It might seem pretty chaotic when you have a lot of windows open on your Mac that are of different sizes, but there’s an easy way to organize the clutter in seconds.
I regularly have many windows open on my MacBook and external displays. Right now I have 11 apps open with 24 windows spread across them. With so many windows, I could split them into different desktop spaces, but I like them all in one because I need to watch multiple windows from different apps simultaneously.
For this reason, I tend to arrange my apps in cascading windows and hide or minimize the ones I don’t use often, so I can quickly figure out which window is which window. Mission Control usually does the trick if I can’t locate a window at a glance.
But when all the windows are different sizes, it looks like one giant cluttered mess, which forces me to try to manually resize each window over and over again, interrupting my workflow multiple times throughout the day. There were tricks to resize all windows on macOS using Apple scripts and third-party apps like Magnet, but on macOS 12 Monterey and newer there is an easier way.
Configure a resizing Windows shortcut
You can quickly create a window resizing macro on your Mac using the Shortcuts app, and it only takes a few actions. Open Shortcuts, then tap OrderGo to File -> New Shortcut in your menu bar or click the plus sign (+) near the search bar to create a new shortcut.
Find and add “Find Windows” to the workflow as the first action.
Next, find and add “Resize Window” as a second action.
If you did it in that order, Resize Window would use the results of the first action as the variable, but you’ll have to choose how you want the windows to be resized. By default, “Fit to screen” is chosen, but you can click on it to select a different sizing method. You can choose between:
- Fit screen
- The top half
- Lower half
- left half
- right half
- Upper left quarter
- Upper right quarter
- Lower left quarter
- Lower right quarter
- Dimensions
To me, “Dimensions” makes the most sense for all windows to be the same size no matter what display they’re on – without forcing them to a specific place on the screens. If you choose this, add the width and height in pixels that each window should have.
If you don’t want to commit to a size or position, you can leave it open with “Ask every time”. When you run the shortcut, it will ask you each time which option you want.
And that’s all there is to it. Give the shortcut a name, and whenever you run the shortcut from the Shortcuts app or using Siri, it will give you the output you want. You can use this shortcut if you want different apps to have different sized windows or if you want to move windows to another location, so feel free to play around.
Access Windows Resize Shortcut Faster
If you want an even easier way to run the shortcut, open the backup editor for the shortcut, then click the “Shortcut details” button, use the Option-Command-2 shortcut, or go to View -> Show Shortcut Details in the menu bar. From the shortcut details, you can:
- Pin to menu bar: The Shortcuts app icon will appear in your Mac’s menu bar. Click on it, then on the shortcut you want to run. All menu bar shortcuts will appear in a new “Menu Bar” folder in Shortcuts.
- Use as a quick action: Between the Finder, the Services menu, and Provide Output, only the Services menu makes sense for resizing windows since you can open it from the name of any application in the menu bar.
- Add a keyboard shortcut: If you don’t want to click, you can assign the shortcut a hotkey of your choice.
Another option you have is to add the shortcut to your dock. From the editor, go to File -> Add to Dock in the menu bar. You can also right-click on the shortcut card in your shortcuts list and choose “Add to Dock”.
Run the resizing windows shortcut
No matter how you run the shortcut – from the Shortcuts app or through Siri, the Services menu, your dock, or the menu bar – it will find all windows on the screen and resize them to the dimensions or position desired. However, hidden or minimized windows will not be changed, so they will have a different size when you open them.
Also, if you’re using multiple monitors, make sure the windows are on the screens you want before triggering the shortcut. They may become a different size if you drag and drop them between monitors of different resolutions.
If you configure the shortcut to ask you what you want to do every time, a mission control window will appear where you can choose the action you want. When you choose “Dimensions”, you must enter the width and height in pixels.
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