TUAW's Daily Mac App: Moom
Window managers are numerous on the Mac, with most relying on keyboard shortcuts or edge snapping. Moom is different.
Moom integrates into the existing Apple UI by providing a pop-up menu when you hover your mouse over the green "maximize" button in the top left-hand corner of your window. Clicking on one of the Moom menu options moves and zooms (mooms) your window to the desired sector of the screen. By default you've got horizontal and vertical half-screen configurations as well as full screen. If you want a quarter screen window, you can click and drag on the default Moom buttons to define the desired quarter.
Sending the window to another monitor is as easy as dragging one of the buttons in the desired direction of the monitor. A grid below the buttons allows you to quickly define a new size and position by selecting the squares required. If all your Mooming gets a bit crazy, you can move the window back to its original position with the revert arrow. You can also define custom mooms in the settings, which are then accessible via a drop-down menu from the Moom pop-up or menu bar.
Moom also includes robust support for keyboard shortcuts, including binding of window sizes and positions to individual shortcut keys. Moom takes keyboard usage one stage further with a keyboard control mode in which you can move the window around with the arrow keys, moom a window to any of the half-screen configurations, send it full screen or centered and even send it to the next monitor.
Moom is also able to run as a menu bar icon, a standard OS X program or even "faceless" (hidden).
We've covered a few other window management utilities on TUAW, but it's safe to say Moom is one of the best. For US$4.99 it's going to be one of the first apps I install on a Mac from here on in. If you're not convinced, give the free trial a go from the Many Tricks website.
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Window managers are numerous on the Mac, with most relying on keyboard shortcuts or edge snapping. Moom is different. Moom...
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Love this software! Move A window to any size to any place and even save a "group" of windows, each window going to wherever you want to any monitor you want with the press of a button or mouse! Awesome sauce that goes with everything...
June 30 2011 at 9:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyMoom is really great but I went back to BetterSnapTool after testing it for a while. Dragging a window to the screens edges or corners feels more natural for me than hovering over one of the little window buttons.
June 30 2011 at 5:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDoes BetterSnapTool throw windows to the monitor you want? Can it handle 2, 3, 4, 5 windows at once?
Moreover, does it do ANY of it's magic with a press of a keyboard?
I got the trial version of Moom about a month ago. When my trial (100 "uses"), I bought it on the Mac App Store.
I don't know if it's limited to version 2004, but Entourage doesn't quite fill the screen when I click the green button. It's irritating. Moom fails to fill the screen with the Entourage window about half the time, but is 100% successful moving the window to the top left corner. I can then drag the bottom right corner of the window to the bottom right corner of the screen.
I also use Moom for TextWrangler. Clicking the green button in TW makes the window as tall as the screen, but not as wide. Moom ignores TW's file drawer when it resize the window to full screen, but the latest version of Moom makes up for this. You can specify window sizes down to the pixel and save them as shortcuts.
In exchange for never fiddling around getting windows for a couple applications to the exact top right corner, Moom's $5 price tag was worth it for me.
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