I gave Windows proper tiling, and I stopped dragging windows around the screen

Published Sep 10, 2026, 7:30 AM EDT Abhishek is an author at XDA who covers computing. He has loved computers since he got the Lenovo G570 in 2012. Abhishek holds a master's degree in computer applications and began his writing career in 2018. He loves writing how-to articles, listicles, and informational posts on popular operating systems and web services. He closely follows the Windows Insider program and tests new Insider builds to discover upcoming experimental features and upgrades. His past work includes long-term collaborations with reputed publications like Tom's Hardware, and Windows Latest. When not writing anything, he is busy watching new episodes of One Piece or searching for something binge-worthy. Tiling is the last thing on your mind while using your Windows PC. It’s a lesser-known concept among the majority of the user base, and the next best thing is Snap Layouts. If you’ve used any other version of OS before Windows 11, you can understand the convenience it brings. On a small screen, you rarely think about snapping two or three windows on it. But it becomes essential on a large display. Older Windows versions supported snapping, or opening two apps side-by-side with the help of arrow keys. Snap Layouts automates that process, helping you snap two or more windows in a predefined layout without pressing any keyboard shortcut keys. However, the feature begins to feel inept after some time, when you realize that it's not as smart and customizable as you want it to be. So, I switched to an i3-style tiling manager, and barely use the OS feature now. Window tiling is a crucial feature Snap Layout severely tones it down Tiling is a smarter way of window management. Think of a scenario where you have multiple open apps, and you switch between them with the Alt + Tab shortcut. This cycling (switching) action works well if you want to allocate the maximum screen space to just one app. But what if you want to use two apps side-by-side? Snap Layouts or the default shortcuts are a good option for such cases. How about raising the stakes? Let’s consider a scenario where you want three or four open windows, all arranged with equal screen space. In such cases, you have to hover over the maximize button and then pick the available layout options. Windows 11 plays nicely with three open windows but struggles a bit with four. I first have to arrange three apps using a predefined layout and then again pick any of the snapped windows, open the Snap Layout menu again, and then pick the design that can work with four apps. Multiple window tiling is necessary for me as I use a 27-inch monitor connected to my laptop. I bought it because it had a much better display, had enough space to adjust multiple open windows, and games look nice on it. But Snap Layouts makes the whole window arrangement solution very bare-bones and unintelligent. It cannot conform to the behavior of open windows, readjust them on the fly, or have any granular settings for advanced users. All these problems urged me to look for a better alternative. A tiling manager can solve my problem GlazeWM to the rescue If you only use Windows, you might not have experienced the stacking and tiling managers available in some Linux distributions. GNOME has them, KDE Plasma has them, COSMIC has them, which is my personal favorite. COSMIC takes tiling and stacking to the next level, and while GlazeWM doesn't reach that level of finesse, it's still better than Snap Layouts. My first issue with Snap Layouts is that I have to take action to snap windows. But in GlazeWM, my active windows get organized automatically. All I need to do is launch GlazeWM, and it handles them for me. Snap Layouts has yet to have such a default behavior, and it cannot help me manipulate layouts. GlazeWM uses keyboard shortcuts, which can be difficult to grasp early on. You can use the Alt + arrow key shortcut to switch between tiled windows. It's similar to what you do with Alt + Tab in Windows 11, minus the whole animation UI that pops up. GlazeWM has another keyboard shortcut to manipulate the tiled layout. If you press Alt + Shift + arrow key on a focused window, you can change its layout position or increase or decrease its size. Snap Layouts cannot do much after you snap the windows into one place. It supports drag-and-drop resizing, but that's not as easy to use as the swift keyboard approach. Whenever you close an app added to Snap Layouts, the feature doesn't automatically fill the empty position with another window. GlazeWM can do this because its role is to manage rather than wait for user discretion. Organizing windows with workspaces Configuration file management A 27-inch monitor is good enough for four windows on one desktop, at least that's what I prefer. But there can be more than four apps that you want to keep active simultaneously. Windows 11 supports virtual desktops, which create another desktop session for a specific set of apps. You can distribute your workflow to keep personal apps on one, work-related apps on another, and so on. But the Snap Layouts experience stays the same on all the desktops. GlazeWM has a similar feature called workspaces, but it's built to supplement the tiling manager. You can create multiple workspaces, and the default option gives you up to nine workspaces to cycle between. I don't use that many, yet I can still move around windows from one workspace to another, and they get tiled according to that workspace. Virtual desktops support this window shifting, but are restricted by Snap Layouts for window tiling. One peculiar thing about GlazeWM is that it lacks a settings page. You can change the settings using a configuration file, which seems apt considering the tool is a keyboard-focused one. I don't suggest messing around too much with the file apart from useful settings like workspace renaming and a few others. Since the configuration file is the brain of the tool, you can export it to other machines as well and create an identical experience on your other Windows systems. Give tiling managers a try I have already experienced a much better method of window management on some Linux distributions. So, switching to a tiling manager based on a similar concept became necessary. Even if you've never used Linux before, the concept of tiling, moving around windows, and layout management can help you increase your productivity. You spend less time organizing the active windows and workspaces and use them to get the actual work done. There are several other tiling managers available for Windows 11, and even PowerToys can help you fix the layouts to some extent. But I'm yet to find something as simple yet effective as GlazeWM. GlazeWM GlazeWM is a tiling window manager for Windows designed for keyboard users and with a range of customization options.