Raycast window management vs a window manager

What Raycast's window commands do

Open Raycast and search for a command such as Left Half, First Third, Center or Maximize. Press Return and the front window moves. The set covers halves, thirds and two-thirds, quarters and sixths, maximize, centering, moving to the next or previous display or Space, and restoring the previous size.

Window Management is part of Raycast's free plan. Custom window commands of your own are a Pro feature.

Give them hotkeys

Typing a command name every time is slow. Assign hotkeys:

1. Open Raycast's settings → Extensions.
2. Find Window Management and expand it.
3. Click the Hotkey field next to a command and press the keys you want.

A Hyper key is ideal here: Hyper plus ← / → for halves, Hyper plus 1/2/3 for thirds, and none of them can clash with an app.

Raycast vs macOS's own tiling

On macOS 15 Sequoia and later, macOS tiles halves and quarters itself with Fn⌃ and the arrows. Raycast adds:

• Thirds and two-thirds, which macOS lacks.
• Your own hotkeys for every action.
• Next/previous display and Space as commands.
• Older macOS support: it works on versions without built-in tiling.

Where it stops

Raycast's commands, like Rectangle's or macOS's, act once on one window. They don't:

• place a window automatically when it opens,
• make room for a new window by rearranging others,
• move focus to "the window on the left",
• remember a layout per desktop and rebuild it.

If you find yourself pressing the same three hotkeys every time you open a project, that's the point where a window manager helps.

Two kinds of window manager

• Grid tilers (Amethyst, yabai, AeroSpace) divide the screen among all windows automatically. Good on large monitors.
• Scrolling managers put each window in a column on a strip wider than the screen, so a new window adds a column instead of shrinking the others. Good on laptops and ultrawides.

Ribbon is a scrolling window manager. New windows become columns automatically; ⌃⌥← / → moves focus between them; ⌃⌥R cycles a column through preset widths (a quarter, a third, a half, two thirds and so on); a trackpad swipe moves the strip with your fingers. It runs alongside Raycast fine as long as you don't use Raycast's window commands on the same windows, because two tools moving one window will fight. Keep Raycast as your launcher, let Ribbon place windows. Try it in the live demo; pricing is $9.99 once.