FancyZones for Mac: custom window layouts with WonderSnap

FancyZones is the PowerToys utility Windows users reach for when halves and quarters are not enough: draw your own zones, then drop windows into them. There is no PowerToys for Mac, but the idea translates cleanly. How custom layouts work in WonderSnap (often searched as "Wonder Snap"), and how you fill them.

What FancyZones does on Windows

Draw zones once, then drop windows into them. In the PowerToys editor you pick a template or draw your own zones per monitor; after that, holding a modifier while dragging drops a window into whichever zone you release over. It is what people use for three-column ultrawides, an editor-plus-terminal-plus-browser split, or anything Snap Layouts does not offer.

Custom layouts in WonderSnap

You build a layout by splitting, so it can never have a gap or an overlap. The editor is in Settings > Layouts. Every zone carries controls to split it vertically, split it horizontally or delete it, and dragging a divider resizes the zones on both sides at once. Delete a zone and its sibling absorbs the space. There is no such thing as an invalid layout to fix later.

With several monitors you design one tiling per display and save it as a single layout spanning every connected display, remembered per monitor configuration. Fresh installs come seeded with two or three starter layouts sized to your display class (laptop, desktop or ultrawide). They are ordinary layouts: edit or delete them freely, and a deleted starter never comes back on its own.

Filling a custom layout

Three ways in, none of them a screen-edge drag (edge drags stay native macOS).

1. The ⌃⌥Space picker

Press ⌃⌥Space and the picker shows the built-in layouts plus every custom layout you have saved. Click yours and a full-screen overlay draws the zones, offering your open windows for zone 1, then zone 2, and so on. A layout that spans displays fills all of them in one flow, the palette moving to whichever monitor holds the active zone. Esc dismisses; anything already placed stays.

2. The hold menu, then Snap Assist

Click and hold a title bar and the Gallery hold menu blooms at the cursor, showing layout tiles including your custom ones. Release on a zone inside a tile and the window docks there. Then Snap Assist takes over: the remaining zones dim and a palette of your other open windows appears. Click one to fill the highlighted zone, or move the pointer to another empty zone and the palette follows, so you fill only what you want, in any order.

3. Keyboard chords for the standard positions

Halves, quarters, thirds and two-thirds need no custom layout: hold Control + Option and tap a key (⌃⌥← left half, ⌃⌥D, ⌃⌥F, ⌃⌥G for the thirds, and so on; tap again to cycle sizes). ⌃⌥⌫ restores a window to where it was, and any chord can be reassigned in Settings > Shortcuts.

Keeping the layout gapless: linked resize

Drag one shared edge and the neighbours move with it, live. The tiling stays gapless, and following windows show a brief accent outline. If a neighbour cannot shrink past its minimum size the whole seam stops together and a badge names the app at its limit, so the layout never tears open. The setting is "Resize snapped windows together" in Settings > Linked Resize.

Margins

Margins apply to everything, custom layouts included. Settings > General has a "Window margins:" popup with Off, Small, Medium and Large (Medium is the default), and linked resize keeps the margin intact as you drag.

Where FancyZones and WonderSnap differ

FancyZones drops a window into a zone by holding a modifier while dragging it. WonderSnap deliberately does not react to a plain window drag at all, so it never fights macOS's own edge tiling; you dock from the hold menu, the picker or the chords instead. FancyZones has no equivalent of Snap Assist or the guided fill, which is where WonderSnap does the multi-window work for you. Both let you set your own keys: every WonderSnap chord can be changed in Settings > Shortcuts.

Getting started

1. Download WonderSnap, drag it to Applications, open it (menu bar only, no Dock icon).
2. Grant Accessibility when asked; your Mac requires it for any app that moves other apps' windows.
3. Open Settings > Layouts, look at the starter layouts, and draw your own.

Questions

Is there a version of PowerToys FancyZones for Mac?

Microsoft PowerToys is Windows only. WonderSnap covers the same need on macOS 14 and later: an editor in Settings > Layouts where you split zones per display, plus a picker, a hold menu and Snap Assist to get windows into those zones.

Can a custom layout cover more than one monitor?

Yes. You design one tiling per display and save it as a single layout that spans every connected display, remembered per monitor configuration. Filling it from the ⌃⌥Space picker walks through every display in one flow.

Can I drag a window into a zone like FancyZones?

Not with a plain drag: WonderSnap leaves screen-edge and plain dragging to macOS. Instead you click and hold the title bar and release on a zone in the Gallery menu, pick the layout from ⌃⌥Space and fill it zone by zone, or let Snap Assist offer your other windows after the first dock.

Do custom layouts allow gaps or overlapping zones?

No, by construction. Zones are carved from splits, so every layout tiles the display exactly. Spacing between windows comes from the Window margins setting (Off, Small, Medium, Large), which applies to custom layouts too.

Is it free?

Every feature is free for 7 days from the first launch, no account and no card. After that it is $2 for a year, with no subscription and no auto-renewal, or $8 once for life, with free updates.