It’s not surprising that an operating system called Windows has historically had an excellent window management feature. Microsoft always made it easy to dock two windows side-by-side using a keyboard shortcut. However, as good as it is, Windows kept this shortcut quite hidden. Now, with Windows 11, Microsoft has improved “Snap layouts,” as it’s called, and now it’s much easier to both discover and use.
How to use Snap layouts
Credit: Microsoft
To use Snap in Windows 11, hover over the Maximize button on any window, and you’ll see a grid of multiple window layouts. You can split the windows equally, dock a thin window to the right, split them into four window quadrants, and more. Click a position and the current window will take up the defined space. You can then choose the windows to add to other open slots.
Once the window layout is created, the windows are grouped together. You’ll find the group in the taskbar, and you can access the entire group using the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut.
If you like keyboard shortcuts and drag gestures, you’ll be happy to know that Windows still supports them. Drag a window to the top-middle of the screen, and you’ll see the same Grid Layouts option. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Windows + Z to get started.
If you want to customize or disable this feature, go to Settings > System > Multitasking and find the Snap Windows section.
Snap windows is faster with drag gestures
The old-school Windows multitasking is still available in Windows 11, and I suggest you graduate to using these gestures after you’ve got a hang of the Snap layouts.
All you have to do is to drag your window to one of the edges or corners of the screen. If you drag it to the left edge, the window will be docked to the left half of the screen; if you do it for the left corner, it will take up the top-left quadrant of the screen. The same works for the top and bottom as well. When you get a hang of this, you’ll find yourself flying through window management. This feature is so good that there are third-party apps dedicated to copying this feature on the Mac.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut Windows + Up/Down/Left/Right to dock the window to a particular part of the screen.
