I’d heard about tiling window managers over the years, but never really understood what the fuss was about. After all, Windows lets you drag and drop windows wherever you want, and with Windows 11’s Snap Layouts I find myself nearly overwhelmed with options on how to lay out running apps on my desktop. Why would I want to cede control of where and how my windows appear to my PC?
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But that’s exactly it: I feel overwhelmed by choice, so most of the time I just work with one window maximized to fill the screen. At most I’ll use two side-by-side if I need to reference something while I’m working. But I never touch the advanced layouts available in Windows 11, or futz around with the custom layouts I can create using Fancy Zones in Microsoft’s amazing (and free) PowerToys app suite.
But in Pop_OS I discovered the option to turn on a tiling window manager that automatically resizes and moves your open windows to make space for every new one you open, and I kind of fell in love. Because as simple as it sounds, that basic automation eliminates 5-10 seconds of thought, effort and distraction every time I launch a new program. That’s not a big difference if it only happens once or twice, but this week I’ve noticed it actually happens 10-20 times a day. That’s adding up to ten or fifteen minutes of wasted time and effort saved every week, as well as noticeably less wasted thought and annoyance during my day-to-day work.
And that’s great, but it’s not why I’m so blown away by a basic automatic tiling window manager. No, it’s more that I suddenly realized that this is a useful way to work and Microsoft could have included an option like this in Windows 11 at any point. Heck, there may well be such an option buried somewhere in Windows’ nested tiers of settings menus; I just couldn’t tell you where, even after testing and using Windows 11 since before it launched.
Pop_OS may have opened my eyes to the joys of an automatic tiling manager, but it can definintely feel cramped if you open too many windows or don’t take the time to dial in the settings just right.
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So while I definitely don’t think an automatic tiling window manager is the right choice for everyone, after trying one this week I’ve come to miss having the option to use one in Windows and I wish Microsoft would patch one in. Of course, I have some issues with the way the tiling manager in Pop_OS works—for one thing, the way Pop_OS automagically squishes windows to fit them into a cluttered layout can often render the Maximize and Close buttons in the top-right corner of each window impossible to click—so I don’t think I’d want to port it over wholesale into Windows.
But one of the things I love about Windows is how easy it is to download third-party software that radically changes the way your PC operates. I know there’s a smorgasbord of downloadable automatic tiling window managers out there for Windows, now the question is…which one do I choose?