Amethyst is a free, open-source automatic tiling window manager for macOS that organises your open windows into non-overlapping layouts without any dragging or resizing on your part.
What is Amethyst?
Amethyst is a keyboard-driven window manager that takes over the chore of arranging application windows on your Mac, automatically dividing your screen real estate into structured, gap-free layouts the moment a new window appears. Think of it as a strict but brilliant studio assistant who never lets two windows overlap — and never asks for your opinion about it.
It draws conceptual inspiration from xmonad, the venerable Haskell tiling manager beloved by Linux power users, but it runs natively on macOS as a proper menu-bar application. No virtual machine, no XQuartz, no nonsense.
What does Amethyst do best?
Amethyst excels at keeping your display dense with productive work rather than scattered with partially visible windows. Its standout strength is the breadth of layout algorithms it ships with out of the box — tall (a classic primary-pane-plus-stack), wide, fullscreen, column, floating, and several others — all switchable on the fly with a keyboard shortcut.
I run two external displays and four or five coding-adjacent apps at any given moment: VS Code, a terminal, a browser with docs, and Slack. Before Amethyst entered my workflow I spent a low-key infuriating amount of mental energy deciding where windows should live. Now they just land somewhere sensible. The tall layout puts my editor in a wide left pane; everything else stacks neatly on the right. Switching the focused window to the main pane is a single chord away.
Multi-monitor support is first-class. Each screen maintains its own layout independently, and you can throw a window across monitors from the keyboard without touching the mouse at all.
Is Amethyst free?
Yes — Amethyst is completely free to download and use, and its source code is publicly available on GitHub under an MIT licence. There is no paid tier, no nag screen, and no subscription. The project is maintained by a single developer and sustained by community goodwill; if it saves you hours of window-wrangling, a GitHub star or a small donation is the appropriate thank-you.
Who should use Amethyst?
Amethyst is the right tool for anyone who prefers the keyboard over the mouse, works with several windows open simultaneously, and finds macOS's native window management — essentially drag, resize, and Stage Manager — too manual or too fussy. Developers, researchers, writers who reference multiple documents, and anyone who has ever used a tiling window manager on Linux will feel at home within minutes.
It is not ideal for users who prefer floating, overlapping windows or rely heavily on macOS Stage Manager. Amethyst and Stage Manager are philosophically opposite approaches, and running both simultaneously will make you quietly miserable.
How does Amethyst compare to Moom and Magnet?
Moom and Magnet are excellent manual window arrangers — they give you snap zones, keyboard shortcuts to snap to halves or thirds, and saved layouts you invoke yourself. They are the right answer if you want to stay in control of every placement decision. Amethyst is a different philosophy entirely: it removes the decision from you. Windows tile themselves as they open and close, and the layout reflows automatically. There is no snapping, no dragging to zones, no menu to invoke.
A closer conceptual competitor is Yabai, the more powerful (and more configuration-intensive) tiling manager that can unlock additional layout control by disabling macOS System Integrity Protection. Amethyst works entirely within Apple's sandbox — no SIP changes required — which means it is safer and easier to set up, but it cannot control certain system windows or move windows between spaces as fluidly as Yabai can. If you want power and are comfortable in a config file, Yabai rewards the investment. If you want something that works in five minutes without touching SIP, Amethyst is the clear choice.
What are the best Amethyst alternatives?
The main alternatives depend on how deep you want to go. Yabai (with the skhd hotkey daemon) is the most powerful option for those who want scripted layout rules and space management. Rectangle and Magnet are simpler manual snap tools. Mosaic adds a visual drag-to-zone approach. Stage Manager, Apple's own solution, suits users who think in window groups rather than tiled grids. None of them tile automatically and continuously the way Amethyst does — that automatic reflow is what sets it apart.
