Apple hasn’t released any fresh features to the window management in macOS Monterey. However, it has made the existing ones easier to locate while also adding some refinements. The best features are the ones that you can easily locate. With the macOS Monterey, many users are going to benefit from full-screen as well as Split screen apps simply, as the process of how to use them has been made clearer.
This is similar to how Apple has revamped the same window management options for the iPadOS 15. However, it isn’t quite as clear. On the iPad, any time you open a window, you will be able to spot an ellipses icon at the top, this very existence draws your attention to tap.
After you do, you can see options that are now present in macOS, too. Excluding the nudge, you get from the ellipse icon.
What are the new options in Mac window management?
Two main changes have been observed and both of them are very welcome. The first one is, when you have an app that is full screen, you have the option of still showing Mac’s menu bar. This does make the app not full screen; however, it removes a friction point. A point of irritation, if you may, as so often in an app you need an option in the menubar.
Previously, you’d have to move your cursor up toward an invisible menubar, which would then appear. The optional hiding/showing of the Dock as your mouse reached it. Then the vanishing of the menubar again when the cursor is moved away, looked good? you bet it did, was it sometimes frustrating, you bet this too.
Just as with the Dock, you can control this, too. You have the ability to set an option in Settings, Displays, to allow the menubar to be on display all the time.
The second refinement has to do with when you have multiple displays connected to the Mac. After you drag a window from one screen to another, it will automatically resize itself to fit the display you dragged it to.
On the plus side, it’ll do this whether the second display is physically connected to your Mac, or you’re using it using Sidecar. There is no confirmation from Apple on whether there will be anything similar when Universal Control lets you move between Mac and iPad screens. However, the iPad doesn’t have Finder windows, even if the apps may have the same name and open the same documents, however, they are still different apps.
So, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to drag windows, either macOS or app ones, between Mac and iPad. Even now, there is an option available that lets you move a window to your iPad. That’s just starting up the existing Sidecar feature.
What you can do?
There are two options for window management on the Mac. You can have one app take up every pixel on your Mac, in the name of Full Screen. If not, you also have the option of letting one app take up precisely half the screen using Split View. That can be the left or the right, however, it cannot be alone, if you want to do this in an app, you have to find a partner.
So, you can’t have a half app take up the right half of your screen and leave the desktop on the rest, that is not how it works. You have the ability to do it manually, by dragging the windows around, however, you can’t do it through macOS’s window management.
What are some of the More refined elements?
Getting into and out of Split View is still a bit clunky. However, changes have been made. If you have two apps in Split View, each taking up half the screen, you can now click on one of them to convert them to Full Screen instead. When you do that, the other app also returns to Full Screen.
It’s also now possible to more easily swap out one app in Split View, then to replace it with another. Even this is similar to how it now works on the iPad.
How to use Split screen apps on macOS Monterey?
- Pick an app, then click and hold the green traffic light icon
- From the appearing menu, select Tile Window to the Left side of the Screen or to the Right.
- After that, you will be immediately prompted to pick another window to fill up the other half screen
- One of the options that appears when you click and hold the green light is the option to switch to Full Screen view mode. If that is what you desire to do, you can easily click the green light icon once, instead.
How can you change one app in Split View?
- In either of the sharing apps, click and hold the green traffic light icon
- Click on Replace Tiled Window
- Choose a different app/ document, from the presented choices
- There’s only ever one active app in the Mac, and one app will be in the foreground. If you’ve got two in Split View, only one of them will show you the traffic light-colored icons.
- Click and hold on to the greyed-out traffic light icons on the other app. This will offer you the menu with Replace Tiled Window in it.
How to get out of Split screen apps?
- If you click and hold the green traffic light icon, you will be able to see another option called Move window to desktop.
- This will remove the window from the Split View. However, this also changes the other Split View app into full screen.
- You won’t be able to observe that at first, as Full Screen, as well as Split View, are part of macOS’s Screens feature.
If you liked this article (or if it helped at all), leave a comment below or share it with friends, so they can also How can you use Split-screen apps on macOS Monterey?
