How to arrange windows in e.g. 3x3 pattern?

Question

On a default Win10 system, pressing e.g. Win+Left pushes the current window to the left edge of the screen setting its width to half of the screen. This is an awesome feature and I love it.

However, I can imagine additional greatness to said feature. The screens are getting larger, so half-screen-size is rather large. I'd like to be able to put a window in side-by-side mode but setting its side to e.g. one third of the width.

That way, I'd be able to quickly set up two long but narrow frames on the vertical edges and in the middle, keep the working area free or, perhaps, divide it into upper and lower halves.

The closes to it I've found is Win+Left+Up, which lets me set up a 2x2 array. It's okay but not perfect. Googling the issue gave me nothing except a noob blogs going bananas over the feature as it's described above. Nothing about going beyond it to more complex window arrangements.

Primarily I'm looking for a built-in way but since I'm rather certain that there's none, I'm also open for a suggestion on a utility that might achieve corresponding result.

Solution 1

Microsoft now provides a free tool to do this, called FancyZones, one application in a larger suite called PowerToys. There are some great instructions at onmsft.com. There is even a setting to override the default behavior of the Windows-arrow hotkeys to move windows among your custom grid.

Solution 2

Windows cannot create such screen snap areas. The most it can do is set a 2x2 grid, as you have found out.

You need a third-party product that is flexible enough to define any screen setup and is easy to use.

The best product I have found in that domain is the completely free GridMove, which has a long list of capabilities:

• 3 different interaction methods to suit everyone’s likes
• Several pre-made grid templates that can be easily swaped
• Ability to set windows on top and maximize them vertically or horizontally
• Full keyboard support, which can organize windows with one hotkey press
• MultiMonitor Support
• Customizable hotkeys
• Customizable interface
• Possibility to create dynamic custom grids
• Complete help file

A tutorial GridMove Grid Making Tutorial can be found on their forums, where the users help each other with complex grids. For example :

An alternative is AquaSnap which is choke-full of goodies, but the free version does not have the more advanced features such as Mouse shortcuts and Window tiling. For that, one requires the Standard version at $18.

Comments

[Konrad Viltersten]

I'm going for AquaSnap for now. It still doesn't have the one-third window sizing but at least it's being currently maintained. But as God is my witness, I would so get my butt to work and create an own solution if it wasn't for the fact that I'm both lazy and overloaded with more crucial junk at the moment. (Only the latter is a temporary condition so I'll probably just stay Aqua'tized.)

[Konrad Viltersten]

I tried PowerToys shortly after I asked the question here. Boy, did it suck... Perhaps I did something wrong but my experience was great on a single screen while it became a total disaster on multiple screens. It was mayhem and confusion how the windows were misplaced and didn't align. Did you try the tools on multi-screen system?

[John Freeman]

I tested with a second display just now. I was able to configure zones on that monitor, they could even be different zones than on my primary monitor (e.g. rows vs columns, or 4 columns instead of 3). The zones worked perfectly. Unlike in default Aero, Windows-arrow hotkeys did not move windows across displays, but Windows-shift-arrow did (just like in GNOME on Ubuntu). My displays are different resolutions, so the zones are different sizes. When moving a window from one display to the other, it keeps the absolute size it had. Another Windows-arrow press made it fill a zone on the new display.

[Konrad Viltersten]

Well, will gladly stand corrected in this regard. Let me give it a try his evening and get back to you. Fingers crossed. And I might even bounty you if it works out better than last time.

[Konrad Viltersten]

You were definitely right. I've tried those PToys again and it has improved. There's still a few quirks I'd like to get rid of but the tools are absolutely on a level that's acceptable and nice to deal with. My only fear is that when I change the desk (and we're doing that every day or two because we're implementing activity based workplace, which sucks ass of thousand donkeys), the settings need to be reset. But it can hardly be blamed on PowerToys that we are retarded. :)

[Konrad Viltersten]

As promised - the bounty is there for you. Just let me know if you want it and I'd smack you up with a nice +50 right away.

[John Freeman]

No worries, but thanks for the offer! Glad it worked out for you!