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Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues

https://noheger.at/blog/2026/02/12/resizing-windows-on-macos-tahoe-the-saga-continues/
85•erickhill•1h ago

Comments

xvxvx•1h ago
I’m a Windows guy, but was given a MacBook for my current job. Fair enough. But I laugh at how horrendous such a simple thing as resizing windows is. Want Slack to take up the right third of a screen then fill the rest with browser? In Windows, it takes 2 seconds. Not on Mac. I have to resize the window myself? There’s no auto-snap?

I’m sure someone will buzz in with some hidden way to do it. ‘Hold cmd-shft-9 then say these magic words and voila!’ No. Dragging the window with the cursor should suffice.

Edit: I’ll also add that having to buy a huge $200+ display adapter so you can connect 2 external monitors to a MacBook, whereas a slimline $30 device will do the same for Windows laptops, is total bullshit.

egypturnash•52m ago
Double-clicking the edge or corner of a window (anywhere a double-headed arrow cursor shows up) will resize it to the edge of the screen.

Hovering over the green dot in the title bar will bring up some simple window tiling options.

https://support.apple.com/guide/macbook-air/manage-windows-o... has more to say on the subject, more recent versions of the OS than I use have added more stuff in this vein, personally I just use Moom and have been for years.

metabagel•30m ago
Moom looks great! Is there a Mac app which enhances the functionality of desktops/workspaces?
thesh4d0w•49m ago
I'm also struggling with a macbook for work, but hold your mouse over the green circle in the top left for a few seconds and it'll pop up. (You don't get the nice snapping that windows does though)
vesrah•43m ago
Holding option while hovering gives you more placement / sizing options too. If you click and drag a top bar to the right or left it'll snap to the right or left half of the screen. Dragging it to the top or double clicking will snap it to full size. Dragging to corners will snap to quarter.
lsbussell•27m ago
I don’t see options for thirds, though. Even on an UltraWide monitor.
universenz•17m ago
tHaTs BeCaUsE wE dOn’T SeLL wIdE ScReeN DiSpLaYs YeT! -Apple Genius
FireBeyond•32m ago
Rectangle Pro.

I'm actually agreeing with you. You shouldn't have to resort to third party apps.

rv3392•30m ago
I've been using Rectangle (https://rectangleapp.com/) for years now. IMO the shortcuts actually make it a massive improvement over Windows.
anon7000•28m ago
Lots of 3rd party tools to help, like Rectangle or Raycast. And at least the most recent macOS release has auto-snap and tiling features: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlef287e5d/...

There is also this option you can enable to drag windows around when holding a shortcut: https://petar.dev/notes/drag-windows-on-macos/

behnamoh•27m ago
Raycast does it. You need Raycast anyway; spotlight sucks.
akersten•23m ago
Yeah window management and the desktop experience in general on Mac just feels like I'm dragging my hands through tar.

For example, "open two file browsers, navigate to $home in one and $downloads in the other, move and rename a few files between them" is a 10 second task on Windows (Win+E x2, quick clicks on the explorer links, easy to scroll around, move files, drag, rename, anything you want). On Mac I get about 7 system ding sounds and Finder windows bugging off the side of my screen while simultaneously deciding the best way to show downloads in a list is alphabetically and with 256x256 tiled icons. It's just an indescribably bad and slow experience to do any kind of file management on Mac.

Another example. Take a screenshot and quickly redact some info with a black box. Easy on windows that I can type it out exactly (win+s, drag box, win key "paint" enter control v box tool save boom). On Mac?? After command shift 4 to take a screenshot I think it's actually physically impossible to edit it within 60 seconds.

dagi3d•14m ago
you can edit the image with preview any time you want
sneak•13m ago
> After command shift 4 to take a screenshot I think it's actually physically impossible to edit it within 60 seconds.

This is completely incorrect, and the solution is way more discoverable than needing to know obscure things like Win+E. Click the thumbnail that appears in the bottom right, then click the marker icon.

