Apple Mac OS X tips and tweaks

Date: 1st January 2012      Tweet

Resizing windows and panes

Resizing windows has always been a bit of a pain in OS X because of Apple's stubborness.

For years we could only resize windows by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner of a window, whereas with other operating systems you could click and drag any border.

Now though, we can click and drag any window border like everyone else. There are some extra things you can do that you are probably not aware of though.

There are two modifier keys that change the way windows are resized. Hold down the Shift key and click and drag any window border. You'll see that all the borders move.

What is happening is that the aspect ratio of the window - the ratio of the width to the height - is being maintained.

It may by useful to resize windows this way on occasions. You get a slightly different effect if you click and drag the bottom right corner or an edge.

Another modifier key is Option. Hold down the Option key and then click and drag any window border. Drag a window edge and the opposite edge is resized too.

You get a slightly different effect if you click and drag the bottom right corner or an edge and all window sides are resized. It seems to keep the centre of the window fixed and resize everything around it.

Try these different effects and get to know them. Open a small window in the centre of the screen and try resizing it using the Shift and Option keys.