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I have two open programs, but I want to view both of them at the same time. Dragging and adjusting them manually takes time, and I might have to do this every day. Is there any shortcut for doing this in Ubuntu?

I'm thinking something like this:

Screenshot showing two windows side-by-side

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5
  • 3
    Ctrl + Alt +Numpad left / Ctrl + Alt +Numpad right. must be here somewhere.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:09
  • ...And Ctrl + Alt +Numpad up / Ctrl + Alt +Numpad down for upper/lower half.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:19
  • 3
    Woa, that's a nice screenshot of an ancient Google on an ancient operating system :)
    – Ray
    Feb 17, 2015 at 12:26
  • You used the wrong screenshot. Windows XP (in the screenshot, it has the Green theme applied) doesn't have such feature (natively). It was introduced in Windows Vista.
    – Ismael Miguel
    Feb 17, 2015 at 16:36
  • 2
    Please don't spam edit like that.
    – Tim
    Oct 24, 2015 at 21:13

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
93

To set a window occupying the left half of the screen use this shortcut:

Ctrl + Super + ←

For the right half:

Ctrl + Super + →

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  • 16
    Super? What key is that?
    – Ismael Miguel
    Feb 17, 2015 at 16:34
  • 23
    Super is the "windows key"
    – Gremlin
    Feb 17, 2015 at 17:14
  • 9
    For those wondering why @IsmaelMiguel used super: not all keyboards are alike. Many are agnostic to the operating system that it uses. Many vendors,however prefix the super key with the dominant operating system that is bundled with a desktop package. Dell keyboards are labeled with Windows. Apple's equivalent label is the command key. In many ways, I wish more keyboards where agnostic to the OS. WASD keyboards do this and many others.
    – justinpage
    Feb 17, 2015 at 20:46
  • 27
    For Ubuntu 18.04 it is Super + ←/→.
    – Tushar
    Sep 28, 2018 at 3:40
  • 3
    For Ub 20.04.1 it's also Super + ←/→
    – user1135218
    Jan 13, 2021 at 16:19
20

You can also just drag the window all the way to the left or right edge of the screen, it will show an animation that highlights the new dimension and then just release it.

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  • 1
    OP mentioned that is not what he wants to do.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:35
  • Oh, read over that bit for some reason.. sorry!
    – Gladen
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:36
  • 2
    Happens to me all the time :)
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:36
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    Although he talks about "Dragging and adjusting them manually takes time".. which implies that he tries to resize it to take the half of the screen manually..
    – Gladen
    Feb 17, 2015 at 9:37
  • 2
    OP sounds like he is fiddling with window sizes manually (collapse from maximize, drag each window edge to line up with right of screen, middle of screen, top of screen, bottom of screen...). Gladen's answer sounds a lot more like Windows 7's aero snap, which is basically "drag title bar to edge of screen and it fills half the screen for you", which takes like a second to do.
    – evilspoons
    Feb 17, 2015 at 16:30

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