How to Install Rectangle app on Mac: Complete Setup Guide

Rectangle mac takes about two minutes to install and one permission grant to start working. This walks through both installation methods, the Accessibility prompt that trips people up, and the handful of settings worth adjusting before you start using it daily.

Requirements

Rectangle app runs on macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. If you’re on an older system, the project’s last release supporting macOS 10.13 and 10.14 is v0.73, available from the Releases page rather than the current download link.

Method 1: Direct download (DMG)

1. Go to rectangleapp.com and download the .dmg file, or grab the latest release directly from GitHub Releases.
2. Open the downloaded file and drag Rectangle.app into your Applications folder.
3. Launch it from Applications (or Spotlight) the first time.

This method gets you the same app as Homebrew; it just updates itself through its own built-in checker instead of through brew upgrade.

Method 2: Homebrew

If you already use Homebrew:

brew install --cask rectangle

Updates then come through your normal Homebrew workflow:

brew upgrade --cask rectangle

Homebrew installs are functionally identical to the DMG version — same app, same permissions needed, same settings.

Granting Accessibility permission

The first time you launch Rectangle, macOS shows a system prompt asking to allow it Accessibility access. This is not optional: Rectangle uses the Accessibility API to read a window’s current position and move it, and without the permission granted, no shortcut or snap area will do anything.

1. Click Open System Settings when prompted, or go there manually: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility.
2. Find Rectangle in the list and toggle it on.
3. If Rectangle isn’t listed yet, quit and relaunch it — the entry appears once the app has requested the permission at least once.

To confirm it worked: click any normal window to make it active, then choose Left Half from Rectangle’s menu bar icon. If the window resizes and moves, the permission is set correctly.

Choosing your shortcut style

On first launch (or in Settings), Rectangle offers a choice between its own default shortcuts and a Spectacle-compatible set, matching the older Spectacle app’s key combinations. If you’re new to window managers, the Rectangle defaults are the better starting point — they’re the ones documented throughout the app and its support materials. Switch to Spectacle-compatible only if you specifically used Spectacle before and already have that muscle memory.

Your first five shortcuts

Learn these before anything else; they cover most day-to-day use:

Everything else — quarters, thirds, sixths, moving between displays — builds on the same Control + Option pattern and can be learned as you need it.

Settings worth changing on day one

Open Rectangle’s preferences from the menu bar icon and check these:

• Launch on login. Turn this on so Rectangle is always running without you having to remember to open it.
• Snap areas. On by default; if you find yourself accidentally triggering a snap while just repositioning a window slightly, this can be turned off while keeping keyboard shortcuts fully functional.
• Traverse displays with edge snapping / repeated shortcuts. If you use more than one monitor, look for the option that lets a repeated «left half» press carry a window onto the adjacent display — some people prefer this to a separate next-display shortcut.

Settings not shown in the preferences window — such as adding a pixel gap between tiled windows — are set through Terminal commands documented in the project’s TerminalCommands.md. You don’t need these to get started; they’re worth knowing exist once you have opinions about margins.

Backing up your configuration

Once you’ve customized shortcuts, use Settings > Export to save your configuration as a JSON file. This is useful before a macOS reinstall or when setting up a new Mac — import the same file on the new machine with Settings > Import instead of rebinding everything by hand.

If the Accessibility prompt never appears

Occasionally the permission dialog doesn’t show up on first launch, usually because a previous window manager left a stale entry behind. Fix it directly:

1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility.
2. Add Rectangle manually with the plus button, browsing to it in Applications.
3. Toggle it on and restart Rectangle.

If shortcuts still don’t respond after that, the troubleshooting steps in the README — starting with locking and unlocking your Mac, then a full restart — resolve most remaining cases.

Uninstalling, if you ever need to

defaults delete com.knollsoft.Rectangle

then move Rectangle.app to the Trash. Homebrew users should run brew uninstall --zap rectangle instead, which removes the preferences file as part of the same command.