One of the features I miss from Windows since switching exclusively to OSX is the window-snapping feature first introduced with Windows 7 (aka Aero Snap). This feature in Windows not only allows you to use the mouse to arrange windows side-by-side (by dragging to the edge of the screen), but it also allowed you to use keyboard shortcuts (Windows+Left/Right Arrow) to quickly rearrange your windows. There’s a way to do this in OSX for free, but it took a little effort to figure out.

Windows snapping was particularly helpful to me as I currently have our main desktop (a 21" iMac) connected to our TV (as a secondary display). Another keyboard shortcut built into Windows Aero is the ability to maximize a window on it’s current display by pressing (Windows+Up Arrow). So, with my PC, if my wife and I wanted to sit down and watch a video online (Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video) I was able to move the browser window quickly between monitors with a couple keystrokes, and one more to make the window full-screen.

No such feature exists natively in Mac OS.

So, instead what I had to do was awkwardly, manually move the window between displays by dragging it with the mouse. And if I really wanted to maximize the screen I’d have to hold the Shift key while hunting for the tiny and elusive Zoom orb on the window:

Yeah, good luck with that.

So today I finally decided I’d do a little research to try and find a free solution to this dilemma. I don’t mind paying for good software but prefer not to for small technical tribulations.

The first several OSX apps I found (as is common in the OSX world) were shareware: MercuryMover, Moom, SizeUp, and Divvy. In my opinion SizeUp was probably the most suitable paid-for solution to the problem I was hoping to fix, but I still wanted a free alternative.

Then I noticed an app called “Slate” in the suggested/similar section of SizeUp’s page on MacUpdate and read words I love to see:

Better and free. OK, I’m sold! But wait… “daunting to get configured.” OK…well, how daunting? At first it seemed impossible to configure Slate the way I wanted it to work, but after reading a helpful article suggested in one of Slate’s MacUpdate page’s comments and a little determination I had it working flawlessly.

Installing slate is pretty easy. Just head over to https://github.com/jigish/slate and download the dmg.

To configure slate you’ll have to create the Slate configuration file in your root. If you have something like Sublime Text installed and configured in your path you can do that like so:

sublime ~/.slate

Here’s a copy of my commented Slate config: