16 Mac Window Tiling Tips

Window tiling functions are fairly new to macOS. Here are some tips for getting the most from window tiling.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using Window Tiling on your Mac. 
You can move the windows on your Mac Desktop around as you like. You can resize windows within their own limits. There are some features that allow you to quickly and easily tile the windows. For instance putting one window on the left half and one on the right half. Here are some tips for using all those window tiling functions, a lot of which are new in macOS Sequoia. 
There are a lot of different ways to access the same window tiling function. For instance, with the window selected you can go to the Window Menu and then you can see, under Move & Resize most of the window tiling functions right there. But you can also access many of the same things by moving your Pointer over the Green Button and then you see Graphic representations of these different options. In addition to that notice in the menu here there are keyboard shortcuts for accessing these. The little Globe represents the Globe or fn key on your keyboard and the symbol before it is the Control Key. So, for instance, Control and then fn and the left arrow will take the current window and make it fill exactly the left half of the screen. 
You can also Drag to tile the windows. So I can drag this window here. If I drag it to the left notice how it outlines the left half and I can drop it to actually have the window snap to the left half of the screen. You can also drag to the top to have it fill the screen as well. If you drag to a corner, like the top right corner here, you can see how it would fill the top right corner. 
You get even more options when you use the Option Key with some of these. For instance, if you go to Window and then go to Move & Resize, hold the Option Key down and notice how under Arrange here some of these will change. So instead of left and right I get the left and the right two corners. Instead of bottom and top I get bottom and quarters. You also get variations when you move the pointer over the green button here to bring up the menu. Notice how when I hold the Option Key down seven out of the eight choices will change to other options. 
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Now let's take a look at some hidden functionality or functionality that is not readily apparent. For instance if I were to take this window here Go To Window then Center you can see how it centers the window but it doesn't change its size. But let's say I wanted to change its size while keeping it centered. If I were to drag a corner then the top left corner moves and it is not longer centered. However, if Center and then grab a corner but hold the Option Key down it will actually resize with the center staying in the middle. So I can move to the left or right to make it wider or up or down to make it taller but because it is moving both sides or the top and bottom at the same time it keeps the center in the middle. The same thing if I click and drag the top, holding the Option Key down. The top and bottom change at the same time and either the left or right side with the Option Key down will change the side, but both sides at the same time so the center remains in the middle. 
Now here's a little more info about how dragging the sides or corners work. Just dragging a side by itself drags that side. The same with the corner. But if you hold the Option Key down it drags that side or that corner and the opposite side and corner as well. So Option Drag the right side and the right and left side will both move. Option drag the top or bottom and both the top and bottom move. If you do it with any corner then that corner and the opposite corner move which means that all four sides will move and you can resize the window like that as long as you're holding down the Option Key.  Double clicking does something similar. If I were to double click on the top of a window it snaps to the top. If I were to double click on the side it snaps to the side like that. If you hold the Option Key down and click it does the side or the corner and the opposite side or corner. So, Option double click the left side makes both sides expand to the left or right side of the screen. If you Option double click a corner it makes this corner expand to the top left and the opposite corner expand or alternative way to fill the screen. 
Now I know a lot of people like to have their hard drives or maybe some other files or folders visible in a Finder Window. Usually these are on the right side. When you sort  them it starts at the top right. So you've got icons here. But if you take a window and then change it so that it fills it will then hide the items there. Just because you fill it doesn't mean that you can't then alter what it looks like. Drag it from the right over a little bit and now you've got a way where the window is pretty much still filling the space but you still have access to the items on your Desktop. You could also, if you like, go to Window, Move & Resize, and Left or use the keyboard shortcut and then drag the right side over to where you want. 
Now let's say you want to have one window on the left and one window on the right each taking up half the screen. You can use the Green button here and you can use Fill & Arrange, like that. Now you've got two that are equal halves. But suppose you don't want equal halves. You want more space for Notes than you do for TextEdit. You could go to the TextEdit window and move that to the right and then move the TextEdit window over to the right to match it. But notice that when you use halves like this and you move your pointer over the center, this little handle appears here in the middle of the screen. It's easy to miss or not notice that it is there. If you drag above it or below it it will just move the current window. But if you drag the handle it actually moves the border with both windows changing sizes. So I can move with one motion to make the TextEdit window smaller and the Notes window larger.
There is another method you can use to do this. You can take this window here and you can use any method to make that the right half. Now you can shrink this down like that. Get it to be the size you want. Now when you go to this window and you make this one the left half notice it won't be exactly half. It will match the other window perfectly. 
So when you tile windows you could take the current window and then you could set it to left half, right half, top, bottom, or one of the quarters. Then go to the next window that you want to tile and then set that to where you want. But you can also use these Arrange options here to do multiple windows at once. When you do so the order matters. Notice how Notes is at the top. Directly underneath it is a Safari window. Behind that is Pages. So every window has its own layer, one on top of the other. So when you use these options here it's going to use that order to put them in the right place. So, if I were to select this one here the current window would be where the black rectangle is on the left. The two gray ones would be the second and third windows in that arrangement. So I can select this and you can see how it puts Notes to the left and then it figured out that Safari was just behind that, so it is at the top, and Pages was just behind that so it's at the bottom. 
