Save a preset for one-press snapping

Goal

The region you use most is saved as a preset, bound to a single key.

Save a preset

1. Click a window and press ⌃⌥⌘Space to open the resize grid.
2. Drag across the grid to outline the rectangle you want to save.
3. Hold ⌥ while releasing the mouse. The card below the grid asks you to press a key.
4. Press the key you’d like to bind. Press Esc instead to cancel.

That key is now bound to that rectangle on that display. Your other displays can use the same key for something else. Binding a key that’s already in use on this display replaces the old preset.

Apply a preset

With the resize grid open, press the bound key. The focused window snaps to the saved rectangle and the grid closes. The number-pad digits count as the same keys as the top-row digits.

You’ll also see a thumbnail of every saved preset in the card below the grid, in key order. Hovering one previews the position on screen without committing; clicking it applies the preset.

Holding ⇧ while clicking a preset (or pressing its key) does one thing more: it also remembers that position for the focused window’s app.

You can apply a preset without opening the grid, too: the Move To submenu in the MaxTo menu-bar menu lists the presets of every display, grouped by display.

Presets survive grid changes — they’re stored as fractions of the screen, not cell coordinates. The grid explains why.

Delete a preset

• In the resize grid, hover the preset’s thumbnail and click the × in its corner. A message with an Undo button appears, in case you didn’t mean it.
• In Settings → Displays, each display lists its presets. Click the trash button next to the one you want gone.

Each display has its own presets

Presets are saved per display, so the same key can mean something different on each one. A can fill the left half of your laptop screen and the top third of your external display.

• Pressing a key applies the preset for the display the grid is on.
• The thumbnails show only that display’s presets. Press Tab to move the grid to another display and see its presets.
• The Move To menu lists the presets for every display.

Displays that share settings also share presets. With the default sharing mode, Displays with the same resolution, displays with the same resolution have one set of presets between them. To give each of them its own, set Share settings between displays to Each display has its own in Settings → Displays.

Presets across displays

If you press a preset key on a display that doesn’t have it, MaxTo looks for that key on your other displays. If it finds one, it moves the grid to that display and applies the preset there.

That’s how you make one key that moves a window to a different display, for example one that fills your second screen. You save the preset on the target display itself.

1. Click a window and press ⌃⌥⌘Space.
2. Press Tab (or Page Down) until the grid is on the display you want windows sent to.
3. On that display’s grid, drag from the top-left cell to the bottom-right cell to cover the whole screen, or outline any smaller region.
4. Hold ⌥ while releasing, and press a key you haven’t used for a preset on your other displays.

Now open the grid on any other display and press that key. The window moves to the saved region on the target display.

This only works when both of these are true:

• The key is free on the display you press it from. A display’s own presets always win. If you’ve bound 1 on both displays, 1 never leaves the current one.
• The two displays don’t share presets. If they share (see above), the key counts as bound on both, and it snaps the window on the current display. Two identical displays share by default, so switch to Each display has its own. Each display then starts with the default grid and no presets, so you’ll need to save them again. Switching back brings back the shared ones.