Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Rectangle VS Karabiner

Compare Rectangle VS Karabiner and see what are their differences

Rectangle logo Rectangle

Window management app based on Spectacle, written in Swift.

Karabiner logo Karabiner

Karabiner, previously called KeyRemap4MacBook, is a very powerful keyboard remapper for Mac OS X.
  • Rectangle Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-20
  • Karabiner Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-06

Rectangle videos

SKYWALKER RECTANGLE TRAMPOLINE REVIEW!!!

More videos:

  • Review - Skywalker Rectangle Trampoline Review #1
  • Review - Marvin Malton 160 Rectangle Flying Hour Watch Review

Karabiner videos

REVIEW: Should you play the Vetterli 71 Karabiner? [Hunt Gun Review #1]

More videos:

  • Review - Vim screencast #59: Karabiner Elements
  • Review - Evolution of the Karabiner 98k, From Prewar to Kriegsmodell

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Rectangle and Karabiner)
Mac Tools
89 89%
11% 11
Automation
0 0%
100% 100
Window Manager
85 85%
15% 15
Note Taking
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Rectangle and Karabiner. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Rectangle and Karabiner

Rectangle Reviews

Best 6 Mac Window Managers
Rectangle shows that you don’t need to dip into your bank account to get window resizer tools. This free Mac window manager lets you manage multiple windows using keyboard shortcuts, menu options, or by dragging and dropping. Just like Magnet, you can split your screen up into quarters, thirds, or halves.
Source: mackeeper.com
Top 6 Window Manager Apps for Mac
Most window manager apps for Mac support multiple monitors. They can help you move windows between screens and create custom layouts for each monitor. Many window manager apps – such as BetterSnapTool, Magnet, and Rectangle – offer this functionality.
The 6 Best Mac Window Management Tools
However, it might take some time for you to get used to the shortcuts in the Rectangle app since there are many. Furthermore, you can also add some of your apps to exceptions if you want to keep them away from Rectangle's shortcuts.

Karabiner Reviews

We have no reviews of Karabiner yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Rectangle should be more popular than Karabiner. It has been mentiond 451 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Rectangle mentions (451)

  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    - Rectangle: window management [https://rectangleapp.com/]. - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    MicDrop - Add a global "mute microphone" button in the status bar (https://getmicdrop.com/) AltTab - Give the same (sane) behaviour to cmd+tab as alt+tab on Windows (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/) Rectangle - Window snapping (https://rectangleapp.com/) Maccy - A clipboard history manager (https://maccy.app/) DropZone - Add a "shelf" zone in the same way as Dropover. It's less good than Dropover, but it's... - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS
    Https://rectangleapp.com is the spiritual successor. - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS
    Not to drop this kind hacker’s competitor, but I’ve been a happy user of https://rectangleapp.com/. Will definitely be checking this out instead tho, even though I’ve paid for rectangle — any demo that has SublimeText windows in it is a demo I trust! - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Updating My Mac Window Shortcuts Strategy for Optimal Workflow
    Rectangle’s installation is incredibly straightforward. Its immediate out-of-the-box functionality was a pleasant surprise. For anyone seeking to reduce the friction of window management on their Mac, Rectangle is a solution I wholeheartedly recommend. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
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Karabiner mentions (271)

  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    Besides the usual Firefox/Chrome, Spotify, etc I use the following: - Karabiner-Elements for key remapping, specifically, for making caps lock into ctrl/esc. I don't know of anything else that does this job. Everyone who remaps keys seems to use this. - Kitty as my terminal of choice. I spend most of my time logged in remotely to a server via ssh where I attach to a tmux session. Kitty was easy enough to... - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?
    If I had to recommend 1 app/script that I use daily: https://github.com/banga/git-split-diffs) to disable things like "Apple + Q" -> nothing worse than going to close a single tab and then your whole app quits. Also able to re-map caps-lock into escape, ect `iterm2` for terminal (colored tabs are great; albeit I disable the hell out of many of the options like "clickable urls" ect) for cli, I try to gnu... - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • Ask HN: What if we wrote HTML with [brackets][/brackets]?
    I have been using Karabiner elements (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org), they allow keyboard customization, I have switched the colon and semicolon key, by default without pressing shift, the key will output colon (:) , I find this useful as I type lot of colon daily. Maybe you can use this software to set "<" and ">" to be the default text output without using Shift. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Remote desktop from Windows to Mac, native keys and function
    In the settings of chrome remote desktop there is an option to not send modifier keys etc to the host system. I've also heard of https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/. Source: 7 months ago
  • DOS_deck: Play DOS games in the browser with full controller support
    Possible karbiner but I've never looked into doing specifically that, so I may be wrong https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rectangle and Karabiner, you can also consider the following products

Magnet Window Manager - Magnet Developers

BTT Remote - A remote control for you Mac, using your iPhone or iPad

yabai - A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning

SharpKeys - SharpKeys is a utility that manages a Registry key that allows Windows to remap one key to any...

Moom - Move your mouse over the green zoom button in any window, and Moom's mouse control overlay will appear (as seen in the above animation).

X-Mouse Button Control - XMouse Button Control (XMBC) allows you to create application and window specific profiles.