If you’re a fan of OS X El Capitan’s new window capture feature, here’s how to get it right now without waiting.
Apple announced and unveiled OS X El Capitan during the company’s WWDC keynote yesterday, arriving with a handful of new features, but keeping the same overall design and appearing as OS X Yosemite.
In fact, OS X El Capitan can be considered a fairly minor update from OS X Yosemite, and Apple only needed about 10 minutes to show off the new features during its presentation.
However, some new features may be useful to many Mac users, including new swipe gestures, Spotlight Search enhancements, and a new multitasking feature that allows users to quickly and easily capture windows and create a side-by-side view using them. two windows.
This is similar to the Aero Snap feature of Windows; here you can activate the bar by dragging a window sideways and let the operating system automatically resize the window to fit half of the screen by releasing the mouse or trackpad. It works a little differently on OS X El Capitan, but the point is there.
Unfortunately, OS X El Capitan won’t be available until late fall this year, but the good news is you can use the new window capture feature in OS X in OS X Yosemite right now, thanks to a third-party app. wanted BetterSnapTool.
Here’s how to set it up and start capturing windows in OS X.
How to Get Window Snap Feature of OS X El Capitan
While BetterSnapTool doesn’t provide the full experience as the split view feature in OS X El Capitan, it’s close enough and is a good way to try the feature before deciding to upgrade to the latest version of OS X later this year. , especially if you only want to upgrade for the new split view feature.
BetterSnapTool is an app that sells for a few dollars on the Mac App Store. To download and install it, open the Mac App Store on your Mac and search for BetterSnapTool. It should show up in the results and you can click on it from there (it’s been displaying on my Mac since I’ve already installed it).
Next, run the app and you will instantly be greeted with the settings pane where you can change the options and tweak the BetterSnapTool to your liking. In fact, the tool has only one settings window. Otherwise, you can close it and BetterSnapTool will run in the background and not get in the way. You can even disable the menu bar icon if you want.
First off, one of the first settings you need to make sure is enabled is that BetterSnapTool should launch every time you start your Mac. This can be found at the bottom of the tab and there should be a checkbox for it that you can select.
BetterSnapTool lets you snap windows in a number of different ways, including left or right so they automatically resize to fit half of the screen. You can also snap a window to the top of the screen to automatically resize it to fit the entire screen.
You can even snap windows to the top or bottom corners so they resize to fit a quarter of the screen in the specific area you’re pasting. You can enable or disable any of these additional features from the tab.
There are a number of advanced settings you can mess with, but for most users you don’t need to bother with them. You really only have to worry about the tab.
But in the advanced settings, you can change the appearance of the additional highlighter and even take advantage of secondary actions with the Close, Minimize and Maximize buttons in the upper left corner of windows.
If you have a MacBook and want to add some more features to the trackpad, there is a tool from the same developers called BetterTouchTool that lets you add all kinds of custom swipes and taps to the Mac trackpad. It also comes with window snapping features that you can find in BetterSnapTool, so if you’re the type who likes to combine features in as few apps as possible, BetterTouchTool essentially kills two birds with one stone.
BetterTouchTool is not available on the Mac App Store, but you can: free download from the application’s website.
