Tips and tricks: Window Management – Aero Snapping

Visual Studio Blog

Adrian Collier

Adrian Collier – Program Manager, Visual Studio Shell Team
Short Bio: I started at Microsoft as an intern in 2004 back in the UK and crossed the pond last year to work on Popfly, since then I’ve been working in Visual Studio land primarily working on the Start Page and window management areas if the IDE.

 
One of the largest areas of feedback we had from Beta 1 was the lack of Windows 7 Aero Snapping functionality with floating windows; we are very pleased to offer this functionality in Beta 2!

What is Aero Snapping?

Aero Snapping allows you to easily dock windows side-by-side, move a window to another monitor or simply maximize/minimize using a mouse or keyboard gestures. For more information on the Aero Snap feature in Windows check out this these videos.

Screenshot of two windows side by side 

Below are the keyboard shortcuts for interacting with floating VS windows.

Command

Shortcut

 

Notes

Maximize

Windows + Up Arrow

 

Restore

Windows + Down Arrow

 

Minimize – from windowed state.

Windows + Down Arrow

This command only works on the main Visual Studio IDE.

Dock to Screen Left

Windows + Left Arrow

(This command can also be used to cycle through the various docked states across multiple monitors)

Dock to Screen Right

Windows + Right Arrow

(This command can also be used to cycle through the various docked states across multiple monitors)

Expand Height

Windows + Shift + Up Arrow

 

Move Window to 2nd Monitor on left of primary display

Windows + Shift + Left Arrow

 

 

 

Move Window to 2nd Monitor on right of primary display

Windows + Shift + Right Arrow

 

 

 

What about the Aero Shake, can I use this to hide floating VS windows?

Unfortunately, no.  Since all floating windows are “owned” by Visual Studio and cannot be minimized individually, shaking a floating window will only result in minimizing other applications.

We will be following up with more posts on how to become more productive with Visual Studio by taking advantage of shortcuts and less well known Visual Studio features.

Adrian Collier
Program Manager, Visual Studio Shell Team

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