To preface this, I’ve used Linux from the CLI for the better part of 15 years. I’m a software engineer and my personal projects are almost always something that runs in a Linux VM or a Docker container somewhere, but I’ve always used a Mac to work on personal and professional projects. I have a Windows desktop that I use exclusively for gaming and my personal Macbook is finally giving out after about 10 years, so I’m trying out Linux Mint with Cinnamon on my desktop.
So far, it works shockingly well and I absolutely love being able to reach for a real Linux shell anytime I want, with no weird quirks from MacOS or WSL. The fact that Steam works at all on a Linux environment is still a little magical to me.
There are a couple things I really miss from MacOS and Rectangle is one of them. I’ve spent a couple hours searching and trying out various solutions, but none of them do the specific thing Rectangle did for me. You input something like ctrl+cmd+right and Rectangle fits your current window to the top right quadrant of your screen.
Before I dive into the weeds and make my own Cinnamon Spice, I figured I should just ask: is there an app/extension that functions like Rectangle for Linux? Here’s the things I can say do not work:
- Muffin hotkeys: Muffin only supports moving tiles, not absolutely positioning them. You can kind of mimic Rectangle behavior, but only with multiple keystrokes to move the windows around on the grid.
- gTile: This is a Cinnamon Spice that I’m pretty sure has the bones of what I want in it, but the UI is the opposite of what I want.
- gSnap: Very similar to gTile, but for Gnome. The UI for it is actually quite a bit worse, IMO; you are expected to use a mouse to drag windows.
- zentile: On top of this only working for XFCE, it doesn’t actually let me position windows with a keystroke
To be super clear: Rectangle is explicitly not a tiling window manager. It lets you set hotkeys to move/resize windows, it does not reflow your entire screen to a grid. There are a dozen tiling tools/window manager out there I’ve found and I’ve begun to think the Linux community has a weird preoccupation with them. Like, they’re cool and all, but all I want is to move the current window to specific areas of my screen with a single keystroke. I don’t need every window squished into frame at once or some weird artsy layout.
You’ll need to specify what DE you’re using. This comes built in with KDE Plasma: Meta+left and then quickly also up for top left corner, Meta+right and then quickly also down for bottom right corner etc.
I don’t knowt what exact shortcuts other DEs use, but I think most that aren’t Gnome support quarter tiling too
Updated to be specific, I’m using Cinnamon. Muffin is the builtin tiling window manager for Cinnamon and it does exactly what you’re describing. The problem is that it moves tiles, it doesn’t absolutely position them. You have to keep moving tiles around to get them where you want them, Rectangle just has hotkeys to immediately place and resize to fit the active window for each quadrant that it supports:
ctrl+cmd+left: top left quadrantctrl+cmd+right: top left quadrantshift+ctrl+cmd+left: bottom left quadrantshift+ctrl+cmd+right: bottom left quadrantalt+cmd+left: left halfalt+cmd+right: right halfalt+cmd+up: top halfalt+cmd+left: bottom halfalt+cmd+f: full screen
It’s hard to express how natural that feels after using it for a bit, and I’m still using a Macbook for work so the muscle memory is not going away.
You can customize this in the Keyboard > Shortcuts settings
I saw that and tried it pretty early on. That just moves the screen, it doesn’t fill the quadrant.
It does. I use it all the time. I have various window cobtrol stuff bound to alt-keypad keys.
I’ll just second the suggestion that KDE Plasma is worth a try, as it’s very adaptable once you know what you want. You don’t need to install any addons for the functionality you describe, just open the Shortcuts settings, KWin category, and have at it.
It’s funny. I have been forced to use macOS because of work, and I use rectangle to mimic what KDE plasma does out of the box. I’d suggest using KDE if you wanted something powerfully customizable and user friendly. If you find something that works with other windows decorations (non-KDE), I’d love to know about them too for when I inevitably switch back to Linux Desktop!
Yeah. I was forced to use Mac too. Rectangle didn’t really help much. After a few months I convinced them to buy me a System76. I needed tiling.
Have you seen the cost of a MacBook Pro? I doubt a system76 is actually much more expensive. May even be cheaper. Though to be honest Asahi is probably good enough now for coding work.
Have you given any thought to using a window manager with your desktop environment? Maybe one that can be customized to provide very basic functionality? I use bspwm with XFCE, for example.
I am not a KDE user but it sounds like KDE would be great for you. KDE should let you customize your desktop a ton including keyboard shortcuts
Sounds like you want a tiling window manager. I can’t guide you further, it’s not my jam, but most are configurable.
