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Comment by issa | Hacker News Reader

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost.

ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

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Not sure what specifically you're talking about here, but if you wanna line up two windows side-by-side you can long click on the green "full screen" traffic light button in the top left of an app's window (e.g. Word), and choose which half of the screen you want it to maximise in. Then do the same for another running app in the other half and it'll split the screen between two apps at full size.

Okay, I just long clicked (5 seconds) on the green button and all it did is maximize the window. Tried long click + drag, didn't work. What am I missing?

Works for me, long click, it resizes to left half horizontally, then when I release it fills vertically. On the right side is a collection of my other windows, I tap one and it fills the right side.

Alas, it's not resizing the windows, but creating some sort of new virtual desktop and sticking them in it.

This is true

That kind of turned me off buy maybe it's worth giving it another go.

Here's the relevant Apple Support article

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204948

I was in the same boat and after some Googling I found that you need to have "Displays have separate Spaces" checked in the Mission Control preferences. For some reason it requires you to log-out and back in after activating it, but afterwards I can indeed use split view as described.

I don't remember changing this setting, but it's always possible I did years ago. I have never been a big user of Spaces and somehow missed out knowing Split View was ever a thing, but it's actually pretty neat.

This seems pretty cool. Looks like it gives you split DESKTOPS, which isn't quite the same. But I'll try it out. Thanks!

TIL! Great feature. After you have your two side by side apps you can also drag the border in between to make one larger than the other.

I use Spectacle for this, simplest thing I've found so far: https://www.spectacleapp.com

I second the Spectacle recommendation, but it is frustrating that you have to download an APP to do something that should be built into the window manager.

for top-level activities that won't really be composed with anything else, it seems fine to leave it to app developers;

as long as someone does the job correctly

Yeah, there have been many many iterations of these apps, by different developers. SizeUp + Cinch, Divvy, Spectacles.

While I think that Apple should have just copied Microsoft's approach (i.e. what Cinch does) the wealth of options for window management means that everybody can find something that they like.

Spectacle is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you!

Spectacle is great, but am I the only one who has to restart it periodically when it stops responding to keyboard shortcuts?

Obviously YMMV but I've been using Spectacle for years and have never had to do this.

I've found Spectacle leaves a bit of padding space under where the dock folds out - potentially useful, but unwanted in my case, and I wasn't able to find a setting to change that behaviour.

I use BetterSnapTool instead, which seems to have a better collection of settings and solves my (admittedly minor) gripe with Spectacle.

Did you know about Moom? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12

I absolutely love moom. I can't imagine going back to using macOS without it. It's amazing to me that this kind of functionality isn't built in. I use moom entirely via keyboard to easily move/resize windows onto a set of customizable "grids." With moom I spend almost zero time/effort fighting with window placement and almost always feel that windows are exactly where I want them. It's a great feeling!

BetterTouchTool / BetterSnapTool

Seconded. I use + love BetterSnapTool. Works great.

Best tool ever. The custom touchpad gestures are great, too. You can do stuff like three-finger swipe up/down to switch to previous/next tab, and rotate right/left to open/close taps.

I hardly ever use the touch gestures but BTT will let you drive everything from the keyboard. I can put windows almost anywhere at will now.

I know I'm being selfish here but it would be nice if Apple covered this sort of stuff instead of concentrating on emoji and Siri. Both of which I have no real use for.

I think I paid $1.99 for this 5 or so years ago. Hands down the best $1.99 I've ever spent.

There is Divvy which is an interesting approach. There is Hammerspoon if you fancy Lu's hacking and Phoenix if you fancy JavaScript. Hammerspoon can do more.

I've been satisfied with Moom, http://manytricks.com/moom/.

+1 for moom... I have mine set to a 4x4 grid instead of the default, so I tend to overlap some windows, depending on what I'm working with.

Moom does what it does. I use it as a faceless application.

I use Divvy and am pretty happy with it. Lets me configure different zones and assign keyboard shortcuts to put windows in those zones.

There is a great app called Hyperdock that does exactly what you want with window snapping. It works so perfectly that I sometimes forget that it's not a native feature of OS X.

Not sure about your window size problems with external monitors, I find that OS X handles this amazingly well

I forgot I had Hyperdock on my last Mac and when I got my new one I thought it was broken because it wouldn't snap / scoll maximize.

It has probably been my favorite utility for Mac

Hammerspoon! Combined with Miro's lua script [1] it provides virtually the same interface (if you've got the "hyper" key setup properly)

[1] https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-management

Not sure if it's just my experience, but I've found Hammerspoon to be extremely demanding on my older 2012 MacBook Air. I find single purpose apps somehow work better.

But I do love the amazing level of configuration and scripting that Hammerspoon allows you to do.

I've been using Hammerspoon for ages with a home-baked script, but Miro's one looks way better. Thanks for the link!

Ubuntu has these similar features in whatever default window manager thing it uses (I don't know the difference between window manager, desktop, etc for Linux). It also has "geographical desktop management," i.e., in windows and mac your separate desktops are to the left and right only, on ubuntu they can be up, down, left, or right. Might be trivial to some, but to me, having a "physical space" metaphor for my workflow is tremendously helpful.

Also you can drag left/right to snap to one half of a screen.

Anyway I tried to replicate this behavior on Mac with spectacle. It's meh. If you fuck up and fullscreen something and then try to half screen it, it seems to break horribly.

I've been using Amethyst and kwm for the past 4 years and are very happy with proper tiling in OS X. There's been some minor inconveniences but over all it's great.

I don't really find this to be a valid complaint. There are so many free tools out there that handles window management for macOS. I personally use Spectacle. Here is a list of 20+ window managers: https://www.slant.co/topics/526/~best-window-manager-for-mac

Magnet has been working well for me for years - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

Moom. Hands down the best window management tool for OSX.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12

I don't understand how OSX and Windows lack a drag modifier key. Like, in most Linux WMs you can hold Ctrl and click and drag anywhere in a window to move it.

Missed that too, so i installed an app "metamove". Sort of works fine!

I use Optimal Layout and the sadly-now-discontinued-but-still seems-to-work Zooom/2 for alt-window dragging:

http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://www.coderage-software.com/index.html

No one has mentioned it yet, but I have used slate for years. It's a programmable window manager. You can program the Windows 7 functionality you described with a few lines of config, if you wish, and that just the tip of the iceberg.

It can do everything but make lunch.

https://github.com/jigish/slate

Hyperdock, yes it's a paid app but it allows for what you want along with my favorite gesture of swipe up/scroll up while hovering over an application's titlebar to take it full screen. There may be free options out there but I've have hyperdock for years. It also gives you dock previews when you hover like Win7.

Divvy is my go-to window manager on macOS. I've got it set up to arrange windows on each edge as well as a "communication" window in the upper left corner of the screen for Slack, etc...

Get magnet from the App Store, it's better than windows!

Try ShiftIt or the clone. I use this at home as I missed the Windows+cursor movement of windows.

Moom is pretty good, beats the crap out of Windows.

as you can see by the answers, there are lots of options :) Personally i use Spectacle and it works great for me

Try moom . It's great

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