> For example, "open two file browsers, navigate to $home in one and $downloads in the other, move and rename a few files between them" is a 10 second task on Windows (Win+E x2, quick clicks on the explorer links, easy to scroll around, move files, drag, rename, anything you want).

Similarly, if you know the platform-specific shortcuts, this is less than 10 seconds on macOS. Click finder in dock, hit Command-N twice for new windows, drag each window to one of the L/R edges of the screen to tile, click downloads in the sidebar on one, click the home icon/username in the sidebar on the other.

jezzamon•20m ago
The answer, unfortunately, is to install a 3rd party program. Once you do that, it works well enough
cleaning•16m ago
The defaults in every OS are set made for power users (i.e. anyone doing more than browsing the web and using office).

With Windows you need to remove most of the cruft, Mac is no different; most people are using some combination of Raycast, Rectangle, Alfred, etc...

Someone1234•3m ago
On Windows you have to change a few settings, on Mac you're suggesting all third-party software to manage core functionality. Apples Vs. oranges.

I mean, yes, Windows has PowerToys which is an installed add-on, but on Mac we're not talking about Mac Vs. PowerToys, Mac isn't even competing with basic Windows features. PowerToys is competing with the PAID third-party software for Mac.

iamflimflam1•11m ago
Sorry to be that guy who buzzes in - I might be missing something, but don't you just mouse over the green button?
jazzyjackson•9m ago
Also takes 2 seconds... You don't need 3rd party apps like everyone's saying, only if you want tiling or to copy Windows behavior.

  Press Control-Up Arrow (or swipe up with three or four fingers) to enter Mission Control, drag a window from Mission Control onto the thumbnail of the full-screen app in the Spaces bar, then click the Split View thumbnail. You can also drag an app thumbnail onto another in the Spaces bar.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-apps-in-split-v...
Someone1234•5m ago
I feel like anyone reading that, and thinking that is a reasonable/intuitive design, may be quite far down the rabbit-hole.

It reads like a parody.

xvxvx•2m ago
It’s significantly worse than I even imagined.
pram•9m ago
This has been built in since Sequoia. It’s literally dragging the window like aero snap.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-window-tilin...

refulgentis•58m ago
Many moons ago, I invented* a rule that "you can always make people feel what you want about a #. either use percentages where they don't make sense, or whole numbers when a percentage does"

I hear it when I read 7 px -> 6 px means 14%(!!!!) less likely to find the horizontal/vertical only drag area.

Fitts's Law is logarithmic, not linear, and at these sizes the dominant factor is whether the target is discoverable at all, not its sub-millimeter width. "14%" smuggles in precision that doesn't exist in the underlying motor reality; it takes an imperceptible physical change and launders it through a ratio with a small denominator to produce a number that feels alarming. You could just as honestly say "we moved the edge by 0.097 mm**" and nobody would blink.

* I think? It feels like there'd be prior art on this

**

  ppi = 262
  inch = 1/ppi
  mm = inch \* 25.4
  # 1px ≈ 0.097 mm ≈ 0.004"
learn_more•42m ago
14% over estimates it because the user isn't clicking with uniform randomness, their clicks are normally distributed about the center of the line.
Lucasoato•56m ago
Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave.
Nextgrid•28m ago
Attach a generator to him and the AI datacenter energy needs are solved. Even better, the more trash like this that AI produces the more energy is generated.
GaryBluto•22m ago
> Even better, the more trash like this that AI produces the more energy is generated.

Do you have any "inside knowledge" that this was caused by LLM use or do you just attribute everything you don't like to AI?

neodymiumphish•51m ago
I’ve tried many apps for window resizing on Mac, and none feel like they’re nearly as good as FancyZones (the PowerToys module for Windows). I don’t want secret squirrel key combos. I don’t want hot corners.

