How to Tile Windows Vertically on OS X and Much More
Loath though I am to admit it, there’s one feature of Microsoft Windows that I missed after switching: the ability to tile windows vertically or horizontally quickly and easily.
Sometimes you want to have a browser and a document open, side-by-side without the hassle of manually arranging it
OS X, for all its productive benefits, does not make handling windows easy. Enter SizeUp, a little that program replicates the ability to tile windows and vastly surpasses it. SizeUp has changed how I use my Mac almost as much as Quicksilver.
SizeUp lets you use keyboard commands to align windows. With just a quick keystroke you can make any window fill the left, right, top or bottom half of a screen. If you don’t like what you’ve just done, another quick keyboard move and the window snaps back to the way it was before.
Keyboard commands will also send a window to any quadrant of the screen. If you use multiple monitors or spaces) there are commands to move windows between them as well.
Here’s a screenshot of my desktop with three windows arranged with SizeUp:
Finally SizeUp eliminates the #1 complaint from Windows switchers: it will maximize a window so that it takes up the full screen, not just the size that Apple thinks it should be.
Go and buy a copy today, you’ll be glad you did — like Quicksilver, SizeUp helps the computer disappear and lets you just work. The developer is also very helpful and responsive to feedback, and charges by a ‘Name Your Price’ method.
If you want to see SizeUp in action, there is a screencast you can checkout here: sizeup screencast.
There is also a free, though limited version called TwoUp that you can download here to give it a try.
Click here to buy and download the full version of SizeUp.
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Header photograph by Darwin Bell.
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I totally agree. Thanks for this tip for OSX, I’ll definitely look at it for my Macs. I love tiling so much that I use a Tiling window Manager in Linux (http://awesome.naquadah.org). One of the best things about Windows 7 is that you can do something like tiling – hitting Windows-Left or Windows-Right maximizes the window you have to the left HALF or right HALF of the screen, to make it easy to put things side-by-side. With the expanding selection of wide-screen monitors, it’s going to become even more important.