How to Fix Rectangle Snap Areas Not Showing Up 

By Ryan Hanson, creator of Rectangle · Tested on macOS 15.5 with Rectangle 0.96 · Updated July 2026

Short version: If keyboard shortcuts work but dragging a window to a screen edge does nothing, snap areas are either switched off in Rectangle's settings or being intercepted by macOS Sequoia's own drag-to-tile feature. Check Rectangle's snap area setting first, then disable Apple's native window tiling — those two account for nearly every case. The rest of the causes are below.

What "snap areas" actually are

Snap areas are Rectangle's drag zones: pull a window toward the left edge and a translucent preview appears showing it'll fill the left half. Corners give quarters, the top edge maximizes. They're the mouse-driven half of Rectangle, separate from its keyboard shortcuts, and they can fail independently — which is the key insight for troubleshooting this.

If your shortcuts work fine and only dragging is broken, you can rule out Accessibility permissions entirely. Permissions being invalid would kill both. So this is a narrower problem with a shorter list of causes.

Cause 1: Snap areas are disabled in settings

Start here, because it's the most common answer and takes fifteen seconds. Open Rectangle's settings from the menu bar icon and look for the snap area option. If it's switched off, nothing will snap on drag no matter what else you do.

This gets toggled off more often than you'd expect — sometimes deliberately during earlier troubleshooting, sometimes when someone was trying to stop conflicts with another app and forgot they'd changed it. Switch it back on, drag a window to an edge, and confirm.

Cause 2: macOS Sequoia's native tiling is competing

This is the modern version of the problem, and it didn't exist before Sequoia. macOS now has its own drag-to-edge tiling built in. When both Rectangle's snap areas and Apple's native tiling are active, they're listening for the same gesture — dragging a window to a screen edge — and the results get unpredictable. Sometimes macOS wins and you get its tiling instead of Rectangle's. Sometimes neither fires cleanly.

The fix is to pick one. If you want Rectangle handling drags, turn off macOS's window tiling in System Settings under Desktop & Dock, where the drag-to-tile options live. With Apple's version out of the way, Rectangle's snap areas behave normally again.

If you'd rather keep native tiling for drags and use Rectangle purely for keyboard shortcuts, that's a valid setup too — just disable Rectangle's snap areas so they aren't fighting each other, and you get a clean division of labor.

Cause 3: A conflicting window manager

Running two window managers at once creates the same collision. If Magnet, BetterSnapTool, Moom, Loop, or anything similar is still installed and running, it may be claiming the edge-drag gesture before Rectangle sees it.

Check your menu bar for other window management icons. If you're trialing multiple apps, fully quit the ones you're not using — not just disable their shortcuts, but quit them, since drag detection can stay active even when hotkeys are off.

Cause 4: External monitor and display edge behavior

Snap areas sometimes behave oddly on multi-monitor setups, particularly where two displays meet. Dragging toward the edge shared with another screen can move the window to that display rather than snapping, since you're crossing into the neighboring screen's territory rather than hitting a true screen boundary.

This isn't a bug so much as ambiguity about what you intended. If it's a problem in your layout, test the outer edges of your displays — the ones not adjacent to another screen — to confirm snap areas work at all, then adjust which display arrangement you use or lean on keyboard shortcuts for the contested edges.

Cause 5: Rectangle needs a restart

Less common, but worth ruling out cheaply. If snap areas worked earlier in the session and stopped, quit Rectangle from its menu bar icon and relaunch it. A stale process can lose track of screen geometry, especially after connecting or disconnecting a display, and a restart re-establishes it.

Cause 6: Individual zones were reassigned or disabled

Rectangle lets you configure snap areas per zone, so it's possible for some to work while others don't. If the left edge snaps but corners don't, or the top does nothing while sides are fine, the individual zone was likely disabled or reassigned rather than the whole feature failing.

Go back into the snap area settings and review the zones individually. This also catches the case where someone changed what a zone does — the drag is registering, it's just producing a different result than expected.

Quick diagnostic path

Shortcuts work, no drags snap at all — Snap areas disabled in settings, or macOS native tiling competing. Causes 1 and 2.

Nothing works, shortcuts included — Not a snap area problem; that's Accessibility permissions.

Some zones work, others don't — Individual zones disabled or reassigned. Cause 6.

Worked earlier today, stopped — Restart Rectangle. Cause 5.

Only broken on a second display — Display edge ambiguity. Cause 4.

Another window manager in the menu bar — Quit it. Cause 3.

Frequently asked questions

Why aren't Rectangle's snap areas working?

The two most common causes are snap areas being switched off in Rectangle's settings, and macOS Sequoia's built-in window tiling competing for the same drag gesture. Check Rectangle's snap area setting first, then disable Apple's native tiling in System Settings under Desktop & Dock.

Does macOS Sequoia tiling conflict with Rectangle?

It can. Both listen for a window being dragged to a screen edge, so when both are active the results become unpredictable. Pick one to handle drags — either disable macOS tiling and let Rectangle do it, or disable Rectangle's snap areas and use it for keyboard shortcuts only.

My shortcuts work but dragging doesn't. Is that a permission problem?

No. If shortcuts work, Rectangle's Accessibility permission is valid — invalid permissions would break both. A drag-only failure points to snap areas being disabled, a conflict with native tiling, or another window manager claiming the gesture.

Can I use Rectangle snap areas and macOS tiling together?

Not reliably, since they respond to the same gesture. The workable version is splitting duties: let macOS handle drag-to-tile while Rectangle handles keyboard shortcuts, with Rectangle's snap areas turned off. Trying to run both drag systems at once causes the conflicts.

Written and tested by Ryan Hanson, creator of Rectangle, on macOS 15.5.