What's that dark bar in Cinnamon?

[marmistrz]

I noticed that while snapping, sometimes a dark bar at the edge of the screen appears. What's that?

[Cosmo.]

That is for indicating the hot area for snapping. by default it does not get shown, you have obviously enabled it in the settings.

[marmistrz]

Thanks! Thought it's for something special and tried to activate it in vain ;D

[Dave B]

Hi Cosmo,

Unless defaults have changed over time, this is the default behaviour in 17.2 Cinnamon. Show tile heads-up-display setting is enabled by default, dragging a window slowly to the screen edge will first show the smaller bar, and when screen edge is reached the full tile preview is shown. After disabling the previously mentioned setting, only the full tile preview is shown.

[beachgardener]

Hello there, could you give me an example of how it is used and what that snapping thing would be used for? I find that I don't really understand it.
Thank you.

[Cosmo.]

@David Black:
You may be right. I use it so quickly (or use it via keyboard), that I indeed do not see the small bar at all, but instantly the full tile preview.

[Cosmo.]

@beachgardener:

Say you want 2 windows visible side by side. Than you move the first windows e.g. to the left, after that the second to the right (or the first to the top and the second to the bottom). Both windows take the half of the screen without overlapping each other. If you move the windows back they get the previously set size, no need to resize them manually.

For beginners I find it easier to make tiling with the keyboard instead with the mouse. How-to: Give a window the focus and press super-cursor-key (up, left, bottom, right), this gives you immediately the result. Bringing a window back to its previous position and size do the same but with the opposite cursor-key.

There is some more, but you should at first familiarize yourself with the basics.

Note: In principle this works with any window with normal decorations (mainly the title-bar), but if you have a small desktop resolution it might fail with windows, which have a great value for the minimal window size. So start playing with it with something like the text editor or the terminal.

[beachgardener]

Thank you for that, I had a small play with that, needs more practice. I may have some questions later on about this.