Rectangle for Developers: IDE, Terminal, and Browser Layouts That Work

Most development work rotates through the same three or four windows: an editor or IDE, a terminal, a browser for documentation or a running app, and sometimes a messaging app you’re trying to ignore. Rectangle app‘s default shortcut set maps cleanly onto that rotation without needing anything beyond what ships in the free app. This covers the layouts worth knowing and the specific issues that come up with developer tools.

Single monitor: two windows

The simplest and most common case. Editor takes the half you look at most; terminal or docs take the other:

• ⌃⌥← — editor to the left half
• ⌃⌥→ — terminal or browser to the right half

If the 50/50 split feels cramped for the editor (a common complaint on a 13-14″ screen where a code editor wants more horizontal room than a terminal does), grow one side with ⌃⌥= (Make Larger) a couple of times rather than switching to a completely different layout. There’s no built-in “60/40 halves” action — Make Larger/Make Smaller on an already-halved window is the way to approximate it.

Single monitor: three windows

This is where thirds earn their place over halves. A reasonable split:

• ⌃⌥E (first two-thirds) — editor, since code benefits from width more than a terminal does
• ⌃⌥G (last third) — terminal

That gives the editor two-thirds of the screen and the terminal one-third, both reachable from the keyboard without dragging a divider. If you want three roughly-equal columns instead, cycle a window through ⌃⌥D (first third) — pressing it again on the same window cycles to center-third, then last-third — and place editor, terminal, and browser into the three positions individually.

Two monitors: the common developer setup

With an external display connected to a laptop, a typical split:

• Editor maximized (⌃⌥↩) on the external display — the biggest, sharpest screen deserves the thing you look at all day.
• Terminal in a half or third of the external display if you want it visible alongside the editor, or moved to the laptop screen with ⌃⌥⌘← if you’d rather keep the external display to one app.
• Browser or documentation on the laptop screen, maximized or halved with a messaging app.

If you frequently swap which app is on which screen — say, presenting your laptop screen while keeping notes on the external display — Next Display and Previous Display move the active window over without re-dragging it, which is faster than a manual drag once you’ve built the muscle memory.

Known friction points for developer tools specifically

Terminal apps and character-width resizing. iTerm2, by default, only resizes in increments of full character widths rather than arbitrary pixels, which means Rectangle mac‘s calculated half or third can land slightly off from what you’d get with a GUI app. The documented fix:

defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 DisableWindowSizeSnap -integer 1

Restart iTerm2 after running it. Apple’s own Terminal.app has the same rounding behavior with no equivalent fix currently documented, per Rectangle app‘s own maintainer — if precise pixel-perfect terminal sizing matters to you, iTerm2 with this setting applied behaves more predictably than Terminal.app.

IDEs with their own keyboard shortcuts. VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and similar tools often use Control + Option combinations for their own commands (navigating panes, refactoring shortcuts), which can collide with Rectangle app‘s defaults. Rather than remapping Rectangle globally, use Ignore app on the IDE specifically: focus it, open the Rectangle menu, choose Ignore app. Rectangle’s shortcuts then unregister only while that IDE is frontmost, and the IDE’s own bindings work normally. Switch to another app and Rectangle’s shortcuts come back automatically.

Full-screen mode changes what a window even is. If your editor or terminal runs in native macOS full-screen (its own Space) rather than as a normal maximized window, Rectangle’s move-to-display and resize actions don’t apply the way they do to a windowed app — full-screen apps aren’t ordinary movable windows. Keep the apps you want Rectangle managing in windowed mode.

Scripting a layout instead of rebuilding it by hand

Because Rectangle exposes a URL scheme, a fixed daily layout can be reduced to a single script rather than four separate keyboard presses every morning:

open -a "Visual Studio Code"
sleep 0.5
open -g "rectangle://execute-action?name=first-two-thirds"

open -a "iTerm"
sleep 0.5
open -g "rectangle://execute-action?name=last-third"

Each block activates an app, waits briefly for it to become frontmost, then fires the matching Rectangle action. Save this as a shell script or wire it into a Keyboard Maestro macro triggered by a hotkey, and “set up my coding layout” becomes one keypress instead of four. This is manual to build and won’t adapt automatically to which monitor is connected — that kind of trigger-on-display-connect automation is a built-in feature in Rectangle Pro rather than something free-tier scripting replicates cleanly.

Quick reference

Layout	Shortcuts
Editor + terminal, single monitor	⌃⌥← / ⌃⌥→
Editor + terminal, uneven split	⌃⌥E (editor) / ⌃⌥G (terminal)
Editor + terminal + browser, three columns	⌃⌥D, cycle with repeated presses
Editor on second display	⌃⌥⌘→ then ⌃⌥↩
Ignore IDE’s own shortcuts	Focus IDE → Rectangle menu → Ignore app