Free, and free in both senses
flingdows costs nothing and the source is on GitHub under the MIT license, so you can read exactly what it does to your windows, build it yourself, or fork it. That matters for a tool that needs macOS Accessibility access: you are not handing window control to a black box, you are running code you can inspect.
Paid snappers are cheap, but they are closed, and the free incumbent (Rectangle) is keyboard-first. flingdows is the rare combination of free, open, and gesture-driven, which is the gap it is built to fill.
Snapping vs. flinging
A snapper answers one question well: how do I get this window into a clean half, quarter, or corner? If that is all you want, Rectangle does it for free and Magnet does it with a polished drag.
flingdows answers a different question: how do I move a window across a big display without dragging it the whole way? You flick it and physics carries it the rest of the distance. Corner and edge snapping presets are on the flingdows roadmap, so today it complements a snapper rather than fully replacing one, and it is honest about that.
Free and paid Mac window managers compared
| Rectangle | Magnet / BetterSnapTool | flingdows | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $2–8 one-time | Free |
| Open source | Yes | No | Yes (MIT) |
| How you move a window | Keyboard shortcuts | Drag to an edge | Flick it with momentum |
| Preset snapping | Yes | Yes | On the roadmap |
| The novelty | — | — | Real window physics |
frequently asked
- Is flingdows really free?
- Yes. It is free and open source under the MIT license, with the full source on GitHub. There is no paid tier today.
- Does it replace Magnet or Rectangle?
- Partly. It adds the fling gesture they don't have. Preset corner/half snapping is on the roadmap, so for now many people run flingdows alongside a snapper rather than instead of one.
- Why does it need Accessibility access?
- macOS only lets an app move other apps' windows through the Accessibility API. Because flingdows is open source, you can verify exactly how it uses that access.
- Which Macs does it run on?
- It's a native macOS menu-bar app. Build it from the GitHub source or grab a release; check the repo for current requirements.
Last updated June 6, 2026