Quick Window Positioning

Dec 12, 2019

About three years ago I switched OS from Windows to MacOS. One thing that surprised me was the MacOS lacks a built in feature for quick window positioning. On Windows you can use the Windows key (CMD on MacOS?) and the arrow keys to place the window quickly.

The first solution I found was the free and Open Source application “Spectacle”: https://www.spectacleapp.com/
It’s since been abandoned by the author but there’s the active fork “Rectangle”: https://rectangleapp.com/

It offers a whole bunch of shortcuts:

Personally I’m only interested in “Left Half”, “Right Half”, “Maximize”, and “Next Display”. Some of these shortcuts collide with IntelliJ default shortcuts so removing most of them helps.

Notably I only have two displays. The laptop and an external display. So there’s no difference between “Next Display” and “Previous Display” is there?

Nowadays I’ve moved over to Hammerspoon: https://www.hammerspoon.org/
It’s an automation tool for MacOS. You write your automation scripts in LUA (would have preferred javascript but OK).

I simply make use of the following for quick window positioning:

local ctrlBind = function(key, fn)
    hs.hotkey.bind({"ctrl"}, key, fn, nil, fn)
end

-- FULL
ctrlBind("w", function()
    local window = hs.window.focusedWindow()
    window:moveToUnit('[0,0,100,100]', 0)
end)

-- LEFT
ctrlBind("s", function()
    local window = hs.window.focusedWindow()
    window:moveToUnit(hs.layout.left50, 0)
end)

-- RIGHT
ctrlBind("d", function()
    local window = hs.window.focusedWindow()
    window:moveToUnit(hs.layout.right50, 0)
end)

-- NEXT
ctrlBind("e", function()
    local window = hs.window.focusedWindow()
    local screen = window:screen()
    local nextScreen = screen:next()
    window:moveToScreen(nextScreen, 0)
end)

I also use the MacOS settings to make caps lock behave as the CTRL modifier key:

Hammerspoon may also be used for other neat automation stuff. So if you are already using Hammerspoon (or plan to use it), this approach mitigates installing one more application.