Snap was a feature that was introduced in Windows 7 but made its way out in Windows 8 only to reappear again on Windows 8.1. The popular feature lets you arrange, maximize, and minimize open windows, simply by dragging them to different edges of your screen. This feature is even better now on Windows 10. To get started with Snap, let’s open up a window, grab the window by its Title Bar, and drag it to any of the sides of the screen.
When you drag it to the top of the screen, you’ll briefly see a ripple effect from your mouse, which is an indication to release the mouse. This effect causes the screen to maximize the window. It is actually a lot easier to maximize a Window using Snap Assist than using the Maximize button. If you grab the Title Bar and drag it down, it will have the effect of removing the maximize functionality. If your drag the window to the left or to the right it snaps the window to that half of the screen.
This can be useful when you need to look at a couple of windows simultaneously. You can also drag the window to the left of the screen and move the mouse up or down before you release it. This gives you the option to snap the window to a quarter of the screen.
Now lets open a few more windows. When you snap one of these windows to the side of the screen, the other windows turn into thumbnails. Clicking one of these thumbnails immediately snaps it to the other half of the screen.
Windows Snap will work only when one-half of the screen is snapped, so if you snap a window up to the quarter of the screen, the rest of the open windows won’t appear as thumbnails. However, if you snap another window to the remaining quarter of the screen, Windows Snap is activated. Then you can click another window to have it fill the other half of the screen.
Using Windows Snap with Keyboard Shortcuts
Now here’s a quick look at how you can use keyboard shortcuts for snapping windows. Just hold down the Windows key and use one of your arrow keys to snap around.
If you hold down the Windows key and press the right arrow key, the window snaps to the right. If you continue to hold down the Windows key, and use the up or down arrows, you can snap it to the top or the bottom of that half. While it's snapped at the bottom quarter, you can press the left arrow key, still holding the Windows key to move it to the other side. You can press the top arrow key to go up again and so on. Pressing the Windows key and the up arrow maximizes the window, and pressing the down arrow key removes the maximize option, and pressing it again minimizes it.
You can press up again to bring it back. If you use these easy to remember keyboard shortcuts, Windows Snap becomes pretty intuitive and fast to use.
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