Tool For Mac That Allows Half Screen Snapping

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Window-snapping, which was first introduced in Windows 7, is a pretty convenient feature for quickly maximizing your screen's real estate. The feature lets you 'snap' a window to one side of your screen without having to move it around and resize it manually.

In Windows 10, Microsoft has improved the snap feature to include more options. You can now snap windows so they take up the full half or just a quarter of the screen, and a handy little Snap Assist tool lets you snap windows even more quickly than before.

Snap with the mouse

BetterSnapTool allows you to easily manage your window positions and sizes by either dragging them to one of the screen's corners or to the top, left or right side of the screen. This enables you to easily maximize your windows, position them side by side or even resize them to quarters of the screen. Mac users now have a window snapping feature built directly into Mac OS, which allows users to easily snap windows to aspects of the screen or against one another. This offers a nice way to quickly and precisely align windows, and it’s more or less the Mac equivalent feature of window snapping. Screen Tool Mac Informer. Featured Screen Tool free downloads and reviews. Latest updates on everything Screen Tool Software related. Snipping tool for mac free download - MiniTool Mac Data Recovery, Outlook Mac Archive Tool, Epubor Mac eBook Converter, and many more programs. The Leader in Screen Capture Software. Take the hassle out of creating images and videos. Capture your screen, edit images, and deliver results.

To snap a window, click its title bar and drag it to the edge of your screen. An outline will appear to show you where the window will snap to once you drop it. Drag it to the left or right side of your screen to snap it to the left or right half of the screen. You can also drag it to a corner to snap it to the corresponding quadrant, or drag it to the top of your screen to get a full-size window.

One such idea is Windows 7's Aero Snap feature: Drag a window to the left or right side of the screen and it'll 'snap' to fill off that half of the screen. Or drag it to the top of the screen to. In contrast to Windows 7 which allows user to quickly snap active windows at left and right side of the screen to view both app windows side by side, Mac OS X 10.7 doesn’t provide options to snap windows to both sides of the screen.

Snap with the keyboard

You can also snap windows using keyboard shortcuts. To snap a window with the keyboard, select the window you want to snap and press Windows Key + Left Arrow or Windows Key + Right Arrow to snap that window to the left or right side of your screen. If you want to snap it into one of the quadrants, first snap it to the left or right side of the screen and then press Windows Key + Up Arrow or Windows Key + Down Arrow to get it into the top or bottom corner. Once the window is in its smallest possible state (a quarter of the screen), you can move it around using Windows Key + Arrow Keys.

In a previous build of Windows 10, you could also vertically snap windows into either the upper or lower half of the screen, but in this build it's no longer possible. Now if you select a window and press Windows Key + Up Arrow, you'll maximize the window. If you press Windows Key + Down Arrow, you'll minimize it.

Use Snap Assist

If you snap a window with the mouse or the keyboard and you're left with a partially empty screen, Windows 10's Snap Assist feature will pop up. For example, let's say you snap a window to the right half of your screen, leaving the left half of your screen blank. If you have any other open windows, Snap Assist will bring them up as thumbnails in the empty left half of your screen. All you have to do is click on a thumbnail, and that window will open in the left half of your screen.

Once you've snapped a window into the empty half of your screen, you can resize both windows by clicking and dragging the dividing line. Resize the window on the right side to the size you want it to be, then let go of the mouse button. The left window will resize itself to fit alongside it, so you won't have any empty screen space.

Snap Assist comes up when you leave half or one quarter of your screen empty, but not if you leave three quarters of your screen empty. This is probably because Snap Assist tries to fill the empty space in one go, and you can't fill three quarters of the screen with a single window.

Editors' note: This How To post was originally published on February 4, 2015 and was updated on November 17, 2015 to reflect new information regarding Windows 10 Build 10586.

Whether you've just switched to Mac or you're secretly a little jealous of Windows 7 features, there are some things Mac OS X just doesn't do that Windows handles beautifully. Here's how to get Windows' best features on your Mac.

People talk about 'Mac Envy' a lot, but you hear a lot less about Windows jealousy—even though Windows has some pretty drool-worthy features. Whether it's the productivity-boosting Aero Snap or the ability to fully maximize windows with the click of a button, here's how to get some of our favorite Windows features on OS X. (If you're a Windows user, too, be sure to check out how to get Mac OS X's best features on your Windows PC, too).

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A lot of the apps mentioned in this post are, unfortunately, shareware. I looked for free options and found a few where noted, but almost everything here is a pay app. As such, you may not want to rush off and buy all of these, but check out their free trials and see which ones actually make your life easier. And remember: $7 may seem like a lot for an app, but if it's something you'll use every day and makes your life easier, it might not be so bad.

True Window Maximization

One of Mac OS X's most annoying features is the lack of true window maximization. That is, when you click the maximization button—the little green one in the corner of your windows—only some applications actually maximize to fill up your monitor. Instead, many just stretch to fit the contents of the window. This can be nice, but if you want to focus on just one thing, or if you just need more space for whatever you're working on, you have to resize the window manually.

