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Comment by doodpants | Hacker News Reader

The term "window snapping" must have some precise definition that I'm unaware of, because the Mac does have behaviors that I would call "window snapping":

- On the Mac, when you drag a window to a side or bottom edge of the screen, it will "catch" on the edge, making it easy to avoid dragging it partially off of the screen. In Windows, when I want to move a window to the edge of a screen, I have to be very slow and careful to get it just up to the edge without going over.

- Likewise on the Mac, windows will "catch" on the edges of other windows, making it easy to put windows up against each other with no overlap or intervening space

- If you click and hold the Maximize button, you get a menu that gives you the option to tile the window to the left or right half of the screen

So, what exactly is this "window snapping" feature that Windows has that the Mac doesn't? I'm genuinely clueless and curious.

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Win-Left Arrow moves the window to the left hand side of the screen. If you have multiple screens, it will move it to the next screen with your next press. Ditto Win-Right. Win-Up maximizes, Win-down un-maximizes, then minimizes.

You can also drag windows against any edge, and get half-windows, maximized windows, etc. by default. And you’re not placed in full screen mode, losing the menu bar. I purchased an app to get similar (but still inferior) behavior in Mac.

Windows’ window management is, IMO, simply superior to Macs.

It's an awful feature to have on by default though. Whenever I'm in Windows, I can't seem to drag a window anywhere without Windows just deciding that I actually want to anchor it on the side and re-size it. NO! I just want to move the window a little. Jeez! There's probably a way to turn it off, but why on earth is that the default behavior? Fortunately I only use windows once a month or so, so I haven't been bothered to figure out how to disable this.

Also, I seem to recall if you "shake" a window while dragging it, it does something else unexpected. Great, now I need to have a surgeon's hands just to move my window around. Can you just let me drag my window in peace, Microsoft?

Yes I feel your pain in that one. There’s a way to turn this off in the settings... one of the first things I do with any new Windows setup.

Another major peeve of mine: Windows lets you drag a window so that its top edge goes outside the bounds of your display. It should stop when the top edge “bumps into” the upper bound of the display: I prefer to have most windows full-height, and I have to be extremely finicky and careful when dragging documents around in Windows. On Mac this is not an issue: I can “slide” full-height windows from side to side by dragging them slightly upwards as I drag them horizontally.

The problem is that these features are not discoverable. Who would ever think of dragging a window by the maximize button?

Snapping in Windows lets you drag a window against an edge of the screen to make it tile left/right/top (and bottom I think). I’m not sure how well it works on the “inside” edges of a multi-monitor desktop though.

The click-and-hold of OSX is relatively new, and there’s several apps that add the functionality anyway so no big deal.

What I don’t like of tiled windows on OSX is how the active one raises on the z-axis, and click-and-hold tends to be annoying when you’re in a hurry... on the other hand on Windows I often accidentally activate the tile shortcut and that’s also a hassle. But I’m just a fussy lad

> I’m not sure how well it works on the “inside” edges of a multi-monitor desktop though.

Like you would expect + some gripping when reaching the edge before passing over so it's easy to know if you're snapping or moving over the other screen.

> Snapping in Windows lets you drag a window against an edge of the screen to make it tile left/right/top (and bottom I think).

Corners too, I use it a lot on my 4k 40" to have 4x20" windows.

> I’m not sure how well it works on the “inside” edges of a multi-monitor desktop though.

"Some" pixels grace zone before escaping to another screen.

yes, but on mac it will make both apps in separate desktops and in windows is just simple window tiling

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