Equally Split Apps On Screne Mac

Mar 14, 2018  How to grab apps for Split Screen and Slide Over You can even float a third app over two split screen apps. Photo: Cult of Mac. The easiest place to keep your apps.

One of the best ways to boost productivity on your Mac is to open two apps in split-screen view, so you can work on them side by side. Apple calls this split view, and it’s super easy to use.

Split view on your Mac fills the entire screen by hiding the Dock and the menu bar for distraction-free multitasking. You can use two apps at once—one for each eye!—and get your work done in half the time.

  • May 12, 2020  Get started with Split View. Step 1: Begin by opening two or more windows that you want to be paired in a split-screen layout: Browser windows, apps, documents — whatever you want.
  • Split Screen is fully configurable, allowing you to choose which shortcut keys to use. Split Screen supports about 90% of apps (some apps are not designed to be resized) and we are adding support to new apps all the time. NOTE: This app does not support Dual monitors.
  • Use apps in Split View on Mac Many apps on your Mac support Split View mode, where you can work in two apps side by side at the same time. On your Mac, move the pointer to the green button in the top-left corner of the window, then choose Tile Window to Left of Screen or Tile Window to Right of Screen from the menu that appears.

Contents

  • 1 How do I see apps in split-screen on my Mac?
  • 4 What to do if split-screen isn’t working
  • 5 Use window snapping on your Mac instead of split-screen

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How do I see apps in split-screen on my Mac?

Apple gives you a couple of ways to enter split-screen view on your Mac, but you always need to start by opening the individual apps you want to use first.

It doesn’t matter if these are two different apps or two windows from the same app.

After opening the two app windows you want to use at the same time, follow the methods below to use them in split-screen on your Mac.

Option 1. Click and hold the green button

  1. The top-left corner of every Mac window has a red, yellow, and green button. Click and hold the green button to reveal a drop-down menu.
  2. From this menu, choose to Tile Window to Left of Screen to resize your window to the left side of your screen. You can also choose to Tile Window to Right of Screen if you prefer.
  3. You should see all the apps you can use in split-screen appear on the opposite side of the display. Click the other app you want to use to make if fill the other half of the screen.

Option 2. Drag apps together in Mission Control

  1. Open Mission Control on your Mac. You can do this using the Mission Control button on your keyboard, swiping up with four fingers on your trackpad, or by double-tapping with two fingers on a Magic Mouse.
  2. Drag and drop the first app window into its own Space at the top of Mission Control, it should go full-screen in that space.
  3. Now drag and drop the second app window onto the first to enable split-screen. If both apps are in full-screen already, drag one onto the other from the top of Mission Control.

Equally Split Apps On Screen Mac 10

How to see your other apps in split-screen?

Two apps in split-screen view appear in an entirely separate “Space” on your Mac. This is the same thing that happens when you enter full-screen mode. Split-screen even hides the menu bar and the Dock like full-screen mode does to reduce distractions.

Change apps from the split-screen view on your Mac the same way as you would with a full-screen app. Use any of the following methods to do so:

Equally Split Apps On Screne Mac
  1. Hover your mouse at the bottom of the screen to reveal the Dock. Click the app you want to use.
  2. Press Cmd + Tab to cycle through your open apps. When you release Cmd your Mac changes to that app.
  3. Open Mission Control to see every Space at the top of the screen. Click the app you want to use to open that Space.
  4. Swipe left or right with four fingers on the trackpad to switch between adjacent Spaces.

Split-screen on your Mac also lets you change the window width for each app to see the contents better. To do this, click and drag the divider in the middle of the screen. Different apps allow different window widths.

To flip your split-screen apps to the opposite sides, click and drag the toolbar at the top of an app window from left to right, or vice versa. As you drop it onto the opposite side of the screen your apps swap places with each other.

How to turn off split-screen?

Apple gives you a few ways to stop using split-screen on your Mac, depending on whether you want to close an app, go into full-screen, or shrink both windows.

To close a particular app, select it from your split-screen view then close the app as you normally would. You can click the red button in the top-left corner of the window, go to [App Name] > Quit [App] from the menu bar, or press Cmd + Q. When you do so, the remaining app changes to full-screen mode.

You can also switch a single app to full-screen mode without closing the other app. To do this, click the green button in the top-left corner of the window for the app you don’t want to use in full screen. This window returns to your Desktop while the other app changes to full-screen mode.

You can also shrink both apps to your desktop from Mission Control. Hover over the split-screen apps at the top of Mission Control to reveal a circular button with two inward-facing arrows. When you click this, both apps exit split-screen view and return to your Desktop.

What to do if split-screen isn’t working

Like all things, split-screen on a Mac isn’t perfect. It isn’t available for every app, you can’t always adjust the widths the way you want to, and there’s no way to interchange apps within the same split-screen view.

That said, split-screen is still an incredibly useful feature to use on your Mac. And if it isn’t working you should use the following steps to fix it.

Step 1. Update macOS

Apple introduced split-screen on the Mac with OS X El Capitan. If your Mac is running older software than that, you need to update it. You should update your Mac either way to fix software bugs that emerge over time.

Open the Apple menu and go to System Preferences > Software Update to download and install updates on your Mac.

Step 2. Enable separate spaces for Mission Control

Go to System Preferences > Mission Control and check the box next to the Displays have separate Spaces option.

Although seemingly unrelated, this option often causes problems with split-screen on Mac. After checking the box, you need to log out of your Mac to enable the feature. Open the Apple menu to do so.

Step 3. Try different apps

Not every app works in split-screen view on a Mac. And some that do are only available at certain widths. If you can’t get split-screen to work, try using it with different apps instead.

