Start here: is one shortcut dead, or all of them? One dead shortcut is a conflict, and you fix it by rebinding either side. All of them dead means Rectangle is receiving no keyboard input at all, which points at Secure Input or a broken Accessibility permission. Everything below splits along that line.
Two questions before you change anything
Most of the time people lose to this problem is spent applying a whole-app fix to a single-shortcut problem. So run two tests, both of which take about ten seconds.
Drag a window to a screen edge. If it snaps into place, Rectangle has Accessibility permission and is running normally. Whatever is wrong is confined to keyboard input. If nothing happens when you drag either, the permission is broken and you want the Accessibility repair rather than anything on this page.
Try the failing shortcut in Finder. Click the desktop, open a Finder window, press the combination. Works in Finder but not in your editor? The editor is claiming those keys. Fails in Finder too? The conflict is at system level, or nothing is reaching Rectangle at all.
When one shortcut is dead
1. Find who claimed the keys
The app where the shortcut fails is the suspect. Check its own keyboard preferences for a binding on the same combination. IntelliJ, Photoshop, and Chrome DevTools are the repeat offenders in my inbox, and all three ship dense default keymaps that overlap heavily with Control + Option arrow territory.
If Finder fails too, look at System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts. Mission Control and Spotlight bindings sit close to the combinations window managers want, and Apple has moved some of them between releases.
2. Decide which side to rebind
Rebinding Rectangle is usually easier, because you’re changing one action rather than reasoning about an application’s whole keymap. Open Rectangle settings, click the shortcut field beside the action, and press the new combination. It records immediately.
Rebind the other app instead when the shortcut is deep muscle memory for you and the conflicting binding is one you never use. That case comes up more than you’d guess in editors, where half the default keymap goes untouched for years.
3. Pick a combination that stays free
Control + Option is Rectangle’s default modifier pair for a reason: it’s the least contested space on macOS. Adding Shift to it opens a second tier that almost nothing else claims. Command-heavy combinations are the ones to avoid, since that’s where applications concentrate their own shortcuts.
4. Watch for the same keys in a second window manager
Running Rectangle alongside Raycast’s window management, Magnet, or BetterSnapTool means two apps competing for identical defaults, and the winner isn’t predictable. Pick one to own window shortcuts and disable the feature in the other. Raycast in particular ships window commands enabled out of the box, which surprises people who installed it for the launcher.
When every shortcut is dead
5. Clear Secure Input
macOS enables Secure Input whenever a password field is focused, which blocks apps from seeing keystrokes. That’s the intended behavior. The problem is that an app sometimes fails to release it, leaving the whole system in a state where Rectangle receives nothing.
Password managers and terminal sessions sitting at a sudo prompt are the usual culprits. Quit them one at a time and test after each. Logging out and back in releases Secure Input unconditionally if you can’t identify the holder.
The signature is unmistakable once you’ve seen it: snap areas keep working perfectly, every keyboard shortcut in the app is dead, and nothing in Rectangle’s settings looks wrong. Dragging works, keys don’t.
6. Confirm the app is actually running
Obvious, and worth thirty seconds anyway. Look for the icon in the menu bar. Rectangle can be hidden from the menu bar in its own settings, which makes a quit app indistinguishable from a running one at a glance. Check Activity Monitor if you’ve turned the icon off.
While you’re there, confirm launch at login is enabled. A surprising share of “shortcuts stopped working” reports are really “the app didn’t start this morning”.
7. Repair the Accessibility permission
If snap areas fail alongside the shortcuts, this is your problem rather than anything shortcut-specific. Remove Rectangle from System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility with the minus button, add it back with plus, relaunch the app. The full walkthrough with fallbacks covers the cases where that doesn’t take on the first pass.
8. Reset shortcuts to defaults
When you’ve been editing bindings for a while and can no longer reconstruct what’s set to what, stop debugging and reset. Rectangle’s settings include a restore-defaults option that rebuilds the shipped configuration. Write down the two or three custom bindings you care about first, because they go with everything else.
This also clears any half-recorded shortcut, where a combination was captured mid-keypress and stored as something you can no longer reproduce with your fingers.
A note on cycling
One last thing that gets reported as a bug and isn’t. Press Left Half twice and the window resizes to a different width on the second press. That’s size cycling, and it’s on by default: repeating a command steps through halves, thirds, and two-thirds.
If you want one shortcut to mean exactly one size, change the subsequent execution mode in Rectangle’s settings. The behavior is a preference, not a malfunction, and it accounts for a fair number of reports that a shortcut “does the wrong thing”.
Frequently asked questions
Why does one Rectangle shortcut work and another does nothing?
Because a single dead shortcut is a conflict, not a permission failure. Another application or a macOS system shortcut has claimed that key combination, and whichever registered it first receives the keystroke. Rebinding either side resolves it.
What is Secure Input and why does it break Rectangle?
Secure Input is a macOS mode that stops applications from observing keystrokes while a password is being typed. Password managers and terminal prompts enable it, and occasionally fail to release it. While it’s stuck on, Rectangle receives no keyboard events at all, so every shortcut goes dead at once.
How do I find which app stole my Rectangle shortcut?
Test the same combination in Finder first. If it works there and fails in one specific app, that app owns the conflict, and its own keyboard preferences will list the binding. If it fails everywhere including Finder, check System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts for a macOS binding on the same keys.
Can I reset Rectangle shortcuts back to defaults?
Yes. Rectangle’s settings include a restore-defaults option that rebuilds every shortcut as shipped. It clears custom bindings, so note anything you want to keep first. It’s the fastest way out of a configuration that has been edited into an unclear state.
