A portrait monitor is the best screen on a desk for code, logs and long documents, and the worst one for window habits learned on landscape screens. “Left half” turns into a sliver. A window dragged over from the landscape monitor arrives in the shape it had there, tall and narrow on a screen where wide and short is the only sensible shape.
This guide goes through what each layer does about it, starting with what is already on your Mac. I build one of the tools below, Nomos, so the section about it is marked, and the first two sections are enough for most desks.
Set the monitor up first
- Open System Settings → Displays, pick the monitor, and set Rotation to 90° or 270°, whichever matches the way it is mounted.
- In the same pane, use Arrange… and put the portrait display where it physically stands. Every tool below that moves a window “left” or “right” to another screen follows this arrangement, not the desk.
What macOS does on its own
Window tiling has been built into macOS since Sequoia. On a portrait screen, the useful part of it is the pair of halves that run across the screen rather than along it:
- fn ⌃ ↑ and fn ⌃ ↓ put the focused window into the top or bottom half. ← and → still give left and right halves, which on a portrait screen are the slivers.
- Quarters and multi-window arrangements live in the menu bar under Window → Move & Resize.
- To send a window to another display, hover the green button in its corner, or open the Window menu, and choose Move to followed by the display’s name.
There is no default key for that last one. You can add one in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts, for All Applications, typing the menu item’s title exactly as the Window menu shows it. The title contains the display’s name, so it is one shortcut per display.
Two limits show up quickly. The layouts are halves and quarters, and on a tall screen the natural unit is the third: editor, terminal, logs. And moving a window to another screen is only a move — once it lands, you tile it again with a second shortcut.
Rectangle: thirds that follow orientation
Rectangle is free, open source, and for most desks the right next step. Two things make it good with a portrait monitor.
Thirds follow the screen’s orientation. In the words of its README, “first third will be left third on landscape and top third on portrait”. The same key gives the sensible stripe on either screen.
Moving between screens can keep the layout. Next display and previous display move the focused window, but by default they centre it on the destination. One setting, off by default and only reachable from the terminal, changes that:
defaults write com.knollsoft.Rectangle attemptMatchOnNextPrevDisplay -int 1With it on, if the window’s last Rectangle action was a snap — a half, a third, maximize — that snap is replayed on the destination display. A window in the first third of the landscape monitor lands in the top third of the portrait one. On a desk with mixed orientations this is the setting worth changing.
Where it runs out is the way it thinks. Rectangle applies an action to the screen the window is on. That fits “put this in the top third”. It fits less well when you think in places — “the log pane on the right-hand monitor” — which becomes “next display, then top third”: two keys, and knowing where the window is now.
Zones: when you think in places, not screens
I wrote Nomos, so weigh this section accordingly.
Nomos starts from places instead of actions. You draw zones on each real screen: hyper L opens the layout full-size on every monitor, a split snaps to halves, thirds and quarters, and ⌥ gives an exact position. The preset menu for each monitor only offers layouts for that monitor’s orientation.
- Every zone on every display gets a number on one ring, and hyper plus that number sends the focused window there from whichever monitor it is on.
- An arrow moves the window to the neighbouring zone in that direction, across the edge between monitors too.
- The window takes the zone’s shape. A terminal moved from a column on the landscape monitor into a stripe on the portrait one comes out wide and short — why it works that way is a post of its own.
The hyper key defaults to ⇧⌘⌃⌥; Hyperkey maps Caps Lock onto all four. The fine print: Nomos needs macOS 26 or newer on Apple silicon, it is in early access, its source is closed, and it is free apart from three paid extras — profiles, application rules and gaps.
Which one to use
| You want | macOS | Rectangle | Nomos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top and bottom halves on the portrait screen | fn ⌃ ↑ ↓ | yes | zones you draw |
| Thirds on the portrait screen | no | yes, orientation-aware | zones you draw |
| A key to move a window to another screen | an App Shortcut per display | next / previous display | a zone’s number, or an arrow |
| A sensible shape after the move | tile again | replays the last snap, once enabled | the zone’s shape |
| Price and source | built in | free, open source | free core, three paid extras; closed source |
If top and bottom halves are all the portrait screen needs, stay with what macOS has. If you want thirds and a key to move between screens, install Rectangle and turn the setting above on. If your desk has a fixed set of places across several monitors and you are tired of reaching them in two steps, try Nomos — and tell me how it behaves on your desk.