7 Using FancyZones
With zones set up and your preferred layout selected, you’re
ready to actually start using FancyZones. To snap a window into a
zone, grab it by its title bar and press the Shift key to highlight the
available zone. Drag and drop the window into place and it will
snap and resize to fill the zone. Repeat the process with any other
windows you want to place into particular zones.
8 FancyZones settings
FancyZones’ settings are in the main PowerToys app. The
options here all have self-explanatory titles, such as overriding the
default snapping hotkey, ensuring windows open in the same
zone on subsequent openings, and maintaining zones across
multiple desktops. You can also change the colour of zone
highlighting to better suit your desktop scheme. Q5
Creating zones
The first thing you need to do is to define the zone that you
would like to divide your screen into for the purposes of window
snapping. In the Templates section there are a number of
ready-made zone layouts that you can use, and by default these
are made up of two zones. If you would like to be able to snap
more windows into zones, just click the ‘+’ button to add more.
3 Using Shortcut Guide
Shortcut Guide, while very simple, is also incredibly useful,
as it will help you to learn time-saving keyboard shortcuts. Press
and hold the [Win] key for a second, and an overlay will appear
on the screen showing you all of the shortcuts available to you.
In Shortcut Guide’s settings you can adjust how long the [Win]
key has to be held for.
6
Creating custom zones
It may be that you don’t like any of the available templates,
and want to create a zone layout of your own. Move to the
Custom tab, select the ‘Create new custom’ option and click ‘Edit
selected layout’. Click ‘Add new zone’ and then position and resize
the zone outline as required. Repeat for as many zones as you
need, enter a name for the layout, and click ‘Save and apply’.4 Getting started with FancyZones
FancyZones is rather more interesting than Shortcut Guide,
but it is also more complex and requires some setting up. The
tool works by dividing your screen up into a grid into which
you can quickly snap open applications and windows to improve
multitasking. In FancyZones settings, click the ‘Edit zones’ button,
or press the [Win] key and [~] to access the zone editor.Explore
Discover the new PowerToys
December 2019 | |^37