Windows 10 New Feature: Enhanced Snap for Both Desktop and Modern Apps

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Snap, first introduced in Windows 7, has always been one of my favorite features in Windows 7 and 8. In case you are not aware, it’s a Windows management feature that lets you easily manage your open windows, either maximizing, resizing, or switching between multiple screens, by dragging and snapping a window to different edges of the screen. And now in upcoming Windows 10, it gets an even better boost with a bunch of cool new features.

Four Corners

Adding to the snapping territories in Windows 10 are the 4 corners that snap open windows to four quadrants of the screen.

Windows 10 4 corners 600x331 - Windows 10 New Feature: Enhanced Snap for Both Desktop and Modern Apps

When you drag a window to a corner of your screen, you will see an animated transparent outline of the window filing out the quadrant you dragged the window into. The window will fill out that area once you release the mouse button.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut keys as well. Here is a complete table what the key combinations are to use the snap feature in Windows 10.

Win + Up Arrow – maximize a window
Win + Down Arrow – minimize a window
Win + Left Arrow – resize a window to the left half of the screen
Win + Right Arrow – resize a window to the right half of the screen
Win + Left Arrow + Up/Down Arrow – resize a window to the left up/down quadrant
Win + Right Arrow + Up/Down Arrow – resize a window to the right up/down quadrant

The new feature also works on multi-screen setup as well. You will just need to be a bit slow if you want to snap to the quadrant area between 2 screens. Going a little slow towards the corner and release the mouse once you see the transparent outline showing up.

Note that using Win + Left/Right Arrow on a multi-screen setup will cycle the open window through every left/right edge on every monitors. It’s a nice feature to have.

Another note is that the corner snapping feature only works on Desktop applications. The modern apps are not supported at the moment.

Snap Assist

Snap Assist is a feature that makes snapping addition windows easier. It displays a thumbnail list of open windows that haven’t been snapped in the empty space as soon as you snapped a window to a corner or edge.

Windows 10 snap assistant 600x331 - Windows 10 New Feature: Enhanced Snap for Both Desktop and Modern Apps

Click a thumbnail, the corresponding window will be snapped to the available space. It seems to be pretty cool addition feature but I haven’t actually convinced how useful it will be.

That’s it for now. Let’s keep eyes on the upcoming builds to see if anything new are being added into the Snap category.

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