AppGrid is a free, open-source window manager for macOS that lets you arrange and resize windows across a grid using keyboard shortcuts inspired by Vim's navigation model.
What is AppGrid?
AppGrid is a lightweight macOS utility that divides your screen into an invisible grid and lets you snap, move, and resize any window to precise positions — all without touching the mouse. It draws heavily from the Vim philosophy of keeping your hands on the keyboard and building muscle memory through a small, consistent set of keys. If you've spent any time with Vim, hjkl movement feels immediately at home here.
The project lives on GitHub under the mjolnirapp organisation, which tells you something about its lineage: it belongs to a family of scriptable, keyboard-first Mac utilities aimed squarely at developers and power users who find macOS's own window management embarrassingly primitive.
What does AppGrid do best?
AppGrid excels at zero-friction, repeatable window placement — the kind of thing you do fifty times a day without realising it. Once you've trained the shortcut for "left half" or "top-right quarter" into your fingers, resizing a window takes under a second and costs zero mental overhead. There's no drag-and-drop, no green button guesswork, no trackpad gymnastics.
Where AppGrid pulls ahead of fancier alternatives is simplicity. Tools like Moom, Magnet, or Mosaic ship with visual configuration panels, drag targets, and preference syncing. AppGrid ships with none of that. You get a grid, you get keys, you get out of the way. For someone who already lives in the terminal and edits config files for fun, that's a feature, not a gap.
- Grid-based snapping — windows land on clean fractions of the screen, not approximate pixel positions
- Vim-style directional keys — hjkl + modifier combos keep hand travel to an absolute minimum
- No menubar clutter — runs silently, no persistent icon or notification noise
- Open source — MIT-licensed, auditable, and forkable if you want custom grid sizes
Is AppGrid free?
Yes, AppGrid is completely free. There is no paid tier, no in-app purchase, and no licence key. You can install it directly from the GitHub releases page or via Homebrew Cask, and it costs nothing now or later.
The trade-off for that price is community support rather than a dedicated developer responding to tickets. The GitHub issue tracker is the support channel. If you hit a bug, you file an issue or submit a PR — that's the social contract of open-source tooling at this level.
Who should use AppGrid?
AppGrid is built for Mac users who are already comfortable in keyboard-centric workflows — developers, writers, researchers, anyone who treats the mouse as a last resort. If you've customised your shell prompt, remapped Caps Lock to Control, and have strong opinions about tab width, AppGrid will feel like it was written for you specifically.
It is probably not the right pick for users who want a polished UI with drag-and-drop layout templates, iCloud sync, or a visual grid picker on screen. For those needs, Moom ($) or Magnet ($) offer a friendlier experience. If you want something in between — more feature-rich than AppGrid but still free — Rectangle is worth a serious look. AppGrid's niche is deliberate minimalism.
How does AppGrid compare to Rectangle and Moom?
Rectangle is the closest free alternative and ships with a much larger set of pre-mapped shortcuts out of the box, plus a preferences window and optional Spectacle compatibility mode. Most Mac users switching from Spectacle land on Rectangle first, and that's a reasonable default. AppGrid's appeal is its unapologetic Vim framing — if hjkl is already in your muscle memory, AppGrid's layout clicks faster than Rectangle's modifier-key scheme.
Moom costs money but earns it with features AppGrid intentionally omits: custom grid sizes per app, saved window arrangements, Snap Areas, and a visual layout picker triggered by hovering the green button. If you manage complex multi-monitor setups with many recurring layouts, Moom's investment pays off quickly. AppGrid is the right tool when you want something invisible that just works the Vim way.
What are the best AppGrid alternatives?
If AppGrid's minimalism is too bare-bones, these are the alternatives worth trying on macOS:
- Rectangle — free, actively maintained, excellent default shortcut coverage, highly recommended for most users
- Moom — paid, most powerful option for custom layouts and multi-monitor workflows
- Magnet — paid Mac App Store app, polished and approachable for less technical users
- Mosaic — paid, beautiful visual layout designer, strong if you prefer mouse-driven setup with keyboard execution
- Raycast window management — free if you already use Raycast; integrates window snapping into the same launcher you use for everything else
