It can seem pretty chaotic when you have a lot of different sized windows open on your Mac, but there’s an easy way to organize the clutter in just a few seconds.
I regularly have many windows open on my MacBook and external displays. Right now I have 11 apps open with 24 windows scattered across them. With so many windows, I could separate them into different areas of the desktop, but I like all-in-one as I need to view multiple windows from different applications at the same time.
Because of this, I tend to put my apps in cascading windows and hide or minimize those I don’t use often so I can quickly tell which window is which. Mission Control usually helps if I can’t find the window at a glance.
But when all windows are different sizes, it looks like a giant mess, resulting in me having to manually resize each window over and over again, interrupting my workflow multiple times throughout the day. There have been ways to resize all windows in macOS using Apple scripts and third party apps like Magnet, but there is an easier way in macOS 12 Monterey and later.
Setting the Windows Shortcut to Resize
You can quickly create a macro to resize a window on your Mac using the Shortcuts app and it only takes a few steps. Open Shortcuts, then press Command-N, go to File -> New Shortcut in the menu bar, or click the plus sign (+) next to the search bar to create a new shortcut.
Find and add Find Windows to your workflow as the first step.
Then find and add “Resize Window”as a second action.
If you do it in that order, Resize Window will use the results of the first step as a variable, but you will need to choose how you want to resize the windows. Fit to Screen is selected by default, but you can click it to choose a different resizing method. You can choose between:
- Fit to screen
- Upper half
- Bottom half
- Left half
- Right half
- Upper left quarter
- Upper right quarter
- Lower left quarter
- Lower right quarter
- dimensions
To me, “Sizes”makes the most sense, as all windows are the same size no matter what display they’re on – without forcing them to a specific location 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 fix any 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 every time you launch the shortcut from the Shortcuts app or with Siri, it will give you the desired result. You can use this shortcut if you want different applications to have windows of different sizes, or if you want to move windows to a different location, so feel free to experiment.
Get quick access to the Windows resize shortcut
If you want an even easier way to launch the shortcut, open the editor for the shortcut again, then click the Shortcut Details button, use the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-2, or choose View -> Show Shortcut Details in Menu Bar. In the Label Details section, you can:
- Pin to Menu Bar: The Shortcuts app icon will appear in your Mac’s menu bar. Click on it and then on the shortcut you want to launch. All menu bar shortcuts will appear in the new Menu Bar folder in Shortcuts.
- Use as a quick action: between Finder, services menu and providing only services menu output makes sense for resizing windows since you can open it from any application name in the menu bar.
- Add Keyboard Shortcut: If you don’t want to press any buttons, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to your liking.
Another option you have is to add a shortcut to the dock. In the editor, select “File”-> “Add to Dock”from the menu bar. You can also right-click on the shortcut card in the list of shortcuts and select “Add to Dock”.
Run the Windows resize shortcut
Whether you launch the shortcut from the Shortcuts app or via Siri, the Services menu, the dock, or the menu bar, it will find all on-screen windows and resize them to the desired size or position. However, any hidden or minimized windows will not be resized, so they will be a different size when opened.
Also, if using multiple monitors, make sure the windows are on the correct displays before launching the shortcut. They may change size if you drag them between monitors with different resolutions.
If you set the shortcut to ask you every time what you want to do, the mission control window will appear where you can select the desired action. When you select “Dimensions”, you will need to enter the width and height in pixels.
