Dragging a window to the edge of the screen to snap it there is an old Windows trick, but Snap Layouts, introduced in Windows 11, turns it into something considerably more useful: a menu of preset grid arrangements you can drop a window into with a couple of clicks, instead of manually resizing and nudging two or three windows into place every time you want to work side by side.
Triggering Snap Layouts
Hover your mouse over a window's maximize button (top-right corner, without clicking it) and a small grid of layout options pops up — typically two windows side by side, three windows split unevenly, or four in a grid, with the exact options depending on your screen size and resolution. Click one of the zones in that grid and the current window snaps into that position. Windows then shows thumbnails of your other open windows so you can pick what fills the remaining zones, all in a couple of clicks total.
The keyboard shortcut is Windows key + Z, which brings up the same layout picker without needing to hover over the maximize button at all — faster once it's muscle memory, and it works even on a window that's already maximized.
Layout Options Vary by Screen Size
- Standard monitor: usually offers a 2-up split, a 3-up split (one large pane plus two stacked smaller ones), and sometimes a simple 4-grid.
- Ultrawide monitor: more layout options appear, including splits designed for the extra horizontal space, like three or four equal columns.
- Smaller or lower-resolution screens: Windows may only offer the 2-up split since finer grids would leave each pane too small to be usable.
Snap Groups: Switching Between Arrangements as a Unit
Once you've built a layout — say, an email client on the left and a browser on the right — Windows remembers that combination as a "snap group." Hover over either window's icon in the taskbar and you'll see the whole group represented as a single thumbnail. Clicking it brings back both windows in their exact snapped positions, and minimizing one window in the group temporarily hides both, restoring the same layout when you click back. This is the part that saves real time: you can fully switch to an unrelated task and back without having to manually rebuild the same two- or three-window layout each time.
Dragging Still Works, and Combines With Layouts
The classic drag-to-edge behavior from earlier Windows versions still works in Windows 11 and now triggers the layout picker too — drag a window to the top edge of the screen and hold briefly, and the same grid appears, letting you drop it into a specific zone rather than just the left or right half the old behavior offered. Dragging to a screen corner snaps a window into a quarter of the screen directly, useful for a small reference window like a calculator or a chat app that only needs a small footprint.
Snap Layouts vs Virtual Desktops: Different Problems
Snap Layouts arrange multiple windows visible at the same time on one screen. Virtual desktops, by contrast, give you entirely separate workspaces you switch between, each with its own set of open windows, useful for keeping "work" and "personal" contexts fully separated rather than tiled together. They solve different problems and combine well — you might snap two work-related windows together on one virtual desktop, then switch to a second desktop entirely for something unrelated. Our guide to virtual desktops in Windows 10 and 11 covers that second piece in full.
On a Second Monitor
Snap Layouts work independently on each connected display — you can build a different snapped arrangement on your second monitor than the one on your primary screen, and each maintains its own snap groups. This pairs naturally with a proper multi-monitor setup; see our guide to setting up two monitors if you're working from a single screen today and considering the upgrade.