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 screenIt’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.
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.
Dont theme my Plasma. At least for tutorial pics!
Ok next time I won’t use your computer.
Do you HAVE to use Cinnamon? XD its a very slowly evolving Desktop Environment, Wayland is still experimental. I would recommend to try KDE.
You can customize this in the
Keyboard > ShortcutssettingsI saw that and tried it pretty early on. That just moves the screen, it doesn’t fill the quadrant.
What do “moves the screen” vs “fills the quadrant” mean? I’m not running cinnamon, but “Move window to upper right” really sounds like it should do what you’re asking, provided I understand what you’re asking.
My guess is that for example if your screen is 1920x1080, and the window is 800x600 OP expects that move to right rescales it to 960x1080 and top-right to 960x540, but that shortcut might be just moving the 800x600 window without resizing.
For OP if that’s what you’re asking, KDE does that, not sure if Cinnamon does, it’s expected to be kind of minimalist and similar to windows. KDE has had that built in for decades, it’s not a new thing, so I think that if Cinnamon was going to have it it would already do.
Ohh, is that actually what it does? No resize? So if the window is already maximized, does it do nothing? I feel like resizing to 1/4 of the screen is the most intuitive thing for that operation to do, I’m surprised if it doesn’t.
That’s my understanding from what OP said, i.e. it just moves the window doesn’t fill the quadrant.
IIRC Xfce4 supports quad manual tiling like that.
It does. I use it all the time. I have various window cobtrol stuff bound to alt-keypad keys.
Thanks for the clarification. I switched from Xfce4 to GNOME many years ago because the former doesn’t support Wayland at that time, but I still miss the manual quarter tiling with the shortcut keys.
I use Rectangle on macOS as well, and use Wayfire on Linux. Wayfire has a tiling plug-in that does exactly what Rectangle does.
Mint and Cinnamon are quite outdated btw, I wouldn’t really recommend them unless you’ve got an old PC and you’re just a basic user.