Here are some native macOS apps that should work in split-screen:

  • Calendar
  • Mail
  • Maps
  • Notes
  • Numbers
  • Pages
  • Reminders
  • Safari

If these apps work, maybe the other apps you were trying to use aren’t compatible with split-screen. Ask the app developers to find out.

Use window snapping on your Mac instead of split-screen

Split-screen isn’t the only multitasking option available on your Mac. You can also snap windows to different sides of the screen to view them side by side. Although not as sleek as split-screen, window snapping lets you reshape windows how you like without losing the Dock or menu bar.

To snap a window to the left or right side of your Mac screen, press Option while you click and hold the green button at the top-left of an app window. The drop-down window that appears should now give you the options to Move Window to different sides of the screen.

When you choose to move your window this way, macOS resizes it to fill the entire left or right side of the screen.

For more window snapping options, consider buying Magnet. This third-party app gives you extra options to snap Mac windows to the left, right, top, bottom, middle, or corners of your screen.

Magnet is one of several useful utility apps to install on your Mac. Other utilities let you improve the copy-paste abilities, search functions, touch gestures, and more.

Dan is a freelance writer based in South West England.

He spent two years supervising repairs as a Genius Admin for Apple Retail and uses that knowledge to keep our troubleshooting guides up to date.

Long before that, Dan turned to Apple products from a musical background. Having owned iPods for years, he bought a MacBook to learn sound recording and production. It was using those skills that he gained a first-class Bachelor of Science in Sound Technology.

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If you have a high resolution LCD or LED screen at home and you are not using any kind of screen splitting application, then you are wasting your screen real estate big time! The best thing about having a high resolution screen is that you can see multiple windows at the same time, instead of just one active program at a time.

Of course, you can always switch between programs by using ALT + TAB or by simply clicking on the program in the taskbar, but there are many times when you need to be able to see multiple programs at the same time. The latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 10, not only has built-in support for multiple desktops, but it also has added a couple of nice features to the Snap feature that was included starting in Windows 7.

In this article, I’m going to write about the new features in Windows 10 and also about a couple of freeware programs that also let you split your screen in different ways. If you’re not already familiar, read my previous post on how to use the Snap feature in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Windows 10 New Snap Features

First, let’s talk about Windows 10 because it has some really nice new features for working with multiple windows on the same desktop. As you already know, you can simply drag a window to the far left or far right of the screen and Windows will automatically resize that window to fill half the screen.

The same is true for Windows 10, but now there is a new Snap Assist feature that also shows you the extra windows on the opposite side as thumbnails and lets you click on them to fill the other side of the screen. In Windows 7 & 8, you had to manually snap the second window into place too.

As you can see above, once I dragged and dropped Excel on the right side of the screen, the other open windows were automatically shown on the left side. Clicking on any of the windows will expand it to fill the entire left portion of the screen.

Another new option is the 2×2 grid. If you take a window and drag it to any corner of the screen, the window will fill up that particular corner or 1/4 of the screen. You can fill each corner with a desktop app or universal Windows app. In Windows 10, all apps act like desktop apps, so they can be snapped anywhere too.

As you can see above, I have two apps snapped on the right side and one app on the left side. It’s worth noting that the preview build of Windows 10 also supported vertical snapping, meaning the app would end halfway down the screen and go across horizontally, but that seems to have been removed in the final build.

With Windows 10’s new snap options and virtual desktop manager, most people won’t ever need to bother downloading a third-party app to manage their windows.

Freeware Apps

There are also two freeware apps you can use to divide or split your screen into multiple parts and therefore work more efficiently. Earlier I had written about a program called SplitView, which lets you split your screen, but it costs $39! Why pay when you can get something better for free?

WinSplit Revolution is a very small utility that helps to organize all your open windows by tilting, resizing and positioning them so that they efficiently use all the space on your desktop.

Using WinSplit Revolution, you can quickly split your screen into two halves, thirds, fourths, etc. You can resize any window and move it to the left half of the screen, the top, the bottom, a corner, etc.

Then using either a virtual number pad or predefined hotkeys, you can quickly bring up a window to fullscreen or switch to another window.

The program is nicely implemented and has a good number of useful features:

Equally Split Apps On Screne Mac
  • Automatically handles window resizing, moving, closing, etc
  • Quick access via global hotkeys and virtual numpad
  • Automatic startup and update
  • Drag and drop windows into different sections
  • Fusion between two windows (splits two program vertically and allows you to use a middle bar to adjust the size)
  • Mosaic mode – Splits the screen into nine equal parts and will place one window into each section. If you have less than nine windows open, it will adjust the size of the mosaic to make the windows larger.

GridVista is the second program that allows you to divide or split your Windows desktop screen into multiple parts. I mentioned WinSplit first because it seems to have more features than GridVista.

Equally Split Apps On Screen Mac Pc

You can again use it to split your screen into halves, thirds, etc. just like WinSplit, but it does not have a virtual keypad. Simply drag a window into any of the sections and it will maximize to the full size of that section.

Equally Split Apps On Screen Mac Pc

You can then maximize any of the sections to full screen either via clicking with the mouse or via hotkey. So if you have a large monitor over 20”, then you should definitely check out either of these programs.

Equally Split Apps On Screen Mac And Cheese

Overall, both programs work well in Windows XP, Vista, and 7, so you can play around with both and see which one works out better for you. The only downside to these freeware apps is that they are old and not developed anymore. For example, MaxTo has actually replaced WinSplit, but I don’t think it’s worth the money. The freeware apps work, but not as useful on new operating systems like Windows 8 and 10. Enjoy!