Mastering Window Tiling and Resizing Keyboard Shortcuts

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using keyboard shortcuts to tile and resize windows on your Mac. 

So when you manipulate windows on your Mac you can make them fill the maximum amount of space on the screen, you can tile them to the left or right, you can center them and do lots of other things. There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts associated with those actions. Since window tiling is fairly new you're probably not used to the keyboard shortcuts as you are with the standards like, Command C for copy and Command Q for quit. 

So for instance here I've got two windows, the Finder Window and the Notes Window. I can manipulate these in a variety of ways using, say, the corners or the sides to resize them. I can click and drag from the top to move them around. But, if I want to manipulate these to perfectly fit or center them then I want to go to the Window Menu here and there are a variety of commands like Fill, Center, and then a whole submenu of things under Move and Resize. You'll notice that a lot of keyboard shortcuts associated with these. So let's go through them, learning just a few can really increase your productivity. 

For Instance, if I wanted this window here be as large as it can possibly be then I may want to use Window and then Fill. Notice the keyboard shortcut for that is Control Globe F. Now if you don't have a Globe key on your Mac's keyboard note that the Globe Key replaces the fn key. As a matter of fact on newer Mac keyboards you'll find the Globe and the letters fn on that key. If you've got an older Mac it might just be fn and that's fine. It will work just the same. So instead of using this menu right here I can use Control and then Globe and then F and it will take this window and move all the corners and sides to maximize its size to fit across the entire screen. Let's switch to this Documents window here. I can do the same thing with this one here using the same Control and then Globe and then F key. It now fills the entire screen.

Note that this is different than going to full screen view. This window here is still on the same desktop space as the other windows, like the Notes window behind it. So they are still just regular windows on a single desktop. If I switch to Mission Control here you can see I just have the one desktop and still have those two windows on it. However if I were to click the green button here and use View and then Enter Full Screen then this window, in this case the Documents window, is now a separate space. I have the desktop space and can have one or more windows on it and I have this full screen view of the Finder with no desktop behind it. It's just a window by itself. So it's a big difference between having a Full Screen version of that window and have windows that are simply maximized to fill from edge to edge the entire desktop. 

Now there's another command that's also similar but not the same as Fill. That's Zoom. If I choose Zoom here from the Window Menu look at what happens. You can see the window did get bigger but it didn't actually fill the screen and it didn't create its own space either. It simply got a little taller and a little wider. Look what happens if I were to shrink it down here and, say, Zoom. Look what happens if I were to actually expand the window and then Zoom. It actually shrinks in that case. What Zoom does is it makes the window as large as it needs to be to include all the information. So in this case in the Finder window I've got these columns here. That's all the space that is needed. If I add some extra space it is just wasted space here. The same is true for other apps. For instance in Pages here if I Zoom you can see it actually shrinks, but it shrinks so that the page is taking up exactly the space it needs. There is no extra space here at all. 

So Zoom gets the window to be its perfect size. Fill takes the window to its maximum size. Full Screen will move it to a separate space taking over the entire space with no desktop behind it. 

Now also notice what happens when I Fill with the Documents window here and then I go to drag it again. It shrinks back to the previous size. When you use a command like Fill it remembers the previous size in case you want to go back to it. In fact there is a Command and a Keyboard Shortcut for that. If you go to Move and Resize the bottom item here is Control Globe R for Return to Previous Size. So if I use Control Globe F to make it the maximum size, I can use Control Globe R and return to the previous size. As you saw the same thing happens when you simply start dragging the window.

Now there's another Command here, Center. This doesn't actually change the size of the window at all. But it will Center it perfectly on the screen. Something I know a lot of people want. So with this Finder window definitely off center I can use Control Globe C and you can see how it centers it. Now in some cases it does actually resize the window. That's because it also acts as a way to return to the previous size. If I were to use Control Globe and then F for Fill, Control Globe and C to Center it both centers it and returns it to its previous size. 

