How Orthant compares
macOS already does halves and quarters. Why add anything?
Since Sequoia, macOS tiles windows in the box: halves, quarters, and drag-to-edge. For a lot of people that is genuinely enough, and if it is enough for you, you do not need Orthant.
What it does not do:
- No grid. You get the fractions Apple chose. There is no way to say "left two thirds" or "the middle column of five".
- No custom regions. Nothing to name, save, or bind.
- No rebinding. The shortcuts are fixed, and they hang off the Globe key.
Orthant adds those three things. Everything else about how macOS behaves is left alone, and the two coexist.
Against other window managers
Swipe to compare →
Prices and capabilities checked 2026-08-31. Corrections welcome: open an issue. Magnet's own site lists no price; the figure above is from its Mac App Store listing.
Which one should you use?
Rectangle is excellent, free, and widely used. If you want reliable halves and quarters on keyboard shortcuts, use it. This is not a pitch to switch.
Rectangle already has thirds and two thirds on shortcuts, free. Orthant is not for that case. It is for the region nobody thought to ship: when the shape you want is not on anyone's list, and you would rather draw it on a grid than hope it was anticipated. Rectangle Pro can define a custom size and position too. What it does not have is a grid to draw one on.
Divvy and Moom cover that ground too, as the table says. Both are long-standing, well-made apps, and if you already own one you do not need Orthant. The difference is price rather than capability for the specific job of drawing a region and keeping it on a key: Orthant is free and open source, and they are paid. Moom does things Orthant does not, which the next section covers.
What Orthant does not do
It moves one window: the frontmost one. There is no way to arrange several at once, and no saved layout to restore later. That is Moom's headline feature and it is genuinely useful: lay out your windows as you want them, then save a layout. Activate the layout at any time.
If that is the problem you have, Moom solves it and Orthant does not.
Pressing the same shortcut twice does nothing different. Rectangle cycles through thirds that way, so one key walks first, centre and last. Some people much prefer that to a key per region. Orthant's answer is that each region gets its own key, which is more keys to remember and no guessing about which press you are on.
It is macOS only, and macOS 13 or later. Windows is planned. Linux is not possible, because Wayland does not let one app move another's windows.