2009-06-28

Moving Windows with the Title Bar Off Screen

In pretty much any operating system, if you want to move a window, you can click and drag the title bar of the window to move it. This shouldn't come as a surprise; in fact, you should probably be questioning why I'm even mentioning it. Well, what happens if you have a window open up and the title bar is off screen? If you use computers long enough, I promise, you will run into this scenario.

You are more likely to run into this situation if you are using a netbook with the standard resolution of 1024x600. I wouldn't call this a common event with my Mini 9, but I'll be honest, it's happened a few times. So, what can we do when we find ourselves in this situation? Well, it turns out that there are a couple of things that we can do:

  • Keyboard only method
    Your Linux distro should have a keyboard shortcut for moving windows. In Debian, the default is Alt + F7. To find out what the keyboard shortcut for moving windows is on your installation, open up a window (pretty much anything will do..nautilus, firefox, etc.). Then open the Window Menu for the window you just opened (keyboard shortcut here is Alt + Spacebar), and you should see this on the list. Now to move a window, you simply need to press the keyboard shortcut you found and then you can move the active window with the arrow keys. You can also simply move the mouse after pressing the keyboard shortcut, and when you click the mouse, the window will stay where you put it.

  • Keyboard and Mouse combination method
    There is another default shortcut for moving windows, and I find this one easier to remember. We simply need to hold the Alt key and click and drag anywhere on the window we wish to move to reposition it.

Now you should never have to worry about windows being positioned such that you cannot click and drag the title bar.

See you next time.

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