Zonas 0.6.0

Snap windows into zones you define in a text file.

One new thing in this release, and it needs no change to your layout: the top
edge of the screen fills the whole screen.

What is new since 0.5.0

• Drag a window against the top edge and Zonas offers you the whole screen.
  Hold ⇧ as always, push the window up until the pointer reaches the top of the
  screen, and instead of a zone you get one rectangle over everything with the
  word Maximised across it. Let go of ⇧ and the window fills the screen.

  There is nothing to add to your file. It works in the layout you already have,
  including one written long before this release, and in the layouts of anybody
  who has never opened the file at all.

  The band reaches from the very top of the screen down 24 points into your
  zones, and the menu bar counts as part of it. That is deliberate and it is
  what makes the gesture comfortable: macOS stops the window when its title bar
  meets the menu bar, but it does not stop the pointer, so throwing a window at
  the top of the screen leaves the cursor up there — over a strip that no zone
  can ever cover, because zones are fractions of what is left after the menu
  bar.

  Holding ⌃ Control turns the band off for as long as you hold it, which is
  how you aim at the zones underneath it. Gathering builds a rectangle out of
  zones, and the whole screen is not one of them — without this rule, sweeping
  along a top row of zones would keep turning into "maximise" under your hand.

  defaults.maximise in the file is the depth in points; 0 removes the band
  entirely. It reads maximize as the same key, so the spelling cannot silently
  cost you the feature.

  This is not macOS's full screen: no separate Space, the menu bar stays
  where it is, and the window remains an ordinary window you can drag out again.

Installing

On first launch nothing visible happens except a small grey icon appearing at
the top right of your menu bar. There is no Dock icon. Opening it from
Applications brings up a window that explains the rest.

1. Download Zonas
   and open the file it saves.
2. Drag Zonas onto the Applications folder, which is what the disk image's
   window shows you. Do not run it from the disk image or from ~/Downloads:
   macOS would then ask for the Accessibility permission again on every single
   launch, forever.
3. Open it from Applications. A window comes up explaining where it went and
   what to do; there is no Dock icon, and the app lives in the menu bar.
4. Give it the Accessibility permission from that window. macOS does not let
   any app move another app's windows without it.
5. Hold ⇧ Shift, drag any window, and let ⇧ go over a zone. Drag against the
   top edge of the screen to fill the whole of it. Add ⌃ Control while
   you drag to gather several zones into one rectangle. Press ⎋ to leave
   everything where it was.

Requires macOS 14 or later, on Intel and Apple Silicon.

Upgrading needs nothing: drag the new copy over the old one. Your layout file is
not touched, and the Accessibility permission survives, because it is tied to the
signing certificate rather than to the particular build. The welcome window does
not come back on an upgrade.

Known rough edges

• