Streamline your workflow with the Divvy window manager!
Filed under: Productivity
comments (8) Views: 2,173
In my ongoing quest to constantly improve my efficiency and workflow I'm always trying to shave time off actions that I do many times a day. Moving and arranging windows is one of those actions and it can really be a pain when you need to move some of them out of the way to see the ones underneath. I was lucky enough to snag the Mac application Divvy on sale a few months back and it offers an excellent solution to that problem. Divvy allows you to quickly resize and position windows with either a series of user-defined shortcuts, or Divvy's innovative "resize grid". The grid allows users to first indicate how many rows and columns they'd like, then you simply bring up the grid and draw how big you want the window. It's tough to describe but check out this video to see what I mean.
I've also got a few tips and tricks to help you make the most out of Divvy. First off, be liberal with your shortcuts...add as many as you think you might need, then a few more. Even if you don't use them all, they're there when you need them. I use a 10 by 8 grid and I've got shortcuts defined for fullscreen, half left, half right, half top, half bottom, centered, 75% centered vertical column, quarter bottom right, and quarter top right. Divvy allows me to quickly move and position terminal windows, browser windows and Sublime Text 2 windows almost anywhere I want them. Additionally Divvy allows you to make your shortcuts specific to an application, or global.
If you've ever moved from one computer to the next you know the pain of setting everything up again. While Divvy makes adding shortcuts easy and fast, it's still a pain to redefine them when you move to that new Retina MacBook Pro you've been eyeing. Don't waste time setting it up twice, simply copy over your settings and move on. After installing Divvy on your new machine, locate /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.mizage.Divvy.plist and copy it over to your new machine in the same location. Insta-preferences!
Finally, if you use Divvy on a machine with multiple monitors, Divvy has even more love for you. Cycle your shortcuts through each monitor in turn by checking the "cycle between screens when using shortcuts" box in Divvy preferences. Now when you select the "center" shortcut, just keep hitting it until your current window is on the intended monitor! Lastly Divvy is smart enough to know where your mouse is. Want to pick the monitor directly? Just highlight the window you want to move, swipe your cursor to the desired monitor and hit the shortcut. Presto change-o!
Give Divvy a try, you won't regret it...it's even available for Windows!
If this article was interesting, or helpful, or even wrong, please consider leaving a comment, or buying something from my wishlist. It's appreciated!
Does this site have a page on Facebook?
Edna N Ramirez - September 14, 2012 01:02 pm
Edna, are you talking about my site, or Divvy?
andy matthews - September 15, 2012 08:04 pm
would it be possible to translate your web-site into spanish because i have difficulties of speaking to english, and as there usually are not numerous pictures in your internet site iā??d prefer to go through a fantastic of what you may be writting
Evelyn Jeanne Shaw - October 15, 2012 07:35 am
Evelyn sure thing. Would you mind providing a link to the results?
andy matthews - October 25, 2012 11:57 am
This is great. I wish I had read this earlier. Thanks for sharing this amazing tip for a more productive workflow.
Ali Raza - December 26, 2012 11:56 am
Can Divvy move a window to an external monitor?
Carl Johns - January 23, 2013 07:50 pm
@Carl...
Sure can. Just hit the shortcut twice. First time will position the window on the current monitor, second time will move the window to the same position on the next monitor. You can't "target" a monitor AFAIK but hitting it twice is an easy enough option. I've only tested it with a single external monitor FYI, but I would imagine that given 3 or more the shortcut would cycle through all monitors in succession.
andy matthews - January 23, 2013 08:02 pm
Thanks for the response. It didn't work at first but once I found the "Cycle between screens when using shortcuts" checkbox under Settings, it worked like a charm.
Carl Johns - January 24, 2013 06:18 pm