Now not all tiling functions are new in Sequoia. For years we have had the ability to Snap to window edges. So, for instance, I can take this window here and I'll kind of Snap here to the left and also to the top. There's a little bit of resistance as I'm dragging to move past that. Then if I were to say resize this and then take this window, if I pushed to the left it will kind of Snap right there to the right side of this window here. There is resistance and I can certainly push past it but it is very easy to match it perfectly. So I can move this window up to the top to match this window here on the left and do the same thing with other windows. I can drag this up, take this window here, and there's a little bit of resistance here right where the top of the Pages window matches the bottom of Safari and the left of the Pages window matches the right side of Notes. 
You may notice that when you go to the Window Menu you have the option to Fill the screen which will take a window like Pages and do this. The window is not in full screen mode. That's a completely different thing. It is just a regular window. But, its height and width are completely filling the available space on the screen. However, there's also this option here. Zoom. You may think that zoom does the same thing, and indeed it often does. For instance here in Notes if I were to use Window, Fill that's what I get. If I were to use Window, Zoom I seem to get exactly the same thing. But let's try that in Pages. Window, Fill we already have seen. But Window, Zoom doesn't do that at all. Window, Zoom actually makes the window a little smaller. What Window, Zoom is doing is it is asking the app what the largest size the window should be and not any larger than it is needed. So, notice here I've got margins here on the left and right side of the page. In Pages these aren't needed. So when I do Zoom it actually removes them. So Zoom and Fill are two different things. 
Now when I mentioned all the different ways to use Window Tiling at the start of this video I didn't mention one and that is to double click the Title Bar. So, for instance, if I take Notes here and I double click in the Title Bar here I get the window filling the space. If I do it in Pages I double click you can see it actually is zooming, not filling. Double clicking the Title Bar is actually customizable. If you go to System Settings and then to Desktop & Dock it's double click Window Title Bar To and you can see it is set to Zoom. Which is why it behaved that way in Pages. I can actually have it minimize the window if I want, do nothing if I find I accidentally double clicked the Title Bar sometimes and I just want it to do nothing, or I can have it Always Fill. If I change it from Zoom to Fill and I go back to Pages, if I double click the Title Bar now it fills. If this is how you want it you may want to go and change that setting. 
Now there's some other settings you may want to change as well. A lot of people don't like how if you drag the window around it can accidentally maybe fill the right half or maybe you drag it to the top and it fills the entire screen like that. You would rather have that turned off. That is here in System Settings under Desktop & Dock. Go down to Windows and there's Drag Windows to Screen Edges To Tile and also Drag Windows to the Menu Bar to Fill Screen. So if you find you accidentally triggered those turn one or both of these options off. Now even if you have these turned off you can still Drag To Tile as long as you have this third option On. Hold the Option Key while Dragging Windows To Tile. If that is On but the other two are Off, then regular dragging won't do anything. But holding the Option Key will still allow you to easily drag left or right, into the corners, up to the top to fill the screen, and everything. 
Now you may have noticed that how I Fill the screen with a window like this, or even drag it to the side, it fills all the way to the edge. If you don't see that, if you see a big margin between the top, bottom, and sides then you probably have the Settings, Tiled Window Have Margins, turned On. If that is On then you get those margins. I know a lot of people don't like those so you may want to turn those Off as I have. 
Another interesting thing about Window Tiling that you may have not noticed is that if you tile a window, like for instance I'll take this to the right half like that, it remembers its previous size. So notice if I drag here it goes back to its size. That doesn't happen if you manually position the window. So if I manually put it here at the top right and I manually take the bottom left corner and resize it, well that's just the size of the window now. But if I were to double click it here to have it Fill and then drag away, you can see how it returns to its previous size. 
Now occasionally you run into a window that has a lot of information there and when you make it fit into, say, a half like that, maybe there's not enough space for the content. In some apps you can breakout windows to show specific content. So, for instance, here in Notes if I double click on the Note it breaks out the note into its own window like that. I can take this window and have it fill the right half. You see how I have a lot more space here for the actual note itself. Mail does that with messages. You can double click a message here and break it out into its own window. The Messages App also allows you to breakout individual conversations by double clicking on that and then you can just have that one conversation here. 
There's no way for Windows Tiling to remember a specific setup like Pages on the left, Notes on the right. But you can use shortcut to create things like that. In the Shortcuts App I'm going to create a new shortcut here. I'm going to search for Windows. The first option here is Find Windows. I'll double click that and use this to locate a window. I'm going to find All Windows, add a filter and say the App Name is and then have it be something like, say, Pages. So it is going to find all windows where the app name is Pages. I'll have it limit it to a single window. So, whatever the first Page's window is. Then I'm going to use Resize Window, I'll double click right there to add that, and you can see how it feeds the results of this into this. So, Resize the windows from here to and then I can choose some of those tiling options, like Left Half. I can Show More here and make sure I have Bring to Front turned On. Now I can do the same thing again. Find Windows but in this case I'm going to Filter and say App Name is Notes. I'm going to limit 1 and resize that and it is going to feed the result from this into here. I'm going to have this go to the right half. Now I can call this Pages Left Notes Right or whatever I want I can go to the Details here and I can have it added to the Menu Bar. I could also setup a keyboard shortcut for it if I want. Now without Shortcuts even running I can go up here, since I pinned it to the Menu Bar, and if I run this you can see it will take Pages and put it on the left, Notes put it on the right, just like I specified. So you can setup several of these shortcuts to have predefined tiling sets. 
I hope you found these Windows Tiling tips useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “16 Mac Window Tiling Tips”

