Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today I'm going to show you how to
build a keyboard shortcut to move windows between screens on your Mac.
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So if you're using more than one screen on your Mac you can move a window between screens pretty
easily with a Menu Command. So, for instance, here I've got a MacBook Pro and I connected to it a 4K
screen. This is a typical arrangement that a lot of people have. A MacBook with an external
display. So you've got two screens which is great. But say you want to move a window,
like this Finder window, to the other screen. You could do that using the Window Menu. If you go in
there and you'll see a Move command and it's got the name of the other display. If you have
even more displays you'll see the names of each display there. So I can just use this Menu Item
and you could see it quickly moves that window to the other display. Then I could go to that display
and with that same window selected I could go to Window and then move back to the built-in display.
Now what would be nice is to have keyboard shortcuts that will do this. You can set
that up pretty easily because anything that appears in a menu, like here in the Window Menu,
you can assign a keyboard shortcut to if there isn't already one there.
So in this case the Menu Item is Move to LG Ultra HD. LG Ultra HD is the name of my display.
Yours would be different. The name comes from the hardware itself. So you've got to check there in
your Window Menu to see exactly what this is. So now let's set this up as a keyboard shortcut. I'm
going to go into System Preferences and then to Keyboard and then Shortcuts. Then I'm going to
click on App shortcuts. I'm going to add a new one by clicking the plus button. I'm going to
set it to All Applications so it's always going to be looking for this menu item in any app that
I'm using. Then I have to type the Menu Title. I need to type this exactly. Every character has
to be the same as the Menu Item. So in this case it would be Move to LG Ultra HD. Just like that.
Exactly the same as the Window Command. I can even see it right here in System Preferences as well.
Now let's do a keyboard shortcut. What I think makes sense here is to use the right arrow key
since this window is always to the right of my main screen. So I'm going to use Command
and then Option and then the right arrow and Add. I can close System Preferences here. Now if I look
under Window I'll see that anywhere I see Move to LG Ultra HD I see this shortcut. So with this
Finder window selected I can use this keyboard shortcut and it moves to the other display.
But now what if I wanted to move it back. Well, if I go over to here and I look under window
you could see it says Move To Built In Retina Display. So I've got to check that and make sure
I know exactly what the menu command is. Now I can create a keyboard shortcut for this. So go
back into System Preferences, back to Keyboard, Shortcuts, and then App Shortcuts. I'll add a
new one and I'll type that exactly as I saw it. Now I'm going to assign a keyboard shortcut.
Command and Option and then left arrow to do that. So just double check when you're done to
make sure the Menu Title is exactly what you see in the menu. Yours might be different than mine.
Then I'm going to Add. Now I can quit System Preferences. If I'm now over in this display
with this window selected, if I look under Window here's Move To Built In Retina Display
with that keyboard shortcut. So now I can use Command Option Left Arrow to move it
back to may main display and Command Option Right Arrow to move it to the secondary display.
This will work with any standard macOS Window. So here I am with Notes. I could see Window has the
same menu command there. So if I use it here the Notes window will move to the secondary
display and then I could move it back. Here I am in Pages. I see the same thing here under Window.
So it's really consistent. I can move the Pages window back and forth between the displays.
So you can see how this can definitely be useful especially if you assign a keyboard shortcut so
you do it pretty quickly. You can get Windows out of the way off to your secondary display
or move them around, back and forth as needed. You can combine this with Command Tab. Like for
instance here I could Command Tab to Pages and then use Command Option Right Arrow to quickly
move Pages over. If you've got a third display you could easily add that as a keyboard command too.
For instance you could use Command Option and Up Arrow or Down Arrow for your center display
and then the left and right arrows will match the left and right displays.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.