Why am I blocked from dragging windows across screen boundaries (multiple monitors) in Windows 10?

Recently upgraded to Windows 10. When I attempt to grab the title bar of a window and drag it to another monitor - I have two side-by-side monitors - Windows frequently prevents it. It appears like Windows thinks that I want to "snap" the window to the side of the origin monitor and won't let my mouse cursor cross the boundary to the destination monitor.

It appears like this:

Figure 1: Google Chrome is being dragged left across Screen 2 onto Screen 1. When the mouse pointer hits the edge of the screens, a blue circle appears, showing the "snap to screen" effect.

Kivin

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 430

Are the 2 screens the same resolution? I assume you can move the mouse between the 2 screens as expected? – Dave – 2015-08-03T08:14:20.493

Answers

It is a question of speed of your cursor.

If you move a window slowly towards (or do a brief stop close to) the edge between your two screens, your chances that Windows will think that you want to snap that window are high. Then it will block your cursor "to help you".

If you move your window more quickly you won't have this behaviour and you'll barely notice the small circle that is displayed when snapping.

If you move really fast, Windows won't even display that circle.

Thus, avoid stopping close to that edge or increase your cursor speed. Hope it helps.

Mik

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 510

6Use WIN + arrow keys for easy window placement. – Tomblarom – 2015-08-03T09:19:58.267

13What an awful "feature". I hate it. Surely to goodness there has to be a way to turn this off. I have a 4000 dpi mouse and can barely make enough momentum to cross the monitor boundary. – Kivin – 2015-08-03T10:21:28.843

You could disable Aero snap but I doubt this is a solution for you (it disables maximizing a window when dragging it to the top of your screen too). Actually I like this behaviour. While I often use Win + arrow key, I sometimes use the mouse and prior to Windows 10 I was forced to use the keyboard to snap a window to the edge between my screens. – Mik – 2015-08-03T11:41:43.097

5Usability fail in an otherwise excellent UI experience by MS. I've been a power user since Win 3.11 and completely didn't think that I had to drag it quickly. I was actually half dragging it into the other monitor and then picking it up again on the other monitor! LOL! Thank goodness for SuperUser! Jeff Atwood - I genuflect in your general direction! – Matias Nino – 2015-10-06T04:48:52.567

1The speed setting for the snap should be much lower than it is. – mystrdat – 2017-06-26T09:02:52.393

Is there a way to modify the speed at which it's allowed to change screens?

As far as Windows 10 goes, that speed should even be a bit higher than it is in my opinion. – towe – 2019-06-04T17:36:11.603

I'm so glad you said this. I couldn't understand why my mouse would snag sometimes but not others. – PeterFnet – 2019-06-18T20:37:29.253

Win+Shift+Arrow moves a window between monitors instantly, might help some. – samjudson – 2020-01-19T19:05:46.853

The block is caused by the Windows 10 Aero Snap feature. It if you drag a window slowly, it will think you want to snap to the side/top border. You have 3 options that i know of:

disable snapping in Display Settings / Multi-tasking. This disables ALL snapping, including the Windows 7 style snap-to-top-of-screen which you are probably use to. I tried this but I miss snapping to the top of the screen too much.
move the mouse fast. This is your main option that actually works but is as annoying as hell, coz you'll often have to try again a couple of times when you forget to move the mouse fast.
don't drag. use the WINDOWS ARROW key combination to snap windows around, or WINDOWS SHIFT ARROW to move between monitors. Some people seem to like this. I find this as annoying as acid on my face.

The fourth option is to whine to Microsoft about it until they give us an option to turn off snap-to-edges that are inside the extended desktop area.

Also worth mentioning, and even more annoying is there is a few pixels at the top of the screen that you can't drag through even if you move the mouse fast.

How to disable sticky corners in Windows 10

There seems to be a third party app/hack on that page to get around that problem, but no official solution from Microsoft yet...

James Podesta

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 111

1+1 for the WIN + SHIFT keys combination. Didn't know that one. The top-right pixel of the screen is blocking our cursors to help us to not miss the red cross of the window. – Mik – 2016-11-15T09:53:00.363

erratum: if you move REALLY fast the top left / top right pixels won't block you :-) – Mik – 2016-11-24T14:26:42.467

I've tried as fast as my hand can move the mouse and it always blocks me in the top corner. Not sure if "REALLY" is taking on some extra meaning here? :) – James Podesta – 2017-07-11T12:42:20.603

You are right. I don't what I did that day. – Mik – 2017-07-17T09:36:25.157

I am now going for option 1. Yes, I loved the maximize function when dragging it to the top (especially as a combination of dragging it from monitor 1 to monitor 2, as I want to have it maxed there), but I just will use the double click maximize feature and should be fine... Would love to see that they bring in an extra feature to recognize "inner" edges to disable the snapping there ... maybe in Win 17 or so ^^ – BAERUS – 2019-04-13T19:45:43.113

This is due to the "Snap" feature, if you don't like it you can simply turn it off.

Right click on desktop -> Display Settings -> Multi-tasking -> and turn off the top slider.

No more snapping.

Ian

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 133

As @Mik has said, it is all about the speed of your cursor when dragging the window.

The reason you are being "blocked" is because Windows now has "Aero Snap" which, allows any [native] window to be snapped to an edge of the screen. The Aero Snap feature cannot work properly if there is no blocking.

So to circumvent this problem, Microsoft decided that it would be best to block the blocking only if the cursor was exceeding a certain "speed".

Solution: Drag windows quickly.

Also, could you please clarify something for me. In your screenshot, to the left of it, there is an open window which appears to be snapped. That window is on your left monitor right? Is it snapped to the right side of your left monitor? If so, and if you are not dragging the window very slowly, this might actually be a bug.

username

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 21

I am using Actual Windows Manager with Windows 10 and it has settings to replace the standard Windows 10 snapping with your own custom windows snapping features. After enabling AWMs snapping features this is not an issue any more and my UI elements only snap how an where I want them to.

user1243995

Posted 2015-08-03T08:07:52.013

Reputation: 11