Precise Mac Window Size Control With MercuryMover

September 28, 2009

A big eQuixotic thank you to Troy Stein of TechSmith, the Product Manager for Camtasia for Mac, for indirectly (and likely unknowingly) answering my Mac window resizing question from my last post via this screencast.

MercuryMover from Helium Foot Software is a keystroke-enabled utility that allows you to resize Mac application windows – exactly what I was looking for but was unable to find. Unfortunately it doesn’t allow you to enter specific values – you have to size up and down using your arrow keys – but you can use mod keys to jump 1, 10 or 100 pixels. So there are a few more keyboard gymnastics required than with Sizer, but it gets the job done.

UPDATE: Per the developer Keith Alperin (comment below), you can enter custom window sizes numerically. Thanks Keith! Please pardon my misinformation.

The bad news is this handy little app will set you back $20, compared to Sizer for Windows – which is free.

Troy also points out a handy (and free) way to instantly resize browser windows (Mac or Windows) via setmy.browsersize.com.

Thanks Troy.

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Category Posted in Apple, eLearning Development Tools

3 Responses to “Precise Mac Window Size Control With MercuryMover”

Keith Alperin said:

September 28th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

Hi Chris, you actually can specify specific screen sizes using the “Shortcuts” feature. In the MercuryMover preference pane, click on the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and then click the plus button to add a new shortcut. From here you can specify the window’s height and width (and optionally, its position on the screen). When you create a shortcut, you give it a key on the keyboard. Once you bring up MercuryMover, hitting that key will size/position that window according to your settings.

Ironically, i have a screencast which demonstrates how this works.

All the best,
Keith Alperin
http://www.heliumfoot.com
Chris said:

September 28th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

Thanks for the info Keith, I wasn’t aware of that functionality. I’ll update the post.
Lee Swain said:

October 23rd, 2009 at 1:25 pm

I found a pretty good alternative to this for free on the mac. Does not allow exact resize like the apps you describe but it does what I needed to do (resize an app window that normally does not allow a resize, namely the flawed Hulu Desktop).

http://mindflow.dk/software/windowwrangler/