The ‘window snap’ feature in Chrome OS is super handy and lets us view two apps/browser pages side-by-side — but have you discovered a little-known extra that makes using it a little more awesome?
Reader Jonathan A. came upon the nifty feature himself recently. Unsure of whether it was new he mailed in to tell us about it.
I’m glad he did. Despite this useful extra being part of Chrome OS for a good few months I had never noticed it before.
A Hidden Window Snap Power Up
Most of you reading this will be very familiar with how window snapping works in Chrome OS: you drag an app to an edge of the screen (or shunt it using a keyboard shortcut) and the window instantly resizes itself to fill that half of the display.
It certainly makes being productive easier being able to see two things side-by-side, be it reading a Wikipedia article while writing an essay or watching a looping playlist of cat videos while editing photos in Polarr.
The “problem” with snap as it exists is that the 50% split isn’t always ideal (in the example above one would prefer more room given to editing than watching cat videos). To work around this most of us resize each half as needed.
Chrome OS’s window management offers a little known but super useful extra that allows you to resize both windows at the same time.
Move the cursor over the split point between two snapped windows. After a second or so a dark drag handle will appear.
Click and hold on the handle and drag it towards the side of the screen. Both windows will resize instantly.
Pull the grab handle to the left and the right-side window grows and the left one shrinks, pull to the right and the reverse happens:
It looks especially impressive when both items being adjusted are ‘responsive’ in design (e.g., Pocket, Wunderlist, this website). As you slide you see the respective layouts change to accommodate the differing widths.
Pretty nifty, huh? Give it a try yourself and, if you find think it’s something others would find useful, be sure to let them know about it.