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So now let's take a look at the things underneath the Move and Resize submenus. So you've right, left, top, and bottom. There's four keyboard shortcuts here to memorize. Except there's not really four. It's just one. Using the same Control, Globe, and modifier keys that we've been using for F, C, and R, we just have to remember to use the Arrow Keys and use them in a way that makes sense. For instance the left arrow key moves the window to the left half of the screen. So with this Documents window selected here I can do fn Control then the left arrow and it will make this window be the left half. I can do the right arrow for the right half, up arrow for the top half, and down arrow for the bottom half. It still remembers the original size when I go back to drag it or use Control Globe and R. So, I could do that with that window and then select the Notes window here and then move this to the side with Control Globe and the right arrow. That way I can split the screen.

But I can also do that with one single command because under Window, Move & Resize there's a bunch of Arrange Commands here. Now these are the same as paths except you're adding the Shift Key. So if I were to use Control Globe and Shift and then the left arrow it will move this to the left side. But it does more than just affect the top most window. It actually looks to see what the next window is underneath it. In this case it will be Notes. It will move that to the opposite side, so the right half. So with one keyboard shortcut Control Globe Shift and the left arrow I've moved the top two windows to be the left and the right half. If I did the right arrow it will do them but in the opposite half, like that. 

Now there are some hidden shortcuts here under Arrange. If I hold the Option Key down notice I get left in quarters. That means that the current window will be the left side and the next two windows will be the top and bottom of the right side, or the other half here. So for instance let's open a second Finder window here. I'll dig down into a Folder and I've got the Notes window being the top most window and these are the next two. So I'll do Globe and Control and Shift and Option and then left and you can see how it puts the Notes window on the left side and these two in the quarters. I do all the same keys but do the right arrow and put the Notes window top most one on the right. Do the Down Arrow and you can see the Notes is at the bottom and the others fill the other quarters. So if you want that kind of thing you do have keyboard shortcuts for it by holding down the Option Key and the extra modifier to change how these work. 

Now what about these other ones, like if you want the four quarters here, for instance. There's a full set of customization options. If you go to System Settings and then go down to Keyboard and then click the Keyboard shortcut button here and then go to Windows. You're going to find a ton of options to customize. Under General here you've got the Fill, Center, and Return to Previous Size command. Under Halves you've got the four halves and you can customize those. Under Quarters you can add them here. Under Arrange you can customize these. Remember I told you there is kind of a hidden button up here to maximize the window. The secret is to double click on the title bar. But if you do it with the default setting it will do that Zoom function that I was talking about earlier. So you can see here the Finder window didn't maximize at all. It just went to the perfect size. However, if you go to System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock and then look for Window Title Bar Double Click Action you can see it is set to Zoom by default. But you can change it to Fill. Now when you double click somewhere else, maybe just consider the space to the right of the green button as the place to do it, notice it will now maximize. So now you have kind of a button to be able to do that. It is just the button all across the top wherever there isn't something else to click. 

Also note you can do most of these by just dragging the window as well. If you go into System Settings and then to Desktop & Dock go down to Windows. You'll see Drag Windows to the Left or Right Edge of the Screen to Tile.  This gets you the right or left half. Drag Windows to the Menu Bar to Fill and hold the Option Key while dragging to Tile. So If I turn these off and just leave the top two on I can take any window, like this, and drag it to the right or left you can see it Snap to the half there. Then if I drag to the Top you can see how it will Fill, like that. Those are those options right there. If I do the Option Key that means I can still do that but holding the Option Key down will make it a little easier. I don't need to go all the way to the right or left side. In fact if I go far enough into a corner here you'll see it changes to quarters. 

Also note that if you're getting large margins whenever you're doing window tiling it is this last option here, Tile the Windows to have Margins. If i turn that On and I say move this to the right half you can see how it's got a nice fat margin around the top and bottom and right or here the top and bottom and left. If you don't want that turn off this option.

So start using these keyboard shortcuts. Think of the Globe and Control keys together as kind of the gateway to the Window Tiling. Then just remember F for Fill, C for Center, and R for Return and then the four arrow keys to move the windows to any half that you want. That will give you the basics. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.