SpaceShift

Windows treats all your monitors as one big surface, and there is no way to keep a moving window inside one monitor. Without help, the windows scrolling through your main screen would constantly show up on your other monitors. So while SpaceShift runs, it covers your other monitors automatically and hides the passing windows behind the cover. Your main screen is SpaceShift's workspace; your other monitors stay calm.

Works by position, with no hotkey. Scroll your view all the way to the edge that touches that monitor and that side opens up. The cover stays on, but now your mouse can cross onto it, and a window you drag over shows through as it crosses, so you can place it there and keep it, or bring one back. Anywhere else in your space that edge is a wall: the monitor stays covered and your mouse cannot wander onto it. In short, a monitor sits just beyond the edge of your workspace, and you reach it by scrolling to that edge.

Not affected by any of this. They stay visible through the cover and fully usable at all times: click, type, move, resize, minimize and restore them as always, and new windows that open there work normally too. SpaceShift never scrolls, gathers or otherwise touches them, never saves them into layouts, and never moves them on exit.

The cover wears a copy of that monitor's own wallpaper, so it looks like your normal empty desktop and feels like home. Keep in mind it is a picture, not the real desktop: while SpaceShift runs you cannot reach the actual desktop of that monitor. Desktop icons there are hidden and cannot be clicked, right clicking the desktop does nothing there, and if you change your wallpaper mid session the cover keeps the old image until the next launch. Nothing is lost or moved: everything is still in place underneath, and the moment you exit SpaceShift the cover disappears and the monitor is back to normal, exactly as it was.

Drag up to increase opacity, drag down to decrease. Range: 50-100%. Double-click to instantly reset to 100%. Applies to the main window only, so you can see through it without affecting dialogs. Plays a short animation on launch, then settles at your saved value.

Turn edge and push scrolling on or off. SpaceShift launches with scrolling stopped and the play button gently pulses, so nothing scrolls by accident at startup and you can arrange your windows first; click the play button to begin. Hotkey scrolling and radar dragging still work while stopped, since those are deliberate and never happen by accident. Turns cyan when stopped. Click again to resume.

Move the view to the center panel. Windows stay in place.

Freeze all view movement. Click to toggle.

Opens the main menu for layout, settings, and tools. Turns white while open.

Collapse to titlebar. Click again to expand. You can also double-click an empty area of the titlebar to collapse or expand.

Hold the left mouse button and move to pan the view in any direction. The border pulses while dragging. The cursor is hidden during drag to avoid interfering with the radar.

Instantly jumps the view to the clicked panel.

The radar shows real window content captured when each window was opened or moved. Thumbnails update automatically when windows change.

Jump Slots are ten numbered view bookmarks. Save any position in your virtual space to a slot and return to it instantly at any time, without scrolling. Left-click a filled slot to jump to it. Ctrl + Right-click a slot to save your current view position to it. Ctrl + Right-click again on a filled slot to clear it. Each slot also has a default hotkey, Ctrl + 1 through Ctrl + 0, reassignable in Hotkey Assignment.

Switches between Edge Scrolling and Push Scrolling. The button shows the mode you will switch to when you click it.

Hide or show desktop icons.

Move the view to center and gather all windows. Press and hold the button to fire, so a stray click never triggers it.

Gather off-screen windows into the current view. Press and hold the button to fire, so a stray click never triggers it.

Restricts scrolling to one axis. Enabling one automatically disables the other. Synced with the corresponding checkboxes in Settings.

Save window positions, view location and jump slots as a snapshot. Overwrites the previous one.

Restore window positions, view location and jump slots from the last saved snapshot.

Show or hide the glow at the edge of the virtual space. Synced with the Show Virtual Space Edge Glow setting.

Show or hide virtual space grid lines.

Restores window positions, view location and jump slots from a previously saved layout file. Switches to the grid the file was saved under, and replaces your current snapshot with the one stored in the file.

Saves window positions, view location and jump slots to a layout file. Your current snapshot is embedded inside the file too.

Manage apps that should not move when the view scrolls (see its own section below).

Save and recall window positions for specific apps (see its own section below).

Opens the full settings panel.

Reassign scroll and slot jump keyboard shortcuts.

Activate or remove your SpaceShift license.

Opens this manual.

Shows the version you are running and the credits.

Controls all view movement. Adjust the Edge and Push scrolling settings, hotkey scroll speed, smoothness and momentum, and slot jump animation speed. Lock horizontal or vertical movement independently. The Edge or Push mode is chosen with the mode button in the main panel.

Edge mode. How fast the view moves while edge scrolling.

Edge mode. How long the cursor must sit at an edge before scrolling starts.

Edge mode. Width of the trigger area at each screen edge, in pixels.

Edge mode. Acceleration and momentum for edge scrolling. Off is instant, higher is heavier with a longer coast.

Push mode. How fast pushing against the edge scrolls.

Push mode. Smooths the push so a jittery hand feels smooth. Off is raw, higher is smoother with a short glide.

How fast the view moves while a scroll hotkey is held.

Acceleration and momentum for hotkey scrolling. Off is instant, higher is heavier with a longer coast.

How fast slot jumps and Back To Center glide to their target.

Ease of the jump animation. Off snaps instantly with no animation, higher is a gentler ease.

Allow horizontal scrolling. Uncheck to restrict movement to vertical only.

Allow vertical scrolling. Uncheck to restrict movement to horizontal only.

Flip the direction the view moves for edge, push and hotkey scrolling. Radar dragging and slot jumps are not affected.

Controls the virtual grid size and visual overlays.

Number of rows and columns in the virtual grid. Changing this clears all saved jump slots.

Show a cyan glow at the edge of the virtual space. Edge Glow Strength controls brightness.

How bright the edge glow is.

How far the edge glow extends inward from each edge of the screen.

Draw cyan lines between the panels across your screen as you scroll. Thickness and Visibility control the look.

How thick the virtual space grid lines are.

Overall brightness of the virtual space grid lines. At the lowest setting the grid lines are off.

When you drop a window near a virtual space grid line, snap it to that line.

When your view sits exactly on a panel, that panel's own grid lines line up with your screen edges and peek about a pixel into the view. Turn this on and those edge lines disappear while you are parked on a panel, for a perfectly clean screen. They come back the moment the view scrolls off the panel. Grid lines away from the screen edges are never affected.

Optional behaviours that change how SpaceShift reacts when you switch, drag, or gather a window.

When you pick a window with Alt and Tab, the view moves to that window so it sits in the center. If the window was minimized it is restored first.

Instead of the view travelling to the window, the selected window is brought into your current view and centered there, restored first if minimized, while the view stays put. The two Alt+Tab options are one at a time, or leave both off so Alt+Tab does nothing.

When Alt+Tab moves the view to a window, the view snaps to the panel holding most of that window, so it always lands cleanly inside a panel.

When jumping to a saved slot, the view snaps to the panel that slot position sits in, so it always lands cleanly inside a panel.

Even while scrolling is stopped, drag a window to a screen edge and the view scrolls there, carrying the window to the next panel. Works in both Edge and Push modes. Freeze still blocks it.

Windows does not allow a maximized window to be moved, so SpaceShift has to un-maximize one to scroll it. With this on, it un-maximizes to full screen size (matched to your screen's work area) so it keeps looking full while it scrolls, instead of shrinking back to its previous window size. Turn it off for the classic behavior, where a scrolled maximized window returns to its previous windowed size. Off by default.

Un-minimize and bring minimized windows when using All To Center / View.

Note on other monitors: Your main screen is SpaceShift's territory. Windows you keep on any other monitor are left completely alone, never scrolled, gathered, Alt+Tabbed or auto placed, and are not saved into your layouts (their own app remembers where they sit). You can even place a window spanning your main screen and another monitor and it stays put. Drag a window from another monitor onto your main screen and SpaceShift begins managing it; drag it back and it is left alone again. Nothing on another monitor is saved, recalled or moved by SpaceShift on launch or exit; only your main-screen windows are.

Appearance and behaviour of the SpaceShift window itself.

Snap the SpaceShift window to screen edges when dragged near them.

Show tooltip descriptions when hovering over buttons, sliders, and controls.

Scales the entire SpaceShift interface. App restarts automatically. Windows and settings are preserved.

Choose how SpaceShift moves your windows and tune how smoothly it scrolls and how much of your computer it uses.

Moves each window one at a time and waits for each to finish. The proven default, accurate and steady. You can switch engines any time without restarting.

Moves all windows together in a single synchronized batch. Fewer system calls, but still waits for the move to finish.

Paces each scroll frame to your monitor's refresh rate so window movement stays in step with the display. This gives the smoothest motion, especially on high refresh rate monitors. Turn it off only if scrolling feels worse on your setup.

Keeps the scroll speed the same no matter what. It holds a steady pixels-per-second pace whether a heavy app (like WhatsApp or Steam) is slowing things down or a high refresh rate monitor is speeding them up, so the speed sliders feel the same on every setup. Off uses a fixed step per frame instead, which scrolls faster on a high refresh monitor and can momentarily slow down on busy windows.

Slows down SpaceShift's background checks while you are not scrolling, to use less processor time and save battery on a laptop. Scrolling still starts the moment you move to an edge, just a hair less instantly. Off keeps SpaceShift fully responsive at all times.

Controls what SpaceShift does when it launches, and how it recalls window layouts.

Launch SpaceShift automatically when Windows starts.

Recall window positions, sizes and view location from the previous launch.

Auto-place managed apps to their saved spot when they open.

Recall the desktop icons toggle state on launch. Icons always reappear when SpaceShift closes.

After your saved layout loads on launch, move the view to the center panel. Windows stay in place.

Load a selected layout file automatically each time SpaceShift starts.

When SpaceShift closes it returns your windows to where they were before it launched, and brings any off-screen window back on screen, so nothing is ever left off-screen.

Restore all settings to defaults. UI Scale, hotkeys and saved layouts are not affected.

Manage apps that SpaceShift should leave completely alone. Add any running app from the list. An excluded app is left entirely to Windows: it is never moved by scrolling, the Gather buttons, or Alt+Tab, nor by any layout, snapshot, previous session, or exit revert, and it does not appear in the radar. Its position is still saved into your layouts, snapshots and the Layout Manager, so if you remove it from the list later it is restored normally.

Save and recall window positions for specific apps, kept independent of snapshots and layout files. Add an app from the Running Apps list, then click its name under Managed Apps to open its detail page. Arrange the app's windows the way you want, then click Save Current App Layout For [NxN] to store them for the current grid size. The app will go to its saved spot automatically when it opens. Click Reload App Layout Now to place its open windows immediately. Each grid size keeps its own layout, and each app window is saved separately. Use Clear to remove a saved grid layout, and the X to stop managing an app. Use Export to File to back up your saved layouts and Import from File to load them back; importing keeps your existing apps and updates any that match. If an app is also in the Exclusion List it is marked Excluded ! and its saved layout is not auto-applied, because excluded apps are never moved automatically. Its layout data is still saved.

Reassign any shortcut: click a field, press your desired key combination, then click Save Hotkeys. Scroll keys, panel jump keys, jump slot keys and the function keys (Toggle Scrolling, Back To Center, Freeze All, Toggle Grid, Lock Horizontal, Lock Vertical) can all be reassigned.

Ctrl + Alt + Arrow Keys

Hold Ctrl + Alt to scroll with your mouse at the screen edges even when scrolling is stopped; let go and it stops. Handy for a quick scroll without pressing Start.

Alt + Shift + Arrow Keys. Jumps the view exactly one panel over in that direction. At the edge of the grid it wraps around to the opposite edge and keeps looping.

Ctrl + 1 through Ctrl + 0

Ctrl + Alt + S. Starts or stops scrolling, the same as the Start/Stop Scrolling button.

Ctrl + Alt + C. Moves the view to the center panel.

Ctrl + Alt + F. Toggles Freeze on and off.

Ctrl + Alt + G. Shows or hides the virtual space grid lines.

Ctrl + Alt + H. Locks the horizontal axis so only vertical scrolling works.

Ctrl + Alt + V. Locks the vertical axis so only horizontal scrolling works.

Open License Management from the menu. Copy your Machine ID, send it to the developer, then paste the received key into the License Key field and click Activate License.

Click Remove License in License Management and confirm. You can re-enter a valid key at any time.