Was trying to resize a window that was partially off screen. Past a certain point it simply wouldn't let me make it bigger. After some playing around with it this happens both horizontally and vertically, both 10 and 11. The maximum seems to be about the about the size the window would be if maximized. Changing resolution scale doesn't change this. Is this some fundamental limit I didn't notice before? Has it always been like this?
Does Windows have a maximum window size?
- Thread starter Dystopia
- Start date
You cannot make a window larger than the maximum resolution of the screen. Otherwise you'll be in the perpetual not able to close or resize the window depending on where you moved the window. If this was possible. Imagine just making a web browser screen larger then your desktop. And just make the middle of the screen asking you to login to windows.
Yet it is possible to have a window appear that is off of your visible screen, and have to use the keyboard shortcuts to enter move mode and the arrow keys to move it back to being visible (which would work in this case as well). I don't think this is a limitation that was implemented as a security measure; that's just a bonus. After all, full-screen browser windows have existed for a long time and been fooling people just as easily.
It's probably just a consequential limitation, where the OS and video driver simply can't draw a window that is larger than the resolution of the OS itself (total across all physical monitors). Like asking it to put a carpet into a room that is bigger than the room because you like the picture sewn into it.
The max size resolution in windows is 32,000 x 32,000, which is the maximum window size in windows
Yes but the question was about maximum window sizes at lower resolutions than that. It seems like it's the total resolution of the screens in each dimension (although it also takes scaling into account).
Incidentally @Dystopia, when you set a window size, for some applications it gets saved in the registry (when you close the application). For example Notepad uses HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Notepad and the values iWindowPosZZ (position X and Y for the top left corner and then dimensions X and Y). So you could look to verify what yours are coming to.
With my two 2560x1440 screens, the maximum size according to the registry is 4114x1170, but it's touching all four corners of the two monitors. Interestingly, this is due to the desktops being set to 125% scaling. It's actually creating the application window at the lower resolution which gets scaled up for display. When I drop it down to 100%, the size is shown as 5140x1460. I suspect that the extra is 10 on each edge for the border that Microsoft tries to pretend doesn't exist in modern Windows. (It also means it's not exactly 125% scaled since that would result in slightly different numbers.)
When I set the Notepad window to fill the screens at 100% scaling, so it would be saved in the registry, then changed back to 125% and opened Notepad, it immediately dropped it back down to the lower size, and a partially off-screen position. So Windows will NOT allow you to do anything to force it to be larger than the scaled screen resolution.
It's been like that since the win9x days. It's not an absolute though, as you can write some custom code that makes a window larger then the desktop.
I'm pretty sure in the dark past I used Excel VBA to resize browser windows, and could make them larger than the current desktop (I had a 1600x1200 monitor, but ran the code on a 1024x768 screen.) Had to use Alt+Space -> M then arrow keys to get the title bar to be visible again.
Wow, haven't had to do that alt-space trick in years. Not sure if it was XP or Vista where it sopped, but I used t have to move offscreen windows on screen all the time. Or sometimes they would be "under" the taskbar and you can get to them without using the alt-space menu
I still use some Excel addins that can't figure out which screen to display on, or barf when spanning screens with different zoom settings and have to resort to it. MS Power tools likes to use the alt+space shortcut though.
Well at least now I know it's not anything broken. I've actually forgotten what I was trying to do, so it's that much of a problem. I think I was trying to resize an explorer window so I could read some really long filenames at really high scaling factors on my tv pc .
If you hover over a file in explorer a tooltip will appear with the full filename.
Yeah, I know, but I needed to be able to read filenames while actively doing something else. Having to mouse over files would have slowed me down, though probably not as much as trying to get everything arranged the way I wanted. And while I'm complaining about this I might as well say that Windows could really stand to steal the way list view works in Mac OS. Being able to drill down the folder hierarchy without opening anything by clicking the disclosure triangles is super convenient and I miss it greatly. Only other place I've found that function is in Caja on Linux, and that implementation is inferior because it doesn't remember subfolder open state when you close the window. The Mac implementation not only remembers state, but it's even preserved when you open that folder on a completely different Mac. I can have a Power Mac running OS 9 open a folder on a network share over AFP and then open it on an M4 Mini running macOS 15 over SMB and have the folder state preserved, and vice versa. Why can no one else do this? And no, the Explorer sidebar doesn't count because it only shows folders and not also files.
Have you seen the amount of metadata crap that macOS leaves behind on non-Mac file systems? It's nice Apple has put the effort in but good lord there's always so many .DS_Store and .<file> after a Mac has touched a file server or USB stick.
Personally I hate the way Mac does it, so, good for diversity I guess? I like having folders on the left and files on the right (could do without a bunch of the other crap on the left of course). Drives me nuts trying to navigate a filesystem when I have to use a Mac; just finding where folders are is a bitch. I don't want every OS to just be a copy of the others, and if enough people liked it that they wanted it to act that way on Windows, there'd be other file browsers that did it but obviously Microsoft won't duplicate it.
Remembering stuff like folder state requires that data to be stored somewhere, accessible only to that user but across every machine, etc., which isn't necessarily possible or simple to implement. It works on a Mac because it was implemented early on. And as @Entegy said, requires leaving trash all over the filesystem.
These days, implemented from scratch, it would use a file browser that connects to a cloud account where all that data gets stored along with a bunch of unrelated information about your system that the company can scrape for advertisers. Apple of course already has all that data.