Slate (arm64) is a free, open-source keyboard-driven window manager for macOS that gives you precise, scriptable control over how every app window sits on your screen — rebuilt and compiled natively for Apple Silicon.
What is Slate (arm64)?
Slate (arm64) is a community-maintained, native Apple Silicon build of the beloved Slate window manager — a tool that lets you define exactly where every window lives on your Mac using hotkeys, JavaScript configuration, and layout rules you write yourself. The original Slate project went quiet years ago, but the arm64 fork keeps it alive and performs beautifully on M-series chips without Rosetta translation overhead.
Where most window managers hand you a handful of half/third/quarter snap zones and call it done, Slate treats your screen as a coordinate plane. You write a config file (or a JavaScript snippet) that says things like: "when I press Hyper+T, throw the frontmost window to the top-left quarter of my second display, sized 1400×900." It executes instantly, every time.
What does Slate (arm64) do best?
Slate (arm64) excels at fully deterministic, keyboard-first window placement — the kind of layout discipline that tiling window managers on Linux have always promised but macOS never shipped natively.
I use it to lock my editor to a 70/30 split on the left monitor and keep a reference browser pinned to my right display at a specific pixel height. I defined those positions once in the config file; now a single chord snaps everything into place after any bout of app-switching chaos. There is no dragging, no clicking a menu bar icon, no mouse involved at all.
- Custom hotkeys per app: assign different bindings that only fire when a specific application is focused.
- Multi-monitor aware: you reference displays by index or resolution, so layouts survive plugging and unplugging external screens.
- JavaScript layout engine: move beyond static positions into dynamic rules — centre a window, resize it to 80% of screen width, nudge it 40px right.
- Window hints: a visual overlay (think Vimium for windows) that lets you focus any visible window by typing two characters.
- Layout snapshots: save a named layout and recall the entire arrangement in one key press.
How much does Slate (arm64) cost?
Slate (arm64) is completely free to download and use. There is no Pro tier, no trial period, and no paywall — it is open-source software hosted on GitHub and distributed via Homebrew Cask.
That said, it is a community project rather than a commercial product, so do not expect a polished onboarding wizard or a support inbox. If you hit a snag, the GitHub issues page is your friend.
Who should use Slate (arm64)?
Slate (arm64) is unambiguously aimed at power users who are comfortable editing a plain-text config file and who feel constrained by the fixed snap zones that tools like Magnet or Moom offer. If you want to drag a window to an edge and have it snap, use Magnet. If you want to express a layout as code and never touch the mouse again, Slate is your tool.
Developers, writers running a heavy multi-pane setup, and anyone migrating from a Linux tiling WM will feel immediately at home. Novice users or anyone who just wants to quickly tile two windows side by side will find the configuration overhead off-putting and should look at Rectangle instead — it ships with sane defaults and requires zero configuration.
How does Slate (arm64) compare to Rectangle and Moom?
Rectangle is the go-to recommendation for most users: drag-to-snap, keyboard shortcuts for common halves and quarters, zero config. Moom is the middle ground — it adds a visual grid picker and per-app rules through a GUI. Slate sits at the opposite end: no GUI, maximum scriptability, steepest learning curve, highest ceiling.
Where Slate uniquely wins is when you need layouts that Rectangle and Moom simply cannot express — conditional positioning, pixel-perfect sizing, per-application binding sets, or snapping three windows simultaneously with one hotkey. The arm64 build also means you are not burning battery on Rosetta translation, which matters on an M-series MacBook where every idle watt counts.
Amethyst and Yabai are also worth mentioning if you want full automatic tiling (Slate does not auto-tile — it responds to your hotkeys). For manual, intentional, keyboard-controlled placement, Slate is the most powerful free option on the platform.
Is Slate (arm64) actively maintained?
The arm64 fork is a community effort focused on keeping a known-good binary compatible with Apple Silicon. It is not receiving new features at the pace of a funded product, but it compiles cleanly and runs without issues on current macOS releases. Check the GitHub repository before installing to confirm the latest build date aligns with your macOS version.
