Usage

Moom can be used via the mouse or the keyboard, depending on your personal preferences—you don't need to choose one or the other, though: Moom can watch for both mouse and keyboard activation at all times. (You can separately disable either mode in Moom's Settings. One mode must be active at all times, however.)

Make sure you also read about Custom Controls, which greatly expand Moom's powers, and are usable in both keyboard and mouse mode.

Mouse Mode

Using Moom in mouse mode is as simple as moving your mouse over any green zoom button, then hovering for a tenth of a second (or the time period you've specified in the Mouse section of Moom's settings). When you do, the Moom palette will appear; you then either click, or click-and-drag, on one of the icons to move and/or zoom the chosen window. Here's what the palette looks like:

mouse controller

Using Moom in mouse mode, you can quickly move and zoom windows to half size or quarter size, or move windows to other displays.

A single click on any of the displayed icons tells Moom to move the window to the chosen side, and set it to half the available space at that location:

Restore Restore window to its original size and location. (Only visible after having previously moved/zoomed a window.)
 
Full screen Resize window to full screen size, covering the display. Note: If you hold down the Option key, the full-screen icon will change to the center icon Center window, allowing easy window centering via the mouse. Use Shift-Option to place the window at absolute screen center.
 
Left half These four icons move and zoom windows to each edge of the screen, and size them to take up half the available screen space. (So windows pinned to the left or right screen edge are half the screen width; those pinned to the top or bottom are half the screen height.
Right half
Top half
Bottom half

As soon as you click, the selected action will be performed on the window.

Custom controls in mouse mode

If you've enabled custom controls on the Mouse tab of Settings, then Moom's mouse interface gains one icon:

The small 'person' icon on the left is a drop-down menu. It contains any custom controls you've created, along with (if applicable) a menu item to revert the current window to its previous state, as the revert arrow is no longer available:

If you hold down the Option key, the custom icon will change into the restore window position icon, making it simpler to undo a Moomed window.

One of the Custom Controls you can create is Revert to Original Dimensions. If you create one of these custom controls, then Moom's built-in Revert entry won't show up (but your custom command will).

Corner pin, quarter size: Instead of clicking an icon, if you click-and-drag an icon, you can pin the window into a screen corner, and set it to take up one-quarter of the available space:

Release the mouse when the corner position you'd like to use is shown, and the window will move there, and resize to one-quarter of the screen.

Add the Option key: As noted above, If you hold down the Option key, you can use Moom's mouse interface to center a window. But that's not all; the Option key also provides a quick shortcut for creating quarter-size corner-pinned windows. With the Option key held down, Moom's mouse interface appears as in the screenshot at right.

Just click on the quarter-sized window location you'd like to use, and Moom will do the rest. The first icon, as noted above, centers the window.

Move windows to other displays while Mooming: In mouse mode, you can not only move and zoom windows on the current display, but you can move and zoom them across displays, too.

To move and zoom a window to another display simply continue the click-and-drag operation you use to pin a window to a corner in quarter size—as you continue the mouse movement, you'll see a small overlay arrow appear, pointing to the display to which the window will be moved and zoomed.

For example, here's what you'd see if you had a second display to the right of your main display, and you click-and-dragged on the 'right half' icon:

Moom across displays

As you can see, as the mouse moves right from the icon, and up or down, an overlay arrow appears, and you can choose between the half- and quarter-size window options. When you release the drag, the window will be moved and zoomed to the display indicated by the arrow.

Resize via grid: Moom can also resize windows via an onscreen grid in mouse mode (and in keyboard mode; see Settings help for more details on this). Grid resizing is disabled by default; enable (and configure) it on the Mouse tab of Moom's settings window.

Once enabled, a resize grid will appear below the standard Moom interface, as seen in the image at right.

The grid represents a small version of your screen, and the lighter squares show the size and position of the frontmost window. (An all-white square means that your window will completely fill that quadrant of your screen; shades of gray denote partial filling of other quadrants.)

To move and resize a window using the grid, either click on any individual square, or click-and-drag to move and resize the window to the size and location you've dragged out on the grid.

As you drag across the grid, Moom will highlight the actual screen area that you're dragging out on the grid.

You can change the size of the grid on the Mouse Settings tab of Moom's Settings window.

Keyboard Mode

To get started with Moom's keyboard mode, first read about Keyboard Settings in the Settings section of help. Those instructions will help you enable keyboard mode, and understand its basic operations.

Keyboard bezelGrid bezel

To use Moom's keyboard mode, start by pressing the activation keyboard shortcut you defined in the Keyboard tab of Moom's settings panel. When you do, the Moom keyboard control bezel will appear, as seen in the top image at right. This bezel will remain onscreen until either two seconds pass with no input, or you execute an action that you've defined to automatically close the bezel.

Once enabled in Settings, you can press the activation keyboard shortcut again while the bezel is already onscreen to switch to Moom's grid-based resizing tool (lower image at right). See the Keyboard section of the Settings help for more on keyboard-based grid resizing.

When either the keyboard or grid bezel is onscreen, you can press the comma (,) key for fast access to Moom's Settings window.

In addition to the standard actions listed in the Keyboard Settings section of the Settings help, you can use the keyboard for the following operations:

One-key shortcut custom controls: If you create any single-key shortcuts for custom controls, these controls will only work when the keyboard bezel is onscreen. See the hot keys section of Custom Controls for more information on single-key shortcuts.

Corner pin, quarter size: To place a window in the corner of a screen at quarter-size, first use the defined Move & Zoom to Half Screen function, then immediately follow that command with another arrow key pointing towards the corner you'd like to use.

For example, if you've defined Command plus the arrow keys as your Move & Zoom to Half Screen command, you could pin a window in the lower left corner by first pressing Command-Left Arrow (pin to left edge at half width), then immediately pressing the Down Arrow (with the Command key still held down). Similarly, the upper-right corner would be Command-Right Arrow, Command-Up Arrow.

Move a Moomed window to another display: When you use the keyboard mode's 'move to other display' command, the chosen window is moved without resizing (when possible). But you can also move already-Moomed windows to other displays.

Assume you want to pin a window to the left edge of a display that's to the left of your main display, where the window is currently shown. Activate Moom's keyboard bezel, then press Command-Left Arrow, twice in quick succession. The first press will pin it to the left edge of the current display, and the second will pin it to the left edge of the other monitor.

You can position a window anywhere you like on the newly-chosen display by just pressing the proper keyboard shortcuts.

For instance, first move and zoom a window from the main display to the left-positioned display with Command-Left Arrow twice in quick succession. Then you can move and zoom the window around on that display as you wish, using your defined arrow and modifier key shortcuts.

If you want the window back on the main display, just press Command-Right Arrow twice in succession.

You can also, of course, use any Custom Controls you've created via the keyboard (assuming you've assigned them keyboard shortcuts).

AppleScript

Moom includes limited AppleScript support, so that you can activate saved layouts from other programs, or even write your own scripts. At present, Moom supports two basic commands:

This command will activate a saved window layout:

tell application "Moom"
    arrange windows according to snapshot named "Snapshot Name"
end tell

There's only one changeable value here: replace Snapshot Name with the name of the saved snapshot you'd like to activate.

If you have more than one saved snapshot with the same name, Moom will use the first saved snapshot when called via AppleScript. If you need access to the other saved snapshots, you'll need to first give them unique names within Moom—simply appending a unique counter digit would work fine, for instance.

This command will center the frontmost window:

tell application "Moom"
    center frontmost window
end tell

If you have additional Moom features that you'd like to have scriptable, please let us know by sending an email to info@manytricks.com.