Windows 11’s “Snap Layout” feature allows you to quickly move a window to a specific region of the screen by hovering over the “Maximize” button. How can you reproduce this in Windows 10? We’ll show you a few ways.
Snap Basics
Windows has had “Snap” features since Windows 7, and they’ve been vastly improved in Windows 10. You can’t do all of the advanced layouts offered by Windows 11, but Windows 10 can do a lot more than side snapping. to the side. two windows that most people are familiar with.
What makes all of this easy to use is something called “Snap Assist”. Rather than manually resizing and moving windows, you can simply drag them to areas of the screen, and Windows 10 will automatically do the work for you.
There are six areas you can use with Snap Assist. Drag to a corner to align the window to that quarter of the screen. Drag to the left or right edge to snap to that half of the screen. Basically, you can create any layout that fits in a 2×2 grid: four-quarter, half and two-quarter windows, or just two halves.
It all works by simply dragging windows across the screen. Left-click on a window’s title bar and drag it to the left or right corners or edges. You will see a transparent overlay indicating how the window will snap. Release the mouse to snap.
When using left or right edge snap, the second half of the screen will automatically show your other open windows. You can select one to fill out this section of the screen.
Snapping to quarters of the screen will not display the list of open windows until you fill three of the corners.
All of this also works with keyboard shortcuts: Windows key + left arrow or Windows key + right arrow to snap an app to the left or right halves of your screen. For smaller quadrants, use Windows key + Right/Left, then Windows key + Up/Down.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 does not support vertical snapping. You cannot use Snap Assist to place a window on the top half and another on the bottom half. You have to do it manually.
Soon: How to Rearrange Windows with Keyboard Shortcuts on Windows 10
Fantasy areas
If Windows 10’s built-in Snap Assist features aren’t enough, you can try Microsoft’s free “PowerToys” app. It includes a powerful window layout tool called “Fancy Zones”.
Fancy Zones extends the functionality of Snap Assist beyond the basic 2×2 grid. You can actually create your own layouts with complex grids and even overlapping zones. It’s pretty awesome if you need that sort of thing.
We have a complete guide on setting up and using Fancy Zones. The tool also lets you configure windows to automatically open to the last area they were in. If you really want to replicate Snap layouts from Windows 11, Fancy Zones is the way to go. It’s certainly not as quick and easy to switch between layouts as it was in Windows 11, but it’s better than the default Snap wizard.
Still not satisfied? The good news is that Windows 11 will be a free upgrade and it will arrive in late 2021. You can try a preview of Windows 11 right now if you’re impatient. (Provided your PC can run Windows 11, of course.)
