Show windows side by side in windows 10

I’ve always right clicked on the taskbar and selected «Show windows side by side.» Now on my Windows 10 laptop, the two windows display very narrow and only on one half of the screen. Is there something I can do to make two documents display across the entire width of the screen?

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Aero Snap is one of the interesting features of Windows 10 that automatically arrange windows by tiles or side by side. Here are the different methods on how you can customize your windows view on your desktop using Aero Snap:

Method 1: Side by side windows.

This method will make each window take half of the computer screen allowing you to arrange it side by side.

1. Press and hold Windows logo key.

2. Press the left or right arrow key.

Method 2: Vertical Snap

You can also use Aero Snap to maximize or minimize the open windows on your desktop.

1. Press and hold Windows logo key + Up arrow key to snap the window to the top halves of the screen.

2. Press and hold Windows logo key + Down arrow key to snap the window to the bottom halves of the screen.

3. Press Windows logo key + Up arrow key twice to maximize the window.

4. Press Windows logo key + Down arrow key twice to minimize the window.

Method 3: 2×2 Snap

2×2 Snap will let you put up to 4 windows on your desktop using a combination of the Windows logo key + left/right/up/down arrow key.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have other questions.

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Based on this thread and another in a different forum, the problem with side by side and stacked windows not working is due to a bug whereby various apps come up and appear to be on the desktop. When you do a side by side, you might have only 2 windows you see — everything else is minimised — but after the operation you wind up with screen real estate as if you were sharing with 2 3 4 or more shadow apps that do not show up.

If you use task manager, you will see phantom apps — e.g. calculator, calendar, skype, all of these come from C:\Program Files\WindowsApps. You might also see SystemSettings. If you kill these, you will generally find that Side-By-Side and Stacked windows behave as expected. Rarely, you may also have to stop/start (re-cycle explorer).

A guaranteed fix is to logoff (not reboot — just logoff) and login. Things work ok until you use a few modern apps and then they start to leak and screw things up.

Randomish8 (from other forum) may have reduced the problem to ApplicationFrameHost.exe as opposed to the mix of Apps I have stumbled across. I have not run into it yet but his solution may be more comprehensive.

I use Cygwin and I have a script that looks for processes in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps or named Systemsettings and kills those. If that is not sufficient I have another script that also recycles Explorer. So far that has always fixed things. I will try to look for ApplicationFrameHost.exe instead to see if that works.

In any event, you are not going nuts. The windows arrangement features works expected and as they always did when you log in and eventually degenerate as apps start to leak. Microsoft is definitely on the hook to fix this but in the meantime, there are ways of coping.

Windows 10 «side-by-side»

Original title: Windows 10 desktop

Windows 10 will not allow me to show Windows «side-by-side». I usually have two windows open. With Windows 10, they do not resize so that each takes about 1/2 of the screen, rather they take about 1/3 each. Today, both windows became very small as if I had about 8 open instead of only 2, and I had to manually resize them. Can anyone offer a suggestion; it’s annoying.

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Thanks for posting your query to Microsoft forum. I will certainly help you with this.

Method 1:

Step 1: Change the resolution

1. Press Windows key on the keyboard
2. Click on System
3. Go to Display
4. Click on Advance display settings
5. Change the resolution (1280×1024 recommended)

Step 2: Enable Show windows side by side

Make sure that you have at least two windows open.

1. Then right-click anywhere on the taskbar and select Show windows side by side.
2. The windows are resized according the number of windows to be displayed. You should note that windows that are minimized are not shown through this side by side interface.
3. When you are done you can close the side by side interface. You can do this by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting Undo Show all windows side by side

Additional information : Applies to Windows 10 too.

The video cannot be played here. Click here to view this video.

Method 2: Update display adapter driver.

Step 1: Check for the latest display driver update through Windows Updates.

1. At the Start screen, type Windows Update.
2. Click or tap Settings on the right side of the screen, and then select Install optional updates from the left results.
3. When the Windows Update control panel opens, click on “Check for Updates” on the top left corner to receive a fresh list of updates.

Step 2: Follow the steps below to update the Bluetooth drivers.

1. Press Windows + X key on the keyboard.
2. Go to device manager.
3. Right-click your display/graphic devices.
4. Click Update Driver Software and then follow the steps in the wizard that appears.

Restart the computer and check.

Let us know if you need further assistance. We will be glad to help you further.

Win 10 will not obey «display windows side by side» command

Janset

Windows 10 will not show windows side by side on right click Task Bar command.

In Windows 7 when I had 2 panels open and I wanted to display them side by side, I would go down to the task bar right click and select «Show Windows side by side»

Now after upgrading to windows 10 Pro when I do this I find that the panels are stacked one on top of another contrary to the instruction.

I then experimented with «Show windows stacked», and in fact that is what it does.

So now my problem is that Windows 10 will not display panels «side by side» when that function is selected.

