Rectangle VS yabai

Compare Rectangle vs yabai and see what are their differences.

Rectangle

Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts and snap areas (by rxhanson)

yabai

A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning (by koekeishiya)
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Rectangle yabai
737 226
26,437 24,873
0.9% 1.9%
8.4 8.7
8 days ago 7 days ago
Swift C
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Rectangle

Posts with mentions or reviews of Rectangle. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-02-09.

yabai

Posts with mentions or reviews of yabai. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-10-29.
  • Using an 8K TV as a Monitor
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Oct 2024
    i find https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/ to get me to 90% parity with i3. it has quirks and limitations, some of which can be fixed by disabling system integrity protection but it can definitely handle window tiling and navigating with keybindings when you use the companion daemon https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd
  • Moom 4, the next-generation window manager
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Aug 2024
  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    38 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Jun 2024
    If your into the tiling window manager experience, I would highly recommend looking into yabai + skhd + Sketchybar

    - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

  • AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS
    28 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Jun 2024
    Here's my .yabairc https://github.com/kcrwfrd/dotfiles/blob/master/link/.yabair...

    Looking through it I don't see a setting for instant space switching... I think maybe it's provided by default when you install the scripting addition? https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/1527

    I have keybindings in my skhd for focusing spaces: https://github.com/kcrwfrd/dotfiles/blob/master/skhd/space

    I usually just keep 10 spaces at all times rather than creating new ones on demand.

  • A Linux guy buys a MacBook Pro
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 15 May 2024
    Historically I'd install refind/refit and install Debian in my work laptops, but haven't been brave enough to do that on the m1's yet. So I took have been living the Mac life for a while now.

    I hadn't been using Spaces much, instead kind of juggling a stack of a couple active windows on one screen. Like the author though I did decide to try out Yabai, and it's been an pretty decent tiling system for me. Every now and then it feels like an obvious should work split won't work, or like today Zoom just refuses to be tiled, but in general it's been a huge upgrade & really improved usability. It also sucked me into using multiple spaces, since there's some configs I knew I'd want to keep.

    One thing worth mentioning is how wild it is to get Yabai actually fully running. It runs pretty well as a regular service, but to really be fully featured one have to disable System Integrity Protection, letting it hook itself into the Dock ia some backdoor messing around evidently. https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I...

    It keeps feeling like the consumer world is more and more locked down, and this was one of those scary signs for me. The OS refusing to afford control, reserving it for itself seems like a trend, with no available permissioning paths even possible. Having to run a naked insecure system to get a couple management and keyboard shortcuts is wild. This feels like a bleak direction for general purpose computing.

  • My MacBook setup (the 2024 version)
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Feb 2024
    It exists! Check out [yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai), which is nicely paired with [skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd).
  • Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Feb 2024
    I have a 49 inch CRG9 and the best recommendation for window management is Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) along with skhd (https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd). Yabai is a greedy window management solution that tries to fit opened applications in given space and skhd let's you easily jump between those using keyboard shortcuts. This has massively improved my ultrawide experience.

    Only disclaimer is, configuring yabai has a slight learning curve.

  • Is there an app that does this Windows feature?
    1 project | /r/MacOS | 5 Dec 2023
    Want something free that's better than tiling on Windows? Yabai.
  • Yabai – A tiling window manager for macOS
    1 project | /r/hackernews | 2 Dec 2023
    35 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 30 Nov 2023
    Here it is. There is no visualization of the stack, which apparently Stackline in the other comment supports, but I don't tend to need that. Just being able to move between the windows is good enough for me.

    https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/203#issuecomment...

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rectangle and yabai you can also consider the following projects:

Amethyst - Automatic tiling window manager for macOS à la xmonad.

AeroSpace - AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS

spectacle - Spectacle allows you to organize your windows without using a mouse.

linux

vscode-vibrancy - Enable Acrylic/Glass effect for your VS Code.

HomeBrew - 🍺 The missing package manager for macOS (or Linux)

MonitorControl - 🖥 Control your display's brightness & volume on your Mac as if it was a native Apple Display. Use Apple Keyboard keys or custom shortcuts. Shows the native macOS OSDs.

alt-tab-macos - Windows alt-tab on macOS

hammerspoon - Staggeringly powerful macOS desktop automation with Lua

PlayCover - Community fork of PlayCover

Karabiner-Elements - Karabiner-Elements is a powerful tool for customizing keyboards on macOS

Nutrient - The #1 PDF SDK Library
Bad PDFs = bad UX. Slow load times, broken annotations, clunky UX frustrates users. Nutrient’s PDF SDKs gives seamless document experiences, fast rendering, annotations, real-time collaboration, 100+ features. Used by 10K+ devs, serving ~half a billion users worldwide. Explore the SDK for free.
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