nick

2 weeks ago

Gary, hope this fits the topic...when resizing the Preview window with a PDF file open, sometimes the content of that file resizes automatically but other times it doesn't. My guess is that it's due to how the file was created. Any ideas why? thx

Stu

Always a nugget in there somewhere! Proportional resizing from the middle window control… 👍

Gary Rosenzweig

nick: Not sure why the difference. Perhaps something to do with how the PDF was created? Or maybe if you changed the zoom level the last time you viewed it? You can probably figure it out with a lot of systematic tests using many different PDFs in different situations.

Carmen

This was very helpful. I frequently want to see two windows side-by-side, and this simplifies the process.

Gene Cyprych

How you explore and find all of this stuff is amazing! Then you create a video that explains it so clearly. I will have to watch at least one more time. Thanks

Mark

Extraordinary that the day has finally arrived with window tiling for Mac! Running 10.14 I found the app Spectacle 1.2 which I can't figure out how I lived without. Particularly handy on multiple monitors when buggy apps like Calendar or Excel open windows such that the title bar is off-screen, a keystroke snaps the off-screen window to where you can reach it.

Gene

I tried the Shortcut that Gary illustrated. I had a slight bug at first but fixed it. One should be aware that if the app you are looking for is in Full-Screen mode it will not work.

Mike

Awesome tips for managing app windows. Thanks.

16 Mac Window Tiling Tips

Comments: 8 Responses to “16 Mac Window Tiling Tips”

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