Any idea?
Regards

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davidhk129

Something is wrong with your Win 10.
Mine works as instructed.

davidhk129

Janset

Thanks for the reply. I will have to ask you to guide me thru that one please as at the moment my mind is blank.

davidhk129

How to do system file check.

Right click at Start button > select Command Prompt (Admin) > at the flashing prompt, copy/paste this. sfc /scannow
> press Enter.

It will take quite sometime. When finished, it will give you one of the 3 reports : (paraphrasing )

1. No integrity violation.
2. Found corrupt files and repair successfully.
3. Found corrupt files but unable to repair.

If report is #1. Your solution lies elsewhere.
IF report is #2, go see if everything is now working ok.
If report is #3, please do the following.

Right click at Start button > select Command Prompt (Admin) > at the flashing prompt, copy/paste this.

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

Again, it will take some time. When finished it will give you a report.
If it says operation successful, go see if everything is now working ok.

Show windows side by side does not work

Show windows side by side does not work. Looks the same as show windows stacked.

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Apologize for the difficulties that you’re experiencing regarding this issue and also for the delay in getting back to you. Do not worry. Let me help you in fixing this issue.

What exactly happens when you try to show Windows side by side?

Does the same thing happen with all types of windows of different programs?

Provide us a screenshot of the issue by referring to the following article on how to do so:

Get back to us with the requested details for further assistance.

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The problem is that the windows do not use the full screen.

In Windows 8.1 if I had two windows side by side the whole screen was used. Windows 10 seems to want to use only two thirds of the screen. This cuts off a lot of things in each window that I want to see. Windows 8.1 did it right. It’s broken in Windows 10.

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Show windows side by side does not work. Looks the same as show windows stacked.

This is the screenshot of what I get when I click «Show windows side by side» — it’s exactly the same as when I click «Show windows stacked». I use this command every day, so I’m dying now that it no longer works in Windows 10

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Show windows side by side does not work. Looks the same as show windows stacked.

This is the screenshot of what I get when I click «Show windows side by side» — it’s exactly the same as when I click «Show windows stacked». I use this command every day, so I’m dying now that it no longer works in Windows 10

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I can only laugh at the moron who designed snap and side by side. I guess can’t they count how many windows it take to fill a screen. They like quads and even if you end task ‘ApplicationFrameHost’ it likes 3 windows please.

I seen tens of thousand jquery web pages that could blow this code to pieces. How many employees does MS have?

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I’m going to take a wild guess and say this «side x side» was coded this way so that you can quickly bring up one of many windows to full screen. That might be fine for some, but it doesn’t cut the mustard for me.

I WANT to be able to actually READ info on one window so that I can cut and paste into the other window. The size of these reduced size windows make that hard or impossible.

While I wasn’t a big fan of Win 8, my wife still has it on her computer and right clicking on the bottom allows you to go «side x side» with 2 windows taking up the entire screen instead of 2/3’s of the screen.

There SHOULD be an option to make this command the same as in Win 7, Win 8, and Win 8.1. I think it worked in XP as well.

Easiest way to show windows side by side in Windows

When I’m working on a computer that is connected to a single monitor, I often like to display two windows side by side, especially when writing a new blog post.

I display the WordPress admin interface in one browser window, and the developer web page or another source or research option in the second window. This allows me to access information directly without having to juggle around with open windows or tabs in a single browser window.

I recently had a chat with a friend of mine about this and he told me that he was using Windows 7’s snap feature to snap two windows next to each other on the operating system. He did that either by moving the windows to the left or right side of the screen, or activating the windows individually, and using the Windows-left arrow or Windows-right arrow shortcut to place them in those locations.

Display windows side by side in Windows

The feature is part of newer versions of Windows, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, as well.

When I told him that there was another way to do that, one that would even work with more than two windows, he was puzzled at first. Take a look at the following screenshot and see for yourself.

A right-click on a blank spot on the taskbar displays the context menu that you see above. When you select show windows side by side all windows that are currently not in minimized state will be aligned next to each other, so that each window gets the same amount of space on the desktop.

If you have two windows open at the time, each gets 50% and is displayed next to each other vertically. Three windows get 33.3% each, and are displayed vertically on the system, and four windows vertically again with each getting 25% of the available screen space.

All you need to do, therefore, is to open the program windows that you want displayed side by side, right-click the taskbar, and select the show windows side by side option. It may not be much faster for two windows if you run Windows 7 or newer, but it is definitely faster if you want to align three or more windows side by side instead.

This option is available — maybe under a different name — in previous versions of Windows as well. Microsoft changed the look of the right-click taskbar menu in Windows 10 but the functionality is still available.

You may also select «show windows stacked» or «cascade windows» from the menu to use different display options.

Show windows stacked aligns them vertically so that they are stacked on top of each other.

The cascade windows option displays all windows on top of each other so that only the title and window controls are visible for all but the window in front.