Linux-style window dragging in Windows with AltDrag

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Linux-style window dragging in Windows with AltDrag

by Lee Mathews Nov 12th 2008

As the owner of a netbook, I sometimes have to deal with application windows that I can't move because the title bar isn't visible.

Thankfully, a 10kb download has solved this problem for me. AltDrag is free, portable program that allows you to drag a window by holding down the alt key on your keyboard and clicking and dragging anywhere. For the 5mb of memory it consumes, it's well worth carrying on your ultraportable.

When launched, it appears as a system tray icon which you can right-click to force it to autostart with Windows or hide the icon.

By holding alt + shift and dragging, AltDrag will snap your window to the edge of your screen. I did notice that it had a little problem with the Vista start orb, and usually snapped below it. Everywhere else on the screen, it worked flawlessly.

[ via Freeware Genius ]

Tags: click-and-drag, portable, window, window-management

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

brad said 6:05PM on 11-12-2008

this can be replaced w/ a very simple "alt+ [space], m" and then use any of the arrow keys once or twice and the move the mouse. No software needed!

linearmode said 8:36PM on 11-12-2008

or.. you can simply right click the program in the taskbar, choose move, then press one of the arrow keys on the kayboard and move your mouse, you'll notice the programs/window move with the mouse.

kingabraham3 said 8:46PM on 11-12-2008

WinMover uses less than 1MB

http://www.majorgeeks.com/WinMover_d4961.html

koan said 8:50AM on 11-13-2008

MoveMe is 30Kb, uses less ram than AltDrag (a little bit more than WinMover maybe) and allows you to move, hide/show, resize and center any dialog or window on screen. And it's portable, of course. Lovely.

koan said 8:50AM on 11-13-2008

Sorry, I forgot the link: http://www.damnsoft.org/cgi-bin/ghostgui.cgi?nographics=;app=projects;section=moveme

Rocketboy said 9:49AM on 11-13-2008

I use MoveInactiveWin from Donation Coder:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/

It works nice, and it does not even have to be an active window to move. Which is doubly nice.

Stefan Sundin said 10:56PM on 11-14-2008

Hi, I'm the author.
Thanks for the blog Lee, it have brought much needed attention to AltDrag :)
I've gotten plenty of bug reports, some of which have already been commited to the repository.
I've also fixed the trouble you've had with the Vista start orb, it won't happen in the next version. I never experienced this since I always elevate my taskbar one step.
I still got some things to implement for 0.5, but I hope it will be done as soon as possible. :D

Marcos said 2:55PM on 11-20-2008

Nice and tiny. But it lacks the resize via right mouse button hability that many other apps that implements alt moving does.

Good work regardless.

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