I’ve an embarrassing confession: I don’t, the truth is, know every little thing about laptop.
I am good at laptop—I do know the place to search out deeply buried menus in Home windows, what cables to jiggle when one thing is not working, what drivers to examine when jiggling the cable does not do something. After years of being the go-to useful resource for individuals who know much less about laptop than I do, typically I overlook that simply because I do not know how you can do one thing doesn’t suggest it will possibly’t be finished.
A couple of months in the past I used to be making the transition from utilizing one monitor day-to-day to 2, in an effort to cease myself from maximizing and minimizing Slack and Twitter each 30 seconds. On the finish of the work day I needed to have the ability to shut these further browser home windows and shut off my secondary monitor, after which get them again in the identical actual window sizes and positions the subsequent day. That is easy if you wish to break up the display into even halves or quadrants, however for extra distinctive shapes you are shit out of luck when you’re on Home windows 10. Home windows 11 has the very handy Snap Layouts characteristic, however certainly there needs to be a method for me to tailor my display format precisely how I needed it, proper?
Why had Microsoft left Home windows 10 within the mud? Nicely, seems it hadn’t—I simply did not learn about PowerToys (opens in new tab). Extra particularly, I did not learn about Microsoft’s best-kept Home windows 10 secret: a PowerToys characteristic known as FancyZones.
PowerToys (which you’ll obtain right here (opens in new tab)), as described by Microsoft, is “a set of utilities for energy customers to tune and streamline their Home windows expertise for better productiveness.” There have been a number of variations of PowerToys over time—it really dates all the way in which again to Home windows 95. However the Home windows 10 model solely launched in late 2019, greater than 4 years into Home windows 10’s life. Not like most Microsoft software program, PowerToys is definitely free and open supply, obtainable on Github.
There’s loads of cool little stuff in PowerToys. For instance:
- A coloration picker that works on the OS degree, helpful for artists
- A picture resizer constructed proper into Explorer
- Bulk file renaming
- A utility to pin a window on high of every little thing else
For those who polled a thousand Microsoft staff who dwell and breathe Home windows day-after-day and requested them, “What characteristic are you irritated Home windows does not have?” I feel you’d get PowerToys.
The one characteristic I take advantage of day-after-day now could be FancyZones. It is primarily the ability consumer model of window snapping. When you flip it on in PowerToys, you possibly can open up the format editor, which features a few default zone configurations like three equal-sized columns, or one wider column within the middle flanked by two narrower ones. Home windows 11 has these choices baked in.
Customized layouts, although, are the place it is at.
With the FancyZones format editor you possibly can resize zones nonetheless you want, click on to separate them or merge them collectively horizontally or vertically, and even effective tune the padding round every window. When you set a zone to a monitor, by default you maintain shift whereas dragging a window to have it snap right into a zone, and also you’re all arrange.
There are just a few FancyZones options I have never used, like the choice to show a number of screens into one large, steady zone, or resizing home windows as you edit a zone format, or excluding some packages from FancyZones so you do not by accident snap them. I haven’t got a lot use for many of FancyZone’s options, however I recognize they’re there for individuals with extra demanding zone wants than mine. A lot of the options in PowerToys really feel that method: they add a extremely helpful operate, after which additionally deliberate for 5 “however can it do this?” use instances individuals may need.
So when you’re the kind to at all times have a messy pile of home windows open, give FancyZones a shot by downloading PowerToys (opens in new tab). It is now my favourite Home windows characteristic, although 50% of the explanation for that may be that the title makes me snicker. There’s simply one thing fancy about software program from a trillion-dollar firm utilizing the phrase “Fancy” that is humorous, proper? Cats get Fancy Feast, I get FancyZones.
