the technical breakdown is here.

• Drag snapping. Drag a window to an edge or corner and a preview zone lights up; release to snap to halves, quarters or thirds. Gaps, the outline preview, and an optional trackpad haptic tick are all tunable.
• Keyboard chords. Every zone has a shortcut. Repeat a chord to cycle sizes, restore a window to its pre-snap frame, or throw it to the next display.
• The throw grid. Hold ⇧ mid-drag for a grid overlay and drop the window into any cell, including spans.
• Custom snap targets. Define your own named regions (say, a centered writing column) and snap to them like any built-in zone.
• Edge stashing. Push a window off the left or right edge; a sliver stays visible and the window peels back when you hover it. Think of it as a shelf for reference material.
• Workspace layouts. Save the position of every window as a named layout and recall the whole desk with one shortcut.
• Restore on unsnap. Drag a snapped window free and it springs back to its old size. Double-click a title bar to maximize, and again to restore.

Honest comparison: Rectangle and Magnet

Rectangle is free, open source, keyboard-first and excellent; if all you want is snapping by shortcut, install Rectangle and be happy. Magnet is an inexpensive App Store one-time purchase covering similar ground with drag zones and chords. Crumble Snap's honest pitch is not "better snapping physics"; it is that the snapping, the taskbar with live window previews, the Start menu and the Quick Settings flyout ship as one native app with one preferences window, instead of three utilities fighting over your menu bar. If the taskbar half of that sentence means nothing to you, Rectangle remains the sane free default.

Snap actions cheat sheet

All chords are configurable in AppleCrumble's preferences, so the table above describes the actions rather than fixed key combinations.