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by david-cako 1508 days ago
You can also move macOS windows by dragging the border along the opposite axis, with no configuration.
6 comments

I've been using a Mac since 2010 and someone always points out 'weird' features like this to me on what has to be a monthly basis.
Same with iPhone. My mind was blown when after years of tapping left-arrow someone showed me what happens when you hold down the space key. Or that dragging the iphone chat message app's background to the left reveals the timestamps of each message.

It's all very clever and elegant and minimal but consumer technology user interfaces seem to be converging on that of a Theremin.

Same. I just learned that in most apps on iOS/Android if there's something you need to pinch to zoom in/out. Usually a map app.

You can zoom with one finger. Double tap and hold, then move you finger up/down to zoom in/out.

Apparently you've able to do this for 5+ years or something. WTF

Only on Android, not iOS, I think. You've always been able to do this, even longer than you could pinch-zoom. Unfortunately, it seems to be going away—Chrome no longer zooms on double-tap-drag, nor do any of the Samsung apps (Samsung Internet, Photos, etc.).
I have a workaround for you: assistive touch under accessibility allows you to bring up an on-screen two-handle bar which lets you adjust zoom with one hand.

My full workflow for using this is triple click power key to bring up accessibility shortcuts, press assistive touch and then tap on the circle icon to bring up the bar. You can drag it around by dragging the middle and if you drag either bar end it does the “pinch”.

I put smart invert for pseudo dark mode and zoom in the other two accessibility shortcuts to round out the accessibility shortcut menu.

> Only on Android, not iOS

It does work on iOS but seems app-dependent. Works in Apple Maps, doesn't work in Photos.

Bullshit... tries it ... Oh! :-) Thank you!

Says something about discoverability when it seems like I need to RTFM for gestures again.

Is there a manual for these hidden features though? I’d really like to read something exhaustive about available gestures!
See David Pogue's "Missing Manual" series
I so miss the days of the well structured and comprehensive manual. I used to read them end to end. Even if you didn't remember the details you knew what was possible.
They still write manuals, it's just non-obvious: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios
The specific spacebar trick is even in the manual at https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph3c50f96e/ios

>Touch and hold the Space bar with one finger until the keyboard turns light gray.

>Move the insertion point by dragging around the keyboard.

So the problem is more that OP doesn't read manuals rather than them not being as good as they once were.

I’ve never bought a new iPhone. Is there something included in the box to point people towards the online manuals? I’m making a hopefully safe assumption there wasn’t a manual in the box that GGP ignored.
So do I, but in entire fairness here that manual for iOS would probably run to three or four thousand pages.

What I really miss is having the time free to peruse a manual like that.

Thanks for the space bar tip … wow. Turns out it works when long-pressing any key on the keyboard.
yeah the mac, with the not even hand gestures, but almost nods and winks at things, is too stupid. If I'm 20 and want to seem hip, and spend 20 hours a day on my phone, then sure, maybe, I think that's cool.

But for the rest of the world, it's not. My mom can't use an iphone or android phone, because they cater too much to... the young? the rich? tech? geeks?

beats me... and I am a dev of > 30 years, that spends more of my time in front of my computer, than almost anyone I know. I love computers and tech, but am amazed that things have not become easier.

They are harder now then they ever were.

But having said that, Macs are all I've used for the last 10 years, because they seem, overall, better than any other OS I've used.

If you hold down the period key on most keyboards in iOS it'll bring up .com, .org, etc. Saves a little time typing in urls.
TIL about holding the space key!
What left arrow?
Along the opposite axis? Can you elaborate?
If you grab the right-hand edge of a window, you can drag it left or right to resize the window. However, if you instead drag it up or down, you can move the whole window.
And if you hold option (alt) when dragging left or right, it will mirror the drag on the opposite side, so you can quickly expand or contract the window size
This is incredible, thank you for posting this.

A few things I've discovered after playing with this for a few minutes:

It works for the corners too - option+drag the corner of a window, and the whole thing resizes symmetrically.

Hold shift and it preserves the aspect ratio of the window

Double click + holding option on an edge will expand both edges to full screen size

You can hold and release option / shift while dragging and it'll work as you'd expect.

Wait... you can actually maximise without going full screen? I thought Apple would never back down on that - I use a third-party app to do this usually. If there's a similar thing to let me make a window full height and half width, and to center a window, I can get rid of that app altogether...
Holding Option when clicking the green maximize button will expand the window without entering full screen mode. You know you're doing it right if the glyph inside the button turns from two triangles to a plus sign.
You can also double click the title bar, or option-click the green full screen button to maximize to the current window.
That seems to be the case!

Double clicking on an edge will cause it to expand to the edge of the window. The shift + option trick doesn't just expand to the first edge it hits, it looks like both edges expand as much as possible.

So when combined with double clicking on a window corner, that makes all for edges expand to display size (even if the window was partially off the monitor).

And, apparently, double click on an edge without holding any keys will expand just that edge out as far as possible.
By convention on Macs option more generally means "anchor at the center." The selection tool in a proper Mac graphics program, for example, will pin the center of the selection to the point where you clicked instead of pinning a corner there. Resizing shapes in a well-made diagramming app behaves this way too. Been this way since the '80s.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

OMG THANK YOU

This is amazing. Over a decade using OSX and I never knew this

There are some paradigms like this option-drag-resizes-both-sides one which have antecedents at least as far back as MacDraw circa 1984.
Oooh, I think this is why I always move my full screen browser window down by a few pixels by accident.
Drag the left or right border of a window up or down.
But you can't drag left or right first. If you do, you won't be able to move the window. You either have to decide which one you want to do on the first click.
It's nice that once you get it moving, you can drag on any axis.
Feels really finnicky to get the window moving this way. Does someone actually use this as their workflow?
I don’t use it on purpose, but it happens sometimes by accident and always surprises me.
It's frustratingly difficult to do this via the right edge, if there's a scrollbar there.
Which is pretty ironic when the scroll bars are so elusive when you actually want to drag them
I haven't dragged a scroll bar in any OS since windows XP. When do you find it's necessary/convenient?
It can still be a lot more efficient to grab the scrollbar to jump to a section of a large document. For example, you can instantly get to say 3/4 of the way through by moving the scroll bar a very short distance, which when done with the scroll wheel or trackpad gestures could take a very long time.

The scroll bar is also sometimes a nice visual cue to the size of a document you've just opened for the first time, again something the wheel/gestures don't necessarily inform.

I have permanent scroll bars enabled in macOS too.

Related hint: Instead of dragging the scroll bar slider, you can also just option+click on the place of the scrollbar that you want to jump to.
It is pretty much required if your primary interaction with the computer is through a drawing tablet. My Wacom has a touch-sensitive wheel on it but it's usually a lot more natural to just poke at the scroll bar with the stylus.

I loathe the modern trend towards hiding all scroll bars everywhere because of this.

Looking at this very page! Using the middle mouse button takes me 3 or 4 seconds to move somewhere close to the bottom of the page, much faster and less frustrating to grab and drag the scroll bar. Is there some easier method I'm missing?
Some old apps have a 'slow' scroll if you just roll the wheel. Moving around large documents in them is a zen koan, designed to break your brain.
Many graphics tablets don't have scroll on the pen.
Sometimes comfortable to drag with thumb trackball
Oh... I have scrollbars permanently shown rather than only on-hover. I should've mentioned that — maybe it affects things.
Great tip. I am loving this already.