My screen is a bento box
There are two apps behind this and they only make sense together, so I'm going to treat them as one thing. I should say up front that this arrangement is newer than it looks: I've had Rectangle Pro since 2024, but Hyperkey only joined in 2026. For two years I had the window manager without the key that made it click.
The key nobody else wants
Hyperkey does something almost insultingly simple: it turns caps lock into a modifier that no other app will ever claim. Caps lock is the most valuable key on the keyboard and the least used — it sits under your left pinky and does nothing you want. Hyperkey makes it mean control + option + shift + command, all at once. Nothing else binds that, because nobody can press it by accident.
That last part is the whole point. A modifier nothing competes for is a modifier you can build on and then stop thinking about.
Nine compartments
Rectangle Pro is what I point that key at. Nine bindings, all running left to right:
- Hyper + 1 / 2 / 3 — Top row of sixths
- Hyper + 4 / 5 / 6 — Bottom row of sixths
- Hyper + 7 / 8 / 9 — Vertical thirds
That's the bento box. Nine compartments, no dragging, no thinking — my fingers do it now without consulting me.
In theory it's a one-handed move. In practice caps lock is under my left pinky and the 9 is somewhere off in another postcode, so no, I don't do hyper-9 one-handed. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
The bit that actually changed my working day
Rectangle Pro can save a named arrangement and fire it when I attach a monitor. Plugging into the widescreen at my desk snaps everything into place at once:
- Top left sixth — Teams
- Bottom left sixth — Outlook
- Middle third — Browser
- Top right sixth — OmniFocus
- Bottom right sixth — Claude
- Laptop screen — Whatever document I'm actually working on, when that isn't in the browser
I plug in, and my desk is set up. No dragging.
Why my quick entry moved upstairs
One more binding, because it taught me something. OmniFocus quick entry now lives on Hyper + A — caps lock and the key directly next to it. It used to be control-space or option-space, and I moved it deliberately.
Those bottom-of-the-keyboard shortcuts have become fiercely contested territory. Claude wants one. Every new AI editor wants one. You install something, it quietly takes a chord you'd been using for years, and you end up re-learning your own muscle memory every few months. Up behind the hyper key, nothing fights me for the space — and I expect that to stay true precisely because nobody else can get at it.
What you actually need to buy
Here's the honest split, because I don't want anyone spending money they don't need to.
The free version of Rectangle already does all of this. Halves, quarters, thirds, sixths — the whole bento box is yours for nothing, and for most people that's the end of the story. I ran the free one for a long time before I paid. Hyperkey is free too, so the entire nine-compartment setup costs you exactly zero.
What you're buying with Pro, for €9.99 once, is the named layout that fires by itself when I attach the monitor. That's it. If you'd use that every working day, it's an easy purchase. If you wouldn't, stay on free with a clear conscience. There's a ten-day trial and one licence covers three machines, so it's cheap to find out which camp you're in.
The verdict
Free Rectangle plus free Hyperkey is one of the best things you can do to a Mac for no money at all. Pay the €9.99 only if the auto-firing layout speaks to you — and if you work at a desk with an external monitor, it probably will. Two years in, it's the piece of my setup I'd rebuild first.
Part of the Mac software I actually use — nineteen tools, one write-up a week. Put together with AI, based entirely on my own use and opinions.
