FancyZones HotKey/Shortcut for swaping windows between screens.

[PlasticDevs]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Say I have window W1 (e.g. Google Chrome) on monitor M1 (e.g. main monitor), window W2 (e.g. Microsoft Outlook) on monitor M2 (e.g. laptop monitor).

Frequently I need to swap the apps between screens. Currently in order to do this the steps would be:

1. Focus on W1.
2. Move W1 to M2 with "Win + Shift + arrow" or drag + snap.
3. Focus on W2.
4. Move W2 to M1 using "Win + Shift + arrow" or drag + snap.

Would be great if we could have a shortcut to quickly and easily swap content between screens.

Scenario when this would be used?

I have an "asymmetrical" monitor setup, as a lot of people do, where I have a "main" monitor and one or two secondary ones (e.g. laptop screen, vertical monitor, etc.).

Frequently I need to swap the window I'm using on my main screen with another on my secondary screen.

A few examples of this could be:

1. Lets say I'm attending a MS teams meeting using my main screen and doing some using my web-browser or notes app on my secondary screen but then I need to share my screen. Having the ability to quickly swap the apps in the screen is great as when sharing the screen I prefer to have what I'm sharing in my main screen and the meeting window on the secondary one.
2. Lets say I'm working on a a front-end development project, and I have my IDE on my main screen while having the browser open on my secondary screen. Then I start a trace, or debugging session or something like this, and I want to quickly swap windows so I now keep the browser window on my main screen and my IDE on the secondary one for monitoring.

Supporting information

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/sqshv9/two_monitors_a_shortcut_to_swap_screens/
2. https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/17885-dual-monitor-swap/

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi I'm an AI powered bot that finds similar issues based off the issue title.

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it. Thank you!

Open similar issues:

• Swap Monitor contents (#24701), similarity score: 0.82

Closed similar issues:

• Swap Windows between Two FancyZones (#14968), similarity score: 0.81
• Allow swap Windows between Zones (#31120), similarity score: 0.80
• [Fancy zones feature] Windows zone swapper (#24170), similarity score: 0.80
• [FancyZones] Swap windows between zones with Alt Windows Snap HotKeys (#1918), similarity score: 0.79

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[PlasticDevs]

Hi I'm an AI powered bot that finds similar issues based off the issue title.

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it. Thank you!

Open similar issues:

• Swap Monitor contents (#24701), similarity score: 0.82

Closed similar issues:

• Swap Windows between Two FancyZones (#14968), similarity score: 0.81
• Allow swap Windows between Zones (#31120), similarity score: 0.80
• [Fancy zones feature] Windows zone swapper (#24170), similarity score: 0.80
• [FancyZones] Swap windows between zones with Alt Windows Snap HotKeys (#1918), similarity score: 0.79

Note: You can give me feedback by thumbs upping or thumbs downing this comment.

I've checked the similar issues, both open and closed, ticket #14968 is very similar, but not quite the same. That said, that ticket was wrongly closed as it initially appeared to be a duplicate when it was not. Also want to clarify that this is not a duplicate of ticket #13689 either, they are different. :)

[crutkas]

Why doesn’t win+shift+left/right arrow key work? That is the built in keystroke for windows for an instant swap. /needinfo

[PlasticDevs]

Why doesn’t win+shift+left/right arrow key work? That is the built in keystroke for windows for an instant swap. /needinfo

Hey @crutkas ,

win+shift+left/right arrow, allows you to quickly send a window to another screen, but, as far as I know, there is no shortcut to swap windows between screens in one go.

As mentioned in the ticket description, to use win + shift + arrow to do it, its always a multi step process.

For example, lets say you are testing something on a website you are developing on your main screen while having on your secondary monitor some sort of trace running on a IDE for the website you have on the main screen. If you wish to quickly swap window in the main screen with the one in the secondary one you would need to:

1. Focus by clicking on the website browser window on your main screen.
2. Move the browser window to the secondary monitor with "Win + Shift + arrow" or mouse drag + snap.
3. Focus by clicking on the IDE window running the trace.
4. Move the IDE window to the main monitor using "Win + Shift + arrow" or mouse drag + snap.

What I would be proposing would be a key shortcut that would allow to quickly and easily swap the "active" windows in each screen between screens.

Hope this description clarifies the difference between the existing windows/fancy zones functionality and the proposal I have, If not I can try to create a small gif or something to showcase it better.

[YAMLcase]

@PlasticDevs Thanks for writing this up, I came here to do so 😄 I would also like to propose using the mouse for the swap as well. Perhaps adding an option in settings to hold ctrl key while dragging a window to swap the zones. My use case for this idea is I'm on an ultra-wide monitor with 5 columns and frequently need to swap 2 or 3 zones over.

Why doesn’t win+shift+left/right arrow key work? That is the built in keystroke for windows for an instant swap

@crutkas perhaps we're defining "swap" differently... I read it to mean something like "replace window 1 with window 2, and window 2 with window 1"

example:

[slrgt]

any update on the posibility of using a keyboard shortcut to quickly swap which is the active monitor?

[PlasticDevs]

Hello @crutkas ,

Just sending a friendly reminder about this topic 😄 .

Kind Regards.

[crutkas]

This is /dup https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/24701

[microsoft-github-policy-service[bot]]

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!