3

As illustrated in this animated gif

this animated gif

There are very few places to drag a window in Windows 10, since clicking most places highlights a button I don't want to click. I drag windows a lot, so I'd like to somehow go back to something more like a Windows Classic theme, or the title bars on a Mac.

Is there a theme I should switch to? I want a "Windows approved" way of doing this rather than many of the hacks I see online for going to Windows Classic, which people say don't work after a while due to Windows updates. For this reason, this post is not a duplicate of this post. However, I did try that hack, and admit that it works well... for now...

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    File Explorer windows have always worked that way. Applications have always had the ability to add icons to that portion of their Window
    – Ramhound
    Jul 22, 2017 at 21:54
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    Perhaps I'm not explaining it properly, but I would just like some help in how to get things more like Windows Classic then. Like many, I find windows 10 to be sluggish in its response and extremely frustrating to use. If you do a search for windows classic you'll see that I'm not alone. Thanks again for any help
    – Tony M
    Jul 22, 2017 at 22:18
  • Your explanation is fine. Your desire to change something that hasn't actually changed is what's confusing
    – Ramhound
    Jul 22, 2017 at 22:30
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    I'm surprised at the lack of an answer addressing the focus of this simple question. My experience on stackOverflow has been so helpful, and I guess I assumed it would be similar with the super user area. Oh well, live and learn...
    – Tony M
    Jul 23, 2017 at 14:23
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    We want to help you, but you limited us, in a way where your question is now unanswerable
    – Ramhound
    Jul 23, 2017 at 15:58

2 Answers 2

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Except for the fact that in windows 10, the control buttons (minimize, maximize, close) are bigger now, the rest of the functionality has not changed.

You can still always drag at the place where the title of the window is located.

Alternatively, there is plenty of software out there that will allow you to control how to move the window.

There are a few windows settings that will help you change the size and thus the area where you can click to drag by title. For example by setting a lower DPI setting, all controls and text become smaller, making the space in the titlebar where the title is effectively larger.

Changing to a high-contrast theme allows you to individually set things as font size. Setting the title font size to a smaller size decreases the command buttons in size as well, increasing the size where you can drag as well.
EDIT: Microsoft seem to have removed the ability to change the font size on the high-contrast theme since the Creators Update. :(

Lastly, if you do not want to change the appearance, there is another method you can use to move a window.

Each window has an identification icon on the top left. If you click it, a menu pops up. The same menu can be accessed by hovering on the program in the taskbar until the small preview window pops up, then right click on that preview window, or alternatively, shift-right click on the program in the taskbar.

In this menu, one of the items is called Move. If you click it, the mouse cursor changes into a 4 directional arrow. If you now press an arrow key on your keyboard, you can move the window by the arrow keys. You release the move action by pressing enter In addition, the window snaps to your mouse. So you can now move the mouse to freely move the window as you normally would. Press left mouse button once to release its grip.

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  • I appreciate the suggestion that "a lower DPI" would help. No instructions on what that means were given -- I assumed it meant changing screen resolution, but every resolution gave the same problem. I have no way to go back to Windows Classic to demonstrate things have indeed changed with a video. Keyboard dragging is of no interest. I just want to be able to drag without searching all over for a place. By contrast, I could not find one program on the mac where it was difficult to find a place to drag a window. How ironic that Windows would become weak in the area of ...windows
    – Tony M
    Jul 22, 2017 at 23:47
  • The functionality has changed though. In Windows XP, very few applications had buttons in the title bar and it was not supported by the native windows theming. The only applications that had such a thing also had to re-skin the entire application window, hiding the default Windows text-decorations. The number of apps that have title bar buttons now leads me to believe it's a functionality of the Windows API rather than complete re-skinning.
    – Sherman
    Jan 26, 2023 at 18:01
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I also find this very frustrating. It seems to be a particularly bad with the Office 365 apps that fill the title bar with app-specific tool buttons and there is no visual indication of which parts of the title bar will allow a drag start.

It seems like the safest place to start dragging is over the actual window title text, which is usually in the middle of the title bar, but sometimes hard to spot among all the other guff.

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