Best Free Window Managers

Do you write, play games, code, illustrate or edit images on your computer? Wouldn’t it be great if you could configure your windows in just the right places, and just the right sizes for each of these roles and then restore them at the click of a button? That’s exactly what SmartWindows let’s you do! Switch between your optimal coding, gaming, writing and other layouts. Save yourself minutes of time and improve your productivity every day with SmartWindows. Not only does SmartWindows save and restore the application positions but it also remembers and opens up the files. All your favorite applications such as Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Project, Notepad and Wordpad are supported. Love the flexibility and freedom afforded when using multiple monitors? No worries. Use multiple displays simultaneously because SmartWindows supports up to 6 monitors for restoring app positions on each display.

WindowManager helps you to improve your workflow by remembering and restoring the position and size of your programs and windows. Many programs don't remember their position and size between sessions and even Windows Explorer does not restore Windows to their last position under Windows 7 or higher. This is where WindowManager steps in and makes sure your windows are placed exactly where you want them every time you open them. WindowManager even allows you to lock the position and size of any window, so that it will always open at the same spot no matter where you move it. The window handling is fully customizable and you can set up special rules for your favorite or most frequently used windows. You can also make WindowManager send keystrokes or mouse clicks to a program when its window is opened, run additional programs, and other advanced actions. With WindowManager, you can also minimize most windows in the system tray.

The SuperPuTTY window manager for putty sessions. SuperPuTTY is a Windows-based application that manages putty ssh terminals. Additionally, it has a simple scripting language for basic tasks. It additionally supports RDP sessions. SuperPuTTY is used primarily as a window manager and multi-session manager for the PuTTY SSH Client. It allows you to embed PuTTY terminal instances inside of windows form providing a better-tabbed interface when multiple connections are used. Additionally, SuperPuTTY has support for using pscp.exe to transfer files to and from a remote host. Local terminal sessions can be started with MinTTY, as well as RDP, PowerShell, and other terminal applications. SuperPuTTY does not do any ssh or terminal management itself since PuTTY does an excellent job of this. SuperPuTTY as of v1.4.0.7 is available with an installer. SuperPuTTY is also available as a portable ZIP file, Simply unzip the files to a chosen location on your local disk.

A must-have tool for large screens or multiple monitors. Stack is a productivity tool, that helps move windows around. Divide screens into arbitrary zones. Quickly move windows between zones. Customizable hotkeys and mouse drag. Group windows into tabbed areas. Stack vertically or horizontally within a zone. High DPI support and highly customizable layout, based on XAML. With v2.1 we are adding an ability to create and share custom widgets, that can be put on Stack layouts. The initial release of Stack v2.1 contains a single sample widget, and a small amount of composable tools, that enable the creation of more complicated data-rich widgets inline inside your layouts. Stack can now automatically assign most newly opened windows to their closest zone. You can now change which mouse button is used to drag windows between zones. We've added an ability to assign hotkey combinations to move the active window to the zone.

WS Grid+ is an accessible window manager for Windows 10. It helps you make order out of many chaotic program windows scattered across your screen. It lets you move and/or resize the active window using a grid selection system. It also provides keyboard/mouse shortcuts to instantly move and resize a window with no need to reach for its title bar. Finally, it gives you useful shortcuts to the Windows 10 virtual desktops feature. Double-tap key CTRL (or ALT + F1) to open/move the panel at/to the current mouse pointer's location. Use the mouse to make a grid selection. The active application window will duplicate the chosen relative position and size. Press CTRL while clicking on a grid cell to only change the window's position and leave its size as-is. Press the key ESC to close the panel (no focus needed). Resize the active window to preset dimensions and reposition to make it completely visible if needed.

