Adding a Mac Keyboard Shortcut For Moving a Window To Another Display

If you have multiple displays, it is handy to be able to quickly move the current window to the other display. There is already a Menu Bar command for this. But with a little work, you can add a keyboard shortcut as well.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today I'm going to show you how to build a keyboard shortcut to move windows between screens on your Mac. 
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So if you're using more than one screen on your Mac you can move a window between screens pretty easily with a Menu Command. So, for instance, here I've got a MacBook Pro and I connected to it a 4K screen. This is a typical arrangement that a lot of people have. A MacBook with an external display. So you've got two screens which is great. But say you want to move a window, like this Finder window, to the other screen. You could do that using the Window Menu. If you go in there and you'll see a Move command and it's got the name of the other display. If you have even more displays you'll see the names of each display there. So I can just use this Menu Item and you could see it quickly moves that window to the other display. Then I could go to that display and with that same window selected I could go to Window and then move back to the built-in display. Now what would be nice is to have keyboard shortcuts that will do this. You can set that up pretty easily because anything that appears in a menu, like here in the Window Menu, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to if there isn't already one there. 
So in this case the Menu Item is Move to LG Ultra HD. LG Ultra HD is the name of my display. Yours would be different. The name comes from the hardware itself. So you've got to check there in your Window Menu to see exactly what this is. So now let's set this up as a keyboard shortcut. I'm going to go into System Preferences and then to Keyboard and then Shortcuts. Then I'm going to click on App shortcuts. I'm going to add a new one by clicking the plus button. I'm going to set it to All Applications so it's always going to be looking for this menu item in any app that I'm using. Then I have to type the Menu Title. I need to type this exactly. Every character has to be the same as the Menu Item. So in this case it would be Move to LG Ultra HD. Just like that. Exactly the same as the Window Command. I can even see it right here in System Preferences as well.
Now let's do a keyboard shortcut. What I think makes sense here is to use the right arrow key since this window is always to the right of my main screen. So I'm going to use Command and then Option and then the right arrow and Add. I can close System Preferences here. Now if I look under Window I'll see that anywhere I see Move to LG Ultra HD I see this shortcut. So with this Finder window selected I can use this keyboard shortcut and it moves to the other display. 
But now what if I wanted to move it back. Well, if I go over to here and I look under window you could see it says Move To Built In Retina Display. So I've got to check that and make sure I know exactly what the menu command is. Now I can create a keyboard shortcut for this. So go back into System Preferences, back to Keyboard, Shortcuts, and then App Shortcuts. I'll add a new one and I'll type that exactly as I saw it. Now I'm going to assign a keyboard shortcut. Command and Option and then left arrow to do that. So just double check when you're done to make sure the Menu Title is exactly what you see in the menu. Yours might be different than mine. Then I'm going to Add. Now I can quit System Preferences. If I'm now over in this display with this window selected, if I look under Window here's Move To Built In Retina Display with that keyboard shortcut. So now I can use Command Option Left Arrow to move it back to may main display and Command Option Right Arrow to move it to the secondary display.
This will work with any standard macOS Window. So here I am with Notes. I could see Window has the same menu command there. So if I use it here the Notes window will move to the secondary display and then I could move it back. Here I am in Pages. I see the same thing here under Window. So it's really consistent. I can move the Pages window back and forth between the displays. 
So you can see how this can definitely be useful especially if you assign a keyboard shortcut so you do it pretty quickly. You can get Windows out of the way off to your secondary display or move them around, back and forth as needed. You can combine this with Command Tab. Like for instance here I could Command Tab to Pages and then use Command Option Right Arrow to quickly move Pages over. If you've got a third display you could easily add that as a keyboard command too. For instance you could use Command Option and Up Arrow or Down Arrow for your center display and then the left and right arrows will match the left and right displays.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Adding a Mac Keyboard Shortcut For Moving a Window To Another Display”

Mark

1 year ago

Great tip Gary! I absolutely will be using this to switch Zoom window to separate display for conference calls. Already set the commands up and works perfectly!

IT Juggler

Great tip. I used Command Option 1, 2 , 3, etc. for multiple displays and used Command Option left/right arrow for Tile Window to Left/Right of Screen.

Oops. I meant Move Window to Left/Right of Screen, not Tile.

Roee Froman

Works likes a charm! thanks!

Stephen

One issue that I can't resolve that is worth pointing out: Most people that have dual monitor setups are likely to have the same monitor for each of them. Example being Mac Mini M1 with two LG HDR 4K monitors. The "name" of each monitor is the same in the menus, so I can't differentiate between which monitor I want when creating shortcut.

Ryan

6 months ago

Is there a way to set this up for Adobe CC applications like Photoshop? The move display option is not in that menu bar

Gary Rosenzweig

Ryan: If there is no consistent menu item to assign a keyboard shortcut to, there's not much you can do.

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Adding a Mac Keyboard Shortcut For Moving a Window To Another Display

Comments: 7 Responses to “Adding a Mac Keyboard Shortcut For Moving a Window To Another Display”

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