Previously mentionedRightZoom is a simple tool that changes the behavior of the green button, causing it to always maximize the window. It isn't perfect (since it then gets rid of the old behavior, which is sometimes good), but it's the best free option we've found. You can alternatively grab Flexiglass, will maximize only when you right-click on the button, but it's $10. It also has a few other window management features though, which we'll talk about in a moment. Of course, most of the Aero Snap programs detailed below will also maximize windows, but using a keyboard shortcut or dragging motion rather than the green plus sign.

RightZoom Makes the OS X Maximize Button More Like Windows

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Window Previews

When you hover over a taskbar icon in Windows 7, it shows a tiny preview of all the windows open in that program, which is great for quickly bringing one into focus (or un-minimizing it). In OS X, you can right click on a dock icon to see the open windows, but the lack of thumbnails makes it hard to distinguish between them. (You can also click and hold on an app to get an Exposé of its windows, but that isn't quite the same). If you'd prefer a more Windows-like behavior, the previously mentioned $10 Hyperdock will give it to you. You can hover over dock icons, close windows right from there, and get a ton of other window management features (which we'll talk about in a moment) right from its preference pane. This is one of my favorite OS X enhancers—easily some of the best $10 I've spent in the Mac App Store.

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Aero Snap's Window Snapping (and Then Some)

Windows 7's Aero Snap feature is a godsend for anyone who needs to work in multiple windows at once. By clicking and dragging a window to the edge of the screen, you could 'snap' them to fit half the screen and use them side-by-side. You can also drag a window to the top of the screen to maximize it. There are a number of different tools that do this for OS X, but they all have a different mix of features, so you'll want to pick the one that works best for you. Here are our favorites:

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Tool For Mac That Allows Half Screen Snapping Shoals

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Hyperdock: This brings window snapping to OS X by both clicking and dragging windows and keyboard shortcuts. In addition, it has the window preview feature mentioned above, as well as the ability to move and resize windows from anywhere—not just the titlebar or window corner (another feature we miss from Windows).

Flexiglass: Flexiglass is also $10, but has a slightly different feature set than Hyperdock. It too can snap windows, as well as move and resize them from anywhere. However, it also adds the ability to fully maximize windows by right-clicking the green plus button, as well as quit apps by right-clicking the red x button, two features that Windows users on OS X will probably miss. It doesn't, sadly, have the window previews in the dock, so you'll either have to buy both apps or decide which features are more important to you. Again, both should have free trials available.

Cinch: If you'd rather not buy an app, you can grab Cinch. Cinch is technically $7, but it's nagware, meaning you can run it forever for free as long as you don't mind a request to buy every time you launch it. Cinch adds the drag-and-snap feature to OS X, but doesn't include keyboard shortcuts. For that you'd need...

Tool For Mac That Allows Half Screen Snapping Turtle

SizeUp: From the same developers as Cinch, SizeUp is a program that lets you snap windows, maximize them, move them to different monitors, and otherwize manage them with keyboard shortcuts. It doesn't include the drag-and-snap features of Cinch and the others, but if you're only going to use keyboard shortcuts anyways, it's perfect. Again, it's $7, but runs free as nagware if you prefer.
ShiftIt: ShiftIt is a free tool that lets you maximize and snap windows using keyboard shortcuts. It's similar to SizeUp but doesn't have quite as many options. It is, however, completely free (and nag-free).

Cut and Paste in the Finder

In Windows Explorer, you can cut and paste files all you want, but for some reason Mac OS X's Finder only lets you copy and paste files—no cutting allowed. There's a very easy way to get this functionality on OS X, though: previously mentionedMoveAddict will add keyboard shortcuts for cut and paste to the Finder, and as long as you only want to move one file at a time, you can do it for free. If you want to cut and paste large batches of files, though, you'll need to shell out $8 for the program.

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Get a Better Window Switcher

Cmd+Tab is a fine app switcher for something that's built-in, but if you're more used to how Windows does it, you'll probably get frustrated pretty quickly. It only switches between apps, not windows, and if you have any windows that are minimized or hidden, Cmd+Tab won't open them up unless you learn some hand-cramping new shortcuts. If you'd like a more powerful window switcher, Witch is a pretty good choice—although not exactly cheap at $14. However, it does give you a more Windows-like switcher, with a full list of open windows, thumbnails of each one, and some serious shortcuts (not to mention configurability). If you use Cmd+Tab a lot but aren't satisfied with the built-in offering, you'll probably find Witch is a very powerful program well worth the cash.

Tool For Mac That Allows Half Screen Snapping Hip

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Get Windows-Style Keyboard Shortcuts

If you just feel that your hand is too cramped reaching for Command instead of Control, or your Windows muscle memory is too great, you can use previously mentionedDoubleCommand to remap some of your keys in OS X. It can remap a whole host of things, some of the most useful being Ctrl, Cmd, and Alt. So, switching Cmd and Ctrl, for example, means that you'll go back to the Windows-style Ctrl+C shortcut for copy, Ctrl+V for paste, etc. They're small tweaks, but if you're used to Windows (or if you're forced to use Windows at work), it's nice to get back to the keyboard shortcuts that you're used to.

Remap your keyboard with DoubleCommand

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You'll never be able to get Mac OS X working exactly like windows, though I don't expect most Mac users would want to. Thankfully, with just a few simple tools and tweaks, you can get the Windows features that do matter on your Mac. Got any of your own favorite features we skipped over? Let us know how you brought them over to OS X in the comments.

You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.