Using a big screen 4K TV as my main monitor can be a little overwhelming at times. You might
start just putting windows all over the place to take advantage of all that extra real estate
but doing that can often leave you more confused and lost than you started, and using the entire
screen with a single app to me is overwhelming. Instead I have a couple main workflows that
I use when working on my big screen TV. Starting with a single application in the
middle for my primary work. And then adding reference material off to each of the sides.
Maybe I need to work two documents simultaneously in the middle,
Or I can extend wider as it’s needed. The taller vertical height can also
be leveraged for programmers that want to review more lines of code.
Or content creators can opt for an ultrawide aspect ratio to review a long video timeline.
Hi I’m David and this is how I multitask and use a Big Screen 4K TV for productivity
The application PowerToys with its FancyZone feature continues to be my must have application
for dividing my screen. With this application I divide my big screen into 12 different zones.
But one new feature they added since it was first released is the ability to snap
a single application to multiple zones. For example, I can hold the shift key,
and snap the application to one zone. Or do that again but drop it on the border of two snap zones.
Or if you hold shift and control together. You can drop it over multiple snap zones.
This added flexibility to fancyzone
is the reason why I’ve divided up my screen into so many different sections.
The two in the middle are my most used locations. Usually it’s just one application
from web browsing to word processing. Or if I’m working on two word documents,
I find they fit fine into two slimmer zones that again stay in my centered field of vision.
But excel sheets tend to need a wider horizontal view, so that’s when I start
snapping it off to the sides zones as well. This flexibility of snapping to multiple zones
means you have cater to whatever sized rectangle you need for your application.
Ultrawide for content creation editing, Tall for reviewing long lines of code,
A large video player off to the side, or a mix of all the above while multitasking.
While I believe having this basic structure is important to keeping organized.
I don’t completely restrict myself to these zones. For applications like calculators,
notes, or file explorers, these are scenarios where I’ll just want to float the different
sized windows without a strict structure. For this I’ll use my next application called
Aquasnap. It’s a paid application, but I personally use the free version myself
since it covers what I mainly need out of it. I like it for the magnetic feature that makes
aligning windows together simple. So when I move two windows close together and they’ll
snap seamlessly together. Or resize windows and again they’ll also snap together as well.
I’ll also use the Glass feature that turns applications transparent when you’re moving
them around. And shake feature that lets me keep applications on top of the screen temporarily.
And the final but important way I organize my screen is with Tabs on all my applications,
so I can quickly hide applications in the background to avoid distractions
but quickly access them again as I need. I’ve been using Groupy for a while,
it’s a paid application but I find it works seamlessly with the FancyZone. You can quickly
drag and drop one app onto another to create tabs to switch between them. And then just as easily
pull it apart and drop it into a FancyZone if you want to keep it dedicated on the screen.
I also find it really helpful if I’m managing files across different folders open in different
tabs and then quickly drag and drop files between them through the tabs, instead of
having multiple windows scatter across the screen. So in the end, this how my screen usually ends up
looking during a typical day. I’ll tend to keep all my reference documents on the right side
in different tabs. And then all my tools, emails, music, onenote on the left side. So everything is
easy to find and just one click away. And just as easily I can change it up for whatever I need to
for a particular task. But that’s just how I use a Big Screen 4K TV for everyday productivity.
Hope you guys enjoyed this one. You know what to do. And I’ll see you in the next video.