Free WinSplit Revolution Makes Monitor(s) More Useful

Ever since the dawn of Windows, a big part of the appeal was… well, windows. Being able to give each application its own area on the screen and run multiple applications at the same time completely transformed computing. But that’s old news; today, many of us have 24” monitors (sometimes more than one), and the challenge is how to use all of that screen space effectively. With the free WinSplit Revolution, you can make sure every inch of your monitor or monitors is displaying valuable information.

If you use a desktop computer or a large notebook, you probably have a keypad. WinSplit Revolution lets you use the pad (or any other hotkey you choose, if your keyboard lacks a number pad) for positioning windows in a very intuitive way. Want to snap a window to the top-right corner of the screen? Just hit Alt+Ctrl+9, and there goes the window. You can grab another window and snap it next to the first one using Alt+Ctrl+7 (for top-left corner). The same goes for every other number pad button; they all correspond to intuitive monitor positions.

While being able to quickly snap a window to every screen corner, you don’t necessarily want each such window to take up 50% of your monitor width. Tap 9 again, and the window you just snapped to the top-right corner becomes narrower, taking up 33% of the screen. Tap 9 once more, and the window grows wider, taking up 66% of the screen. So with a few quick keyboard taps, you can have a beautifully tiled desktop, with three narrow windows stacked on top of each other on the right (for reference material, for example), and one wide window taking up two-thirds of the screen width and its full height, for your main work area. All without reaching for your mouse.

If you do like to drag windows using the mouse (or have a laptop with no number pad), WinSplit Revolution offers a feature called Drag’N’Go. Hold down Ctrl+Alt while dragging any window, and the different “target areas” will be highlighted as you hover over them. Drop the window over any area, and it instantly snaps to size.

WinSplit Revolution also lets you fine-tune the window sizes: If the 33%/50%/66% dimensions don’t work for you, you can easily configure different window sizes for each screen area. You can also save any given window’s location, and snap it back to that exact location and size using a quick tap of Alt+Ctrl+0.

I’ve been using this monitor utility for over a year now, with my dual-monitor system. Using its hotkeys has become second nature, and I rarely find myself reaching for the mouse to drag a window anywhere. If you’re looking to get the maximum out of every pixel on your screen, WinSplit Revolution is one great tool.