I want two things:

- Predefined zones à la FancyZones - Tied edges (there’s surely a better term for this) so that I can grab the edge between two apps and have them both resize together (one gets smaller as the other gets bigger).

Please someone tell me this exists without a subscription!

joedrago•47m ago
I think for preexisting solutions, the "best" one is Rectangle Pro, but it isn't free, so maybe that doesn't count. That said, eventually I realized I don't even want the whole "window split" stuff and I'd prefer to just have a few keybinds that throw windows into specific coords on my screens, so I installed Hammerspoon (free) and wrote a screen's worth of Lua to do this for myself. It is written for my two adjacent 1440p monitors and personal preferences, but the code is really obvious so if you're comfortable with making your own bespoke solution, this is pretty nice, and free.

* https://www.hammerspoon.org/

* https://gist.github.com/joedrago/bfc54f4083b070fe998d519cc6c...

_def•49m ago
I miss resizing windows with alt+right click
matja•20m ago
Did macOS support that at some time in the past?

I've used Linux as my daily OS for 20 years and got so used to alt-right resize and alt-left drag that the macOS and Windows way of actually needing to move my mouse to the corner or edge of a window feel almost barbaric in comparison.

I still have found no way free equivalent on macOS.

4b11b4•49m ago
Haven't resized a window with a mouse since using aerospace
learn_more•49m ago
>In total the thickness went down from 7 to 6 pixels, which is a 14% decrease, making it 14% more likely to miss it.

Pedantic, but chance of miss is actually less than 14% more likely since the user's click location is not uniformly random over the thickness area, it's biased toward the center (normally distributed).

dagi3d•12m ago
I had similar thought but didn't want to be that guy.
dgxyz•46m ago
It's bad when stock Gnome is better. That's where I am now.
accrual•39m ago
Switched to KDE Plasma last month and very pleased I can have square-corner windows again.
dgxyz•39m ago
Corners are great aren't they! :)
krisknez•10m ago
I had a hard time with Gnome but now I got used to it and it's amazing for me. I just can't believe they still haven't implemented scrolling speed setting...
jazzyjackson•6m ago
I love gnome, at least how it's implemented by recent Fedoras. Whenever I go back to Mac I wonder why spotlight and mission control are two different functions
urbandw311er•44m ago
You have to wonder what’s actually going on under the hood when the curve of the hitbox is different to the curve of the window? I’m very curious to understand how Apple have got to this point.
sho_hn•37m ago
This is relatively common. The mouse interaction code doesn't necessarily look at the visual asset, and in many UI toolkits the ability to have interaction targets located and sized differently from visual features is a feature.
MBCook•35m ago
Trying to get Liquid Glass to work is such a clown show. Incredible.

The UI wasn’t perfect before. It’s slowly been getting worse with each of their dumb updates to make it look more like iOS over the years.

What we’re forced to use now is just a joke. Ignoring all the visual design issues they can’t even make basic stuff fully functional.

kyralis•2m ago
The worst part is that Liquid Glass isn't even good on iOS.
jasondigitized•23m ago
Rectangle Pro for the win
ivanjermakov•21m ago
Since the first taste of Linux WMs, I believe the best and only good way of handling window move and resize is super+lmb/rmb respectively. No more pixel-perfect header/corner sniping!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/qv0vmz/missing_supe...

garciansmith•10m ago
Yeah, it was one of those things I noticed when I first started using Linux and wondered why every other OS didn't just copy it.
2bitencryption•15m ago
The interesting part, for anyone who actually reads the article - the change was fixed in an RC and then reverted in the final release.

Which implies there was some regression, some issue, some incorrect behavior or negative impact. One has to wonder… what could it have been? What could the issue with having a more accurate clickbox for the corner of the window possibly be?

anematode•3m ago
Maybe it was just an oversight in the merge process? e.g. the diff was applied only to the RC and not to the release branch? idk
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finally

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https://searchengineland.com/google-cracking-down-self-promotional-best-of-listicles-468227
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