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These days I work on both Windows and Mac OS X machines. I'm a long time fan of Mac and would like to get some of the UI functionality on the windows machines I work with.

In OSX the menubar is the hard limit for windows, and I like that. Is there a way - some hack, some program or anything - to prevent windows from going up OVER the screen?

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Pitaschio can do this, and much much more:

  • Snap a window to other windows when moving and resizing
  • Restrict a window position to inside of the screen
  • Always keep a window above all other windows
  • Minimize a window to the system tray
  • Use small icons in the desktop
  • Disable Windows key, Insert key, Alt key etc.
  • Lock the mouse or keyboard while cleaning them
  • Take statistics about mouse and keyboard
  • Calculate Moon's age
  • Control the sound volume using the mouse wheel
  • Display the sound volume level on the screen

enter image description here

Pitaschio is freeware.

If you only want the top of the screen to be a boundary, you can use AutoHotkey's functions WinGetPos and WinMove.

To get the position of the active window, and store it in the variables X and Y:

WinGetPos, X, Y, , , A

if the window you're moving goes out of the top boundary (negative value for Y), call WinMove:

WinGetTitle, Title, A ; get its title
WinMove, %Title% , , %X%, 0 ; leave X value alone, modify Y
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Don't count on that autohotkey trick working if your system has multiple monitors that aren't aligned on their top edges. Depending on the exact settings, you can get 0 being out of view on the vertically smaller monitor. (I've got a laptop with external monitor, hence the size difference. I keep the tops unaligned so that I have small 'step' between the monitors at the top and bottom instead of a large 'step' at the bottom. I find this makes it less likely that I'll get the mouse 'hung up' on the step and lose track of where it is.) – Michael Kohne Dec 27 '09 at 18:36
You are correct! By how the question was worded I assumed he was using 1 monitor. But you can also do bounds checking in AHK. Check if the windows position is past a certain X value (on the second screen) and if it is, and the window goes above the different Y value, move it back down. Pitaschio is much easier than wrapping your head around code though. – John T Dec 27 '09 at 18:44
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Is the problem that you can't move the window because the draggable window header is inaccessible? If that's the case, you can move the window back down by right-clicking on the app in the task bar, selecting move, and then using the cursor keys to move the window back down.

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DesktopCoral can do this. You can set an invisible docking bar in any corner on the screen.

enter image description here

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