How to Use Snap Layouts in Windows 11 – Guide
Windows 11 Snap Layouts lets you customize your desktop layout in a snap, making it easier to find what you need and reducing clutter. Our expert guide will help you get the most out of this useful UI tool. ..
Windows 11 may be best known for its centered taskbar and rounded window edges, but you may find that the new Snap Layouts feature (sometimes also called Snap Assist) is a more useful UI innovation. Windows, as its name implies, has long been excellent at managing and rearranging program windows, but Snap Layouts takes the operating system to the next level. Using them is simple, as we’ll explain.
How do snap layouts work?
To maximize the window, just hover over the Maximize icon. You will see a variety of layouts.
I tested a few different apps and found that Firefox and Spotify only showed the old Maximize option when I started the process with an app that supported the feature. However, you can still place them inside a Snap Layout after starting the process with an app that supports the feature.
I was able to only get the four options shown above, with two-, three-, and four-window arrangements on my 15 inch surface test Laptop 3 running Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22000.176 with the display scale set to the recommended 150%. Microsoft recently announced a new layout option, three equal windows side by side or stacked, but it didn’t show up on mine.
You can drag the layout diagram to a new location by clicking on it and then dragging it to a new location.
After tapping where you want the current window to remain, you’ll see the full layout on screen with the other available locations shown using flowing design acrylic effects that blur the background. All other running applications are shown as options to fill in placeholders.
You can now tap the app you want in each box in succession or simply go back to the resized window to leave the desktop as it was. You cannot drag thumbnails to another location. Instead, Windows makes you fill in each of the spaces, one at a time. After filling in all the dots, your screen will look like this (below): ..
Snap Layouts let you move and resize windows in half, which is a handy feature if you want to make a window fit perfectly in one quadrant of the screen.
In Windows 10, you can drag a window title bar to a corner or edge of the screen to get up exactly half or a quarter of the screen space, but with Windows 11 you don’t need to drag it to the edge or corner: an acrylic outline of the snap position appears just before you reach an edge or corner.
You can see the position of an app within that group (provided the app supports Snap Layouts) through its taskbar thumbnail, along with the icons of the other apps in that group.
How do you disable snap layouts?
If you don’t support Snap Layouts, you can’t use them.
You can disable a number of features by checking boxes below. For example, you can disable the option “When I drag a window, let me adjust it without dragging to the edge of the screen”. ..
One downside is that there is no way to use Snap Layouts via a touch screen. I like to just tap something on the screen instead of moving a mouse or trackpad to point it at a button. As Microsoft is also big on touchscreens, including them on all Surface devices, I hope they will address this issue at some point. ..
more windows Features
Windows 11 introduces a new, more useful look and feel for arranging windows by dragging their title bars to the side or corner of the screen. When you drag a window’s title bar to a corner of the screen, you see the four-up layout complete with a fluid design acrylic effect. ..
The Title Bar Window Shake is a handy feature that Microsoft has added to Windows 11. It allows you to shake your computer’s title bar to make it more responsive. This is a useful feature if you use the computer frequently and want it to be more responsive.
For advanced repairmen
If you’re not satisfied with the default Snap Layout on your computer, or if you want more customization options in Windows 10, then check out Microsoft PowerToys. This experimental set of tools offers a tool called FancyZones, which virtually duplicates Snap Layout with even more customization.
After installing PowerToys, FancyZones is enabled by default. You can customize the keyboard or mouse actions that trigger FancyZones. ..
Final note
Snap layouts are a great way to organize your windows in Windows 11. By using snap layouts, you can easily see what is going on in your window without having to open the window itself. You can also use snap layouts to create custom windows that are specific to a certain task or application.
