The best Divvy alternative for Mac (before Rosetta takes Divvy away)
Divvy was the first Mac window manager that made a grid the interface. Press a hotkey, a little panel of squares appears, drag across the cells you want, and the window fills exactly that slice of the screen. So if you're searching for a Divvy alternative now, it's usually not because the idea stopped working. It's because the app hasn't been updated in six years, and the ground under it is about to move. Here's what's actually going on, and which apps keep the grid idea without the expiry date.
Why people are looking for a Divvy alternative now
It hasn't been updated since 2019. The Mac App Store lists Divvy 1.5.2, released on 23 August 2019, still at $13.99 with a stated requirement of macOS 10.6.6 or later. The download on Mizage's own site is version 1.5.1. Nothing since. Owners on the TidBITS forums say they've emailed the developer about future macOS versions and heard nothing back.
It's an Intel app. Both builds predate Apple silicon, and Homebrew's listing says plainly that Divvy is built for Intel and needs Rosetta 2 on an M-series Mac. That has been invisible for years, because Rosetta just works.
Rosetta has an end date. Apple's support page on Intel apps says Rosetta is available on Apple silicon Macs running macOS 27 or earlier. Starting with macOS 28, the next major release, it will only be kept for "certain older, unmaintained games". A window manager isn't a game. Unless Mizage ships a native build, Divvy stops launching on the first macOS release after this one, and at least one owner on the TidBITS forums reports already seeing macOS warn that it will stop working.
If it still works for you on macOS 27, there's no need to rip it out today. But pick a replacement on your own schedule, not the morning after an upgrade.
What made Divvy worth keeping
Be clear about what you're replacing, so you don't lose the bit you liked:
- You saw your options. The grid was the menu. No shortcuts to remember for "left two-thirds" or "top-right quarter"; you just picked the cells.
- Any rectangle on the grid was reachable. Not a fixed list of halves and quarters, but any block of cells, on a grid as fine as 20 × 20.
- Shortcuts were there if you wanted them. You could save your favourite regions as hotkeys and skip the panel.
Most popular Mac window managers keep only that last part. Rectangle and Magnet give you a fixed set of shortcuts, one per region, and nothing to look at. That's fine if you only ever use halves. It's a step backwards if the grid is the reason you used Divvy.
The best Divvy alternatives at a glance
| Divvy | Let's Tile | Moom | Rectangle | Built-in macOS tiling | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $13.99 | Free tier + $9.99 Pro, one-time | $15 one-time | Free (Pro paid) | Free |
| Last updated | August 2019 | Actively developed | Actively developed | Actively developed | Ships with macOS |
| Native on Apple silicon | No (Rosetta) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-screen grid | Yes, picked with the mouse | Yes, steered with arrow keys | Yes, from keyboard mode | No | No |
| Any region on the grid | Yes | Yes (3 × 2 free, any grid in Pro) | Yes | No, fixed regions | No, halves and quarters |
| Saved layouts | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Minimum macOS | 10.6.6 | 14 (Sonoma) | 10.13 (High Sierra) | 13 (Ventura) | 15 (Sequoia) |
Let's Tile: Divvy's grid, driven from the keyboard
Let's Tile is the closest thing to Divvy's idea that's still being built, and it fixes the one thing Divvy always made you do: reach for the mouse.
Press one shortcut (⌘↵ by default, and you can rebind it) and a grid drops over the window you were just using. Move the highlighted cell with the arrow keys, hold ⇧ and press an arrow to stretch it across more cells, then hit ↵ and the window snaps into place. It's the same "the grid is the menu" thinking, without the drag. One shortcut reaches every layout on the grid, so there's no list of per-region hotkeys to maintain.
The free tier is a 3 × 2 grid, and that's permanent, not a trial. It covers halves, thirds, two-thirds, quarters and full screen, which is what most Divvy owners were actually dragging out day to day. Pro is $9.99, paid once. It adds any grid shape you like (4 × 3, 6 × 2, whatever an ultrawide wants), a different grid for each display that it remembers on its own, throwing the window to another display mid-tile, reshaping the grid on the fly with ⌥ and the arrow keys, and margins between cells in pixels. There's no account and no subscription, one key covers up to 20 devices, and the app sends no telemetry.
To be fair about what you give up: Let's Tile is far newer than Divvy, it needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, it's not open source, and it does not save and restore whole layouts. If you used Divvy's saved shortcuts mainly to jump to one exact region you use all day, you'll do the same thing in a few arrow presses instead.
The other options, honestly
Moom is the one to pick if you want a grid and saved layouts. Many Tricks have kept it current since 2011. It has an on-screen grid you can drive from its keyboard mode, plus a hover palette on the green button, and it can save an arrangement of several windows and restore it, even automatically when a display connects. The trade is a bigger app with more settings, and its keyboard grid sits behind a mode you enter first. More in our Moom alternative post.
Rectangle is the free, open-source default, and the right answer if cost or open source matters most. There's no grid, though. You learn a shortcut per region, and most people settle on halves and quarters. See the Rectangle alternative guide for where that works and where it stops.
Built-in macOS tiling has been there since macOS 15 Sequoia: drag a window to a screen edge, or use the Window menu's Move & Resize items. It's free and needs no permissions, but it only knows halves, quarters and full screen. Our guide to tiling windows on macOS covers it in full.
If you'd like the wider view, we compare everything in the best macOS window manager for 2026.
Moving off Divvy without losing a day
- Write down the regions you actually use. Open Divvy's shortcut list. Most people find they've got three to five in regular use, and almost all of them sit on a 3 × 2 or 4 × 2 grid.
- Try the replacement alongside Divvy. Give it a shortcut that doesn't clash with Divvy's (Divvy's global hotkey is set in its preferences), and use both for a few days.
- Grant Accessibility to the new app. Every window manager needs it to move windows. If something appears but nothing moves, see window manager not working on Mac.
- Then remove Divvy from your login items, before the macOS upgrade that ends Rosetta, rather than after it.
Frequently asked questions
Does Divvy still work? On an Apple silicon Mac it runs through Rosetta 2, which Apple says is available through macOS 27. Apple says that from macOS 28, Rosetta will only be kept for certain older games, so plan for Divvy to stop working then unless it gets a native update.
Is Divvy abandoned? Mizage hasn't said so publicly. But the last update on the Mac App Store is from August 2019, and owners report getting no reply about future macOS versions.
Is there a free Divvy alternative? Yes. Let's Tile's free tier gives you a 3 × 2 grid for good, and Rectangle is free and open source, though it uses fixed shortcuts rather than a grid.
Divvy got the idea right in 2011: show people the grid and let them pick. If you want that idea for the next ten years rather than the next one, try Let's Tile. The free grid is enough to find out whether it fits how you work.