Moom comparison guide
Moom by Many Tricks is an established window manager. It moves and resizes windows through a pop-up palette on the green zoom button, keyboard control, snapping to screen areas and snap zones, grids, and custom actions. If you want a full tiling and snapping manager, Moom is the stronger choice here, and the two apps can also be used side by side.
Short version: Moom places the window you are using now. SnapState preserves the whole arrangement, including apps, displays, and active browser tabs, and restores it on demand.
Moom handles moment-to-moment placement: hover the green button for the palette, drive placement from the keyboard, snap windows to areas and zones, or build grid and custom actions. Saved layouts are one part of that toolkit. Through Save Layout, Moom can save app-specific layouts or layouts applying to any windows as the N frontmost windows. Those saved layouts can adapt to display configuration changes and can be set to trigger automatically on display changes. In Moom 4, saved layouts can also launch apps and open a single window in each app.
SnapState is narrower: named workspace snapshots. Each snapshot keeps the visible windows on the current desktop with position and size, the apps needed to relaunch them, the monitor and display layout, and the active tab URL of each window in Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and Chromium after Automation permission is granted. Restore from the menu bar, with global Control-Command-1 to 6 shortcuts, or automatically when a monitor connects or disconnects, when a matching display layout appears, or on wake from sleep. Saved frames are remapped onto the current displays when the setup differs.
SnapState is a native macOS menu bar app, version 2.5.2, requiring macOS 15.7 or later on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. It costs $9.99 as a one-time purchase through Lemon Squeezy, with a lifetime license for up to three Macs and a 14-day refund, and ships as a signed, notarized DMG. It needs Accessibility permission, and workspace data stays local as JSON in ~/Library/Application Support/SnapState/.
Read the rows carefully: these tools overlap on saved layouts but differ everywhere else. Where Moom behavior is not covered by the summary above, check Many Tricks' documentation.
| Capability | SnapState | Moom |
|---|---|---|
| Move and resize via palette, keyboard, grids, and custom actions | No | Yes |
| Snapping to screen areas and snap zones | No | Yes |
| Saved window layouts | Yes | Yes |
| Saved layouts adapt to display changes | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic restore on display changes | Yes | Yes |
| Wake-from-sleep and matching-layout triggers | Yes | Check Many Tricks docs |
| Launches apps with a saved layout | Yes | Yes |
| Restores active browser tab URLs | Yes | Not listed |
| Global keyboard shortcuts | Yes | Yes |
A practical setup is to let Moom own placement and SnapState own memory. Tile the windows for the task at hand with Moom, then capture that arrangement as a named SnapState workspace for coding, design, writing, or research. When a restart or dock change scatters the layout, restore the snapshot first and keep tiling from there. Neither app needs the other, but they answer different questions.
SnapState does not tile or snap windows, does not save or restore macOS Spaces, and captures only the visible windows on the current desktop. It restores only the active tab URL per supported browser window, not full tab sets, and Firefox is not supported. If tiling is the main need, start with Moom; if recalling named contexts with browser URLs matters more, SnapState fits for $9.99.
Choose Moom if you want a full tiling and snapping window manager with saved layouts as one feature. Choose SnapState if you want narrow workspace snapshots with app relaunch, active browser tab URLs, shortcuts, and wake or monitor triggers. Many people can reasonably use both.
Yes. Moom can save layouts of windows through Save Layout, either app-specific or applying to any windows as the N frontmost windows. Saved layouts can adapt to display configuration changes and can trigger automatically on display changes, and in Moom 4 they can also launch apps and open a single window in each app.
Yes. Use Moom to place the window you are working in right now, and SnapState to capture the whole arrangement and call it back later from the menu bar, a shortcut, or an automatic trigger.
No. SnapState is not a tiling or snapping window manager. It preserves a complete arrangement you already made, including display layout and browser context, rather than arranging windows into grids or snap zones.
SnapState saves visible windows on the current desktop, not macOS Spaces, and restores only the active tab URL per supported browser window rather than full tab sets. Firefox is not supported.