Installation

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Requirements

• macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• A Mac with Apple silicon. Intel Macs aren’t supported for now.
• One display. Layout manages a single display. It won’t activate while a second display is connected, and if you connect one while Layout is active, it pauses and shows “Layout is paused: this version supports one display.”
• AeroSpace not running. Layout won’t activate while AeroSpace is running, so that two window managers never move the same windows.
• The Accessibility permission. You grant it during the guided setup. See Accessibility permission.

Install Layout

1. Download Layout from the Layout website.
2. Open the disk image you downloaded.
3. Drag Layout into your Applications folder.
4. Open Layout from Applications.
5. The first time, macOS won’t open it, because this version isn’t notarized by Apple yet. Close the message, open System Settings › Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway next to the message about Layout. Enter your password if macOS asks, then confirm that you want to open it. macOS asks again after each update.

The first time you open it, Layout starts the guided setup. Nothing on your screen moves until you activate Layout at the end of it.

Layout has no Dock icon and doesn’t appear in the macOS ⌘Tab switcher. It runs from its icon in the menu bar, the Layout logo (a tall tile beside two small ones), and from its editor window. To bring the editor back after closing it, choose Open Layout from the menu bar icon, press ⌃⌥, while Layout is active, or open Layout again from Applications.

Trial and price

Layout is free to use for 14 days. After that, it costs $19, paid once.

Where Layout keeps its files

Layout stores everything in ~/Library/Application Support/Layout/:

File	What it holds
configuration.json	Your workspaces, sections, layouts, work contexts, and settings, plus your progress in the guided setup.
recovery.json	The recovery journal: the titles and positions of the windows Layout has moved out of sight, so it can put them back, even after a crash.
browser-windows.json	The browser window Launch layout opened for each workspace’s tabs, with those tabs’ addresses, so the next launch reuses it instead of opening the tabs again.

These files stay on your Mac. See Privacy.

Quit Layout

• Click the Layout icon in the menu bar and choose Quit Layout. If the Layout bar covers the menu bar, move the pointer to the top edge of the screen first to show the macOS menu bar.
• Or press ⌘Q while the Layout editor is in front.

When you quit, Layout puts back the windows it moved out of sight. It spends at most five seconds on this, then quits anyway. Any window it couldn’t restore in that time stays in the recovery journal, and Layout restores it the next time you activate it. See Recovering windows.

Closing the editor window doesn’t quit Layout: it keeps running from the menu bar.

Uninstall Layout

1. Quit Layout, so it can put back any window it moved out of sight.
2. Drag Layout from your Applications folder to the Trash.
3. To remove your workspaces and settings too, delete the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Layout/.
4. Optionally, remove Layout from System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility.