Lifetime Mac
Window management & desktop control

Magnet

Price: $4.99 once

PerpetualUpdates included, forever

Price read on apps.apple.com, the page Buy on the App Store opens.

The catch

App Store only, so there is no trial, and updates have slowed to occasional minor fixes

The full picture

Development has slowed: version 3.0.7 shipped in April 2025 with performance tweaks and minor fixes only. There are no saved multi-window layouts, no display-change automation and little customisation beyond shortcuts and snap zones. Mac App Store only, so there is no direct download and no trial before paying. Free Rectangle does substantially the same job for nothing.

Pays back in
under a month
Seats
No Mac count statedNo seat count stated: a Mac App Store purchase installs on the Macs signed in to your Apple Account, and the listing allows up to six family members via Family Sharing.
Developer account
None needed
Buy once$4.99Rent 5 years$540

$535 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Setapp at $108 a year, Mac plan billed annually; $14.99/month if billed monthly.

What it looks like

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

Magnet is the standard answer to "I want to snap windows and I do not want to think about it any further". Drag a window to the left edge and it takes the left half, drop it in a corner for a quarter, or use a shortcut for the same positions. It has sat on the Mac App Store since 2011 at $4.99, and the listing says in plain text that there is no subscription and no in-app purchase — which is rarer on that store than it should be.

There is very little else to describe, and that is the appeal. No saved layouts, no automation when a monitor appears, no scripting, no account. Version 3.0.7 landed in April 2025 with performance tweaks and small fixes, which tells you the app is being kept alive rather than actively developed. For a utility this narrow, that is not necessarily a problem.

Because it is App Store only, you pay before you try it. In exchange you get Family Sharing, sandboxing and updates through the same mechanism as everything else on the machine.

The honest version: free Rectangle covers this ground, with more positions and more edge cases handled, for nothing at all. Buy Magnet if you would rather your utilities came from the App Store and were tied to your Apple account than downloaded from GitHub. That is a real preference, and $4.99 is not a difficult decision either way.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Posters who want snapping without configuration keep landing on Magnet, describing drag-to-edge plus a shortcut as the whole of the learning curve

Criticised

  • Every recommendation draws the same list back — Rectangle, Moom, BetterTouchTool, Raycast — with posters noting they already own something that covers this
  • Several owners moved to Moom the moment they wanted saved layouts or windows shifted between spaces

Details

The price in full

$4.99 on the Mac App Store, where the listing's own feature list reads "No subscription" and "No in-app purchases". Updates arrive free through the App Store and the purchase is covered by Apple Family Sharing like any other App Store app.

The Magnet page at magnet.crowdcafe.com
The developer’s own page. magnet.crowdcafe.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
No
Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
BOOTCODE A.S.

Also bought outright