Organize your desktop in 3 simple steps. Create and restore any desktop layout with Mosaico. Easily organize your desktop using Mosaico. Simply drag windows and they will automatically fit a predefined position. Save a desktop layout for each of your activities. All window positions and sizes are stored in a snapshot. Recall any saved layout with a single click. Windows will run and resize at its original position. Save time and improve your productivity with Mosaico! Organize your desktop creating a custom layout for each activity: work, internet, gaming, files, etc. With Mosaico, you can easily move windows and they will automatically fit a predefined position on the screen. Capture their position and size on screen so that you can recall that layout later. Switch between layouts with a single click, or with your own keyboard combination. Mosaico is ideal when you work with many windows open.

awesome is a highly configurable, next-generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license. It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with everyday computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their graphical environment. A window manager is probably one of the most used software applications in your day-to-day tasks, along with your web browser, mail reader and text editor. Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable. awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible, highly configurable window manager.

Allows the user to quickly and easily layout their windows on a dynamic grid using just the mouse. Gives functionality to the normally useless right mouse button when moving a window. Doing this will enable the grid snap mode. Simple to control, portable, and Installable. Works with Aerosnap, not intrusive. Grid overlay can be customized, can auto-update, and has customizable input. Supports Windows Vista (SP2), 7 (SP1), 8, 8.1 & 10. Saved window locations and theme customization. Grid overlay can sometimes be delayed. The WindowGrid32.dll may need to be added to some virus scanners' exclusion lists. Problems when moving non-DPI-aware windows between monitors with DPI scaling. WindowGrid is a modern window management program for Windows. Move the cursor to select the starting grid position of the window.

Drag and drop your windows to the sides or corners of the screen, and they'll automatically be resized to fit one-half or one-quarter of the screen. This feature is just like the built-in Aero Snap function of Windows 10, but with more possibilities. This is especially useful on either a 4K monitor or multiple monitors. Be more productive with the best tiling window manager for Windows. Sometimes, splitting your desktop into halves or quarters is not ideal. When two windows are side-by-side, resizing one of them while pressing will also resize the other one. It's an easy and powerful way to modify the layout of several tiled windows. AquaSnap allows you to easily align your windows by making them behave like magnets. This simple feature is the cornerstone of AquaSnap, and has been carefully designed to assist you without getting in your way so you don't waste your desktop space.

TidyTabs is a tool that brings tabbed browsing to all of your programs. If you ever wanted to have Chrome-style tabs in Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office, or PuTTY, TidyTabs does just that. It integrates nicely with the OS and you will feel like the multi-tab functionality is a core part of Windows. Organize your windows and free up space on your desktop. Now that all your windows have a draggable tab, you can easily organize them into logically related groups. Just drag one tab onto another and create a tabbed group. Tabs can be detached from a group and inserted into another one. You can even group windows from different applications together. With one click, save a group so that your applications are automatically grouped and placed as you wish the next time you open them. Or define advanced auto-grouping rules for the most complex scenarios. It takes just a few minutes to fully automate your tab management.

FancyZones is a window manager utility for arranging and snapping windows into efficient layouts to improve the speed of your workflow and restore layouts quickly. FancyZones allows you to define a set of zone locations to be used as targets for Windows on your desktop. When you drag a window into a zone or enter the associated keyboard shortcut, the window is resized and repositioned to fill that zone. You can also trigger zone selection mode by clicking the non-primary mouse button if the "Use non-primary mouse button to toggle zone activation" setting is enabled. If two zones are adjacent, a window can be snapped to the sum of their area (rounded to the minimum rectangle that contains both). When the mouse cursor is near the common edge of two zones, both zones are activated simultaneously, allowing you to drop the window into both zones. You can drag the window until one zone is activated, then press and hold the control key while dragging the window to select multiple zones.

The window manager you didn't know you missed. Divide your screen, and increase your productivity made for Windows. It is easy to divide your monitor into the exact regions you want. The window will automatically go into the region underneath the mouse cursor. You can keep a different set of regions open on each virtual desktop. Use our handy setting to choose if you want each virtual desktop to have its own set of profiles. With MaxTo's presets, you can quickly load up your favorite regions whenever you need them. The quickest way to load a set of regions is by assigning a keyboard shortcut. You can see a preview of the presets you are applying when you edit your regions. Launch and place multiple programs at once. Using our powerful recipe features, you can start the programs you need, and place them where you want them. Anything you do using keyboard shortcuts can be done with scripts.

i3 is a tiling window manager, completely written from scratch. The target platforms are GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems, our code is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) under the BSD license. i3 is primarily targeted at advanced users and developers. Based upon the experiences we made when wanting to hack/fix wmii, we agreed upon the following goals for i3. This includes being modifiable by people who do know how to program but who are not necessarily familiar with all of X11’s internals. That is, document why things happen and when they happen so that the user gets a picture of the whole process a Window Manager is responsible of by just reading the source code. Implement multi-monitor correctly, that is by assigning each workspace to a virtual screen. Especially make sure that attaching and detaching new monitors like video projectors works during operation and do the right thing. Also, provide support for rotated monitors.

Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor that combines the latest Wayland innovations with smooth, eye-pleasing animations and a lightweight, responsive core. It offers automatic tiling with multiple fine-tunable layouts, rounded corners, and customizable window groups, plus global shortcuts and touchpad gesture support for fluid interaction. Its live-reloading, easy-to-read configuration format, and sensible defaults make setup and tuning straightforward, while comprehensive documentation guides users through advanced tweaks. A single, socket-based IPC system and a powerful plugin architecture let you extend and script every aspect of your workflow, whether by writing custom C++ extensions, leveraging community plugins, or controlling Hyprland via bindings in your favorite language. With native Wayland features like motion-smooth transitions, tear-free rendering, and modular window rules, Hyprland unlocks full control over your desktop without sacrificing performance.

It was originally designed to provide elegant enhancements to the otherwise functional, plain, practical GNU Screen, for the Ubuntu server distribution. Byobu now includes an enhanced profile, convenient keybindings, configuration utilities, and toggle-able system status notifications for both the GNU Screen window manager and the more modern Tmux terminal multiplexer, and works on most Linux, BSD, and Mac distributions. Byobu includes an enhanced profile, configuration utilities, and system status notifications for the GNU screen window manager as well as the Tmux terminal multiplexer. Byobu is developed and released as free software under the GPLv3.

TaskLayout is a productivity app for Windows designed to set up your desktop for work in seconds. No adware, malware, or spyware, professional tools for effective work-. Try before buy, it provides fast and responsive support. This tool allows to save and restore Windows desktop layout (a set of running applications with corresponding positions on the screen) with an assigned hotkey. Set up your working configuration on the desktop, launch applications, open folders, and arrange windows into suitable locations on the desktop. Save the layout with TaskLayout, and assign a hotkey for open/close. Use these hotkeys to instantly restore/discard your desktop in seconds. Application/command Launcher, set up custom commands to start it with an assigned hotkey. By default, TaskLayout works as a launcher and Window repositioning tool in one. Automatically retrieve and preserve startup commands assigned to selected windows. Run commands (if required) and arrange windows on the desktop.

Tiling window manager for macOS along the lines of xmonad. If you want to learn more about tiling window managers and the features of Amethyst there are some great community resources on YouTube.

Spencer for Mac is a new window manager with a completely unique approach. It solves the biggest problem with virtual desktops — restoring app windows exactly where they were saved. It’s especially useful when switching between different display setups (for example, work and home), disconnecting a MacBook from an external monitor, or even after a system restart. The huge advantage is that there’s no need to configure anything — just click Save and then Restore. The whole process takes only a few seconds, and that’s all the user needs to do. It goes further: Spencer can adjust the number of Spaces depending on your monitor setup or the active workspace. You can switch between custom workspaces (e.g. “Work”, “Meetings”, “Relax”), with the right apps launching, the others hidden, and full multi-monitor support. It’s like having a perfectly organized desktop environment on demand.