To split the screen on Windows, click the window you want on one side and press Windows + Left arrow or Windows + Right arrow. The window snaps to exactly half the screen, and Microsoft’s Snap guide describes what happens next: Snap Assist shows thumbnails of your other open windows, and you click one to fill the other half. That is the whole job for two windows — no settings to open, nothing to install. Pressing the same arrow again, or adding Windows + Up arrow or Windows + Down arrow, moves the window into a quarter of the screen for three- and four-window splits, and on Windows 11 pressing Windows + Z opens Snap Layouts, a picker of ready-made grids. Everything on this page is the built-in feature Microsoft calls Snap; it only resizes and repositions windows, and never touches the files inside them.

Quick paths:

Job Keys or action
Two windows side by side Windows + Left/Right arrow, then pick the second window
Four windows in corners Windows + Left/Right, then Windows + Up/Down for each window
Ready-made grids (Windows 11) Windows + Z, or hover over the maximise button
With the mouse only Drag a window’s title bar to an edge (half) or a corner (quarter)
Turn Snap off or on Settings > System > Multitasking > Snap windows

The keyboard route — two windows in seconds

The keyboard method is first here because it is the fastest and because it works identically on Windows 11 and Windows 10, on a desktop or a laptop, with no mouse precision needed.

  1. Click the first window so it is the active one — its title bar is highlighted.
  2. Press and hold the Windows key, press Left arrow or Right arrow, and release. Microsoft’s own wording is to press and hold the Windows Logo Key + Arrow to snap the app you are on, and to keep pressing arrows to keep changing its position.
  3. Snap Assist fills the empty half with thumbnails of everything else you have open. Click the window you want, or use the arrow keys and Enter. If you press Esc instead, the first window stays snapped and the other half stays empty — useful when the second app is not open yet.
  4. Drag the divider between the two windows to resize them. Microsoft notes that resizing one side resizes the adjoining window to fit, so there is no wasted space: a wide editor next to a narrow chat window is a divider drag, not a new layout.

Two follow-on presses are worth learning at the same time. Windows + Up arrow on a half-snapped window pushes it into the top quarter; Windows + Down arrow pushes it into the bottom quarter, and pressing Down arrow again on a quarter window minimises it. To undo a split, drag the window’s title bar away from the edge, or press Windows + Up arrow on a half window to maximise it — the split is a position, not a mode you have to exit.

Split the screen with the mouse

Dragging is the same feature worked by hand, and it is the better route when your hands are already on the mouse or a touchpad. From Microsoft’s Snap page:

  • Snap to side: drag a window by its title bar to the left or right edge of the screen. A translucent outline shows the half it will take; release to drop it there, then pick the second window from Snap Assist.
  • Snap to corner: drag the window into a corner instead, and it takes that quarter of the screen.
  • Drag to the top: on Windows 11, dragging a window to the top of the screen opens the Snap bar — a strip of layout choices; drop the window onto one and Snap Assist offers windows for the remaining spaces. Dragging a window to the very top edge without pausing maximises it, which is the one drag outcome people mistake for a fault.

On a laptop trackpad the corner drag is the fiddly one — the window has to reach the actual corner before the quarter outline appears. If corners keep missing, use the keyboard for quarters and save dragging for halves.

Windows 11 Snap Layouts — three and four windows without the fiddling

Snap Layouts are Windows 11’s answer to arrangements beyond two halves. Rather than snapping windows one at a time and hoping the sizes work out, you pick the finished pattern first.

  1. Hover over the window’s maximise button (the square at the top right), or press Windows + Z. Microsoft calls this pop-up the Snap flyout.
  2. The flyout shows the layouts your screen supports — side-by-side pairs in uneven widths, a three-column split, a large window with two stacked beside it, and a four-way grid among them. Microsoft is explicit that the layouts you see depend on the size of your display, so a small laptop screen offers fewer of them than a large monitor.
  3. Click the zone where the current window should go. It snaps there, and Snap Assist offers your open windows for each remaining zone in turn.
  4. The arrangement is remembered as a Snap group: hover over any of its apps on the taskbar and you can restore the whole group at once, and groups also appear in Task View and Alt + Tab, as Microsoft describes — so an interruption does not cost you the layout.

The number keys work inside the flyout too: after Windows + Z, press the number shown on a layout, then the number of the zone inside it. Layouts are where three-window work — document, browser, notes — becomes practical, because the columns are sized by the pattern rather than by three rounds of divider dragging. A finished group is also the view people most often end up capturing to send to someone else; the capture side of that job is covered in how to screenshot on Windows.

Windows 10 has no Snap Layouts, no Snap bar and no Windows + Z. The same three- and four-window results are still available there, just built by hand: snap each window to a side with the arrow keys, then press Up or Down to quarter it. Anyone following a Windows 11 guide on a Windows 10 machine will stall at the maximise-button hover — nothing appears — and that mismatch, not a broken PC, is the usual explanation.

Split screen on a laptop

Nothing about the feature changes on a laptop; only the screen is smaller and the keyboard is tighter. The arrow-key route works exactly as above and is the method to default to, because it does not depend on trackpad accuracy. Two laptop-specific points matter:

  • Layout choice matters more. On a 13- or 14-inch screen, two halves are comfortable and a four-way grid usually is not — each quarter ends up too small to read. Snap Layouts’ uneven patterns (one wide window, one narrow) suit a laptop better than an even split when you genuinely need three apps visible.
  • The Windows key is always there, even when other keys are combined. Some laptop keyboards compress the arrow keys or share them with other functions, but Windows + arrow is a system shortcut and works as labelled. If your laptop is docked to a monitor, each display snaps independently, and a window dragged across the join will offer to snap on whichever screen it lands.

If the reason for splitting is to compare a document against something on screen and share the result, a split view plus a capture is often the practical pair — how to screenshot on Windows covers taking the picture once the layout is right.

Split screen across two monitors, and on a touchscreen

Each monitor snaps independently — a split on one screen says nothing about the other. To move a window to the next screen, press Windows + Shift + Left arrow or Windows + Shift + Right arrow: Microsoft’s keyboard shortcuts reference lists these as moving the active window to the monitor on that side. Once it lands, snap it there with the ordinary Windows + Left/Right arrow, and fill the other half from Snap Assist. Dragging across the join between two screens is the unreliable way to do this — Windows often reads the drag as a move to the other monitor rather than a snap — so the keyboard route is the one to learn for a docked setup. The display mode has to be Extend (press Windows + P to check): Duplicate mirrors the same picture on both screens, so there is no second screen to split.

On a touchscreen or 2-in-1, your finger does the mouse’s job. Microsoft’s Snap page states that windows can be arranged using the mouse, touch or keyboard: press and hold the window’s title bar with one finger, drag it to the left or right edge, lift when the outline appears, then tap a thumbnail in Snap Assist to fill the other half. Resizing works the same way — tap the divider between the two windows and drag it.

Turn Snap off or on, and fix it when it does nothing

Snap is on by default. If dragging and the arrow keys do nothing at all, the setting has been switched off — by a previous user, a work policy, or a tidying spree through Settings. Microsoft’s route, from its multitasking guidance, is:

  1. Open Settings > System > Multitasking.
  2. Turn the Snap windows toggle On. To turn the feature off entirely — some people hate windows resizing when they only meant to move them — turn the same toggle Off, and both dragging and arrow-key snapping stop.
  3. Expand the Snap windows section to fine-tune the parts separately. Microsoft’s Snap page lists the checkboxes: When I snap a window, show what I can snap next to it (that is Snap Assist — turn this off if the thumbnail suggestions annoy you), Show snap layouts when I hover over a window’s maximize button (the flyout), Show snap layouts when I drag a window to the top of my screen (the Snap bar), the Snap groups display option, and When I drag a window, let me snap it without dragging all the way to the screen edge.

If Snap is on and one particular app refuses — it resizes oddly, or will not go below a certain width — that is the app setting its own minimum size or drawing its own title bar, not Windows failing. A few older programs and some games in full-screen mode do this. Test with two ordinary windows, such as File Explorer and a browser: if those snap, Windows is fine and the holdout is the app.

One more non-fault: a window already maximised cannot snap sideways until it is restored to a floating window — Windows + Down arrow does that first, and the next arrow press then snaps it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the keyboard shortcut for split screen on Windows? Windows + Left arrow or Windows + Right arrow snaps the active window to that half of the screen. Add Up or Down to move it into a quarter. On Windows 11, Windows + Z opens Snap Layouts. Microsoft’s keyboard shortcuts reference lists the same combinations: Windows key + Left arrow snaps the window to the left side of the screen, and Windows key + Z opens the snap layouts.

How do I split the screen into three or four windows? On Windows 11, press Windows + Z and choose a three-column or four-way layout, then fill each zone from Snap Assist. On either version, you can also build it manually: snap a window to a side, then press Windows + Up or Down to quarter it, and repeat for the others.

Why is split screen not working on my laptop? Almost always because Snap windows is off in Settings > System > Multitasking, or because the app itself will not resize. Check the toggle first, then test with two built-in windows.

How do I turn split screen off? Settings > System > Multitasking, and turn Snap windows off. To keep snapping but stop one behaviour — the suggestions, the flyout, the Snap bar — expand the section and untick just that checkbox instead.

Does split screen work the same on Windows 10 and Windows 11? The core does: dragging to edges and corners, the arrow-key shortcuts, Snap Assist and divider resizing are the same. Windows 11 adds Snap Layouts, the Snap bar, Snap groups and Windows + Z, which Windows 10 does not have. On a Mac the equivalent job is done by Split View, under the green window button — a separate system that shares nothing with Snap but the idea.

This article is general information, based on the Microsoft Support pages linked above and checked in November 2026. The layouts offered by Snap Layouts depend on your display size, and an employer-managed PC may have Snap settings fixed by policy — if a toggle is greyed out, that policy, not this guide, governs your machine.