Using arrow keys to quickly changing active window placement

By a complete accident I have found a cool feature in Windows 7 (probably works in other versions as well), that allows you to use Windows and keyboard arrows to quickly change active window placement.

You can change horizontal placement (i.e. pick to which screen margin active windows sticks) as well as vertical placement (i.e. quickly maximize or minimize active window).

Following combinations are possible:

  • Windows + Left Arrow or Windows + Right Arrow changes horizontal placement of active window. I.e. decides whether window sticks to left or right margin of a screen or is placed freely on desktop.
  • Windows + Up Arrow or Windows + Down Arrow changes vertical placement or windows state of active window. I.e. shifts between maximized window, regular window and minimized window.

Horizontal placement rotates between all states as you presses key combination continuously. So for example pressing Windows + Left Arrow when window already sticks to left margin will stick it to right margin and so on.

This doesn’t work for vertical placement. Pressing Windows + Up Arrow, when window is already maximized will have no effect.

Minimized state is terminal. All of above keyboard shortcuts stops working when window becomes minimized. You need to click button on task bar, that corresponds to particular window to un-minize it and to make above mentioned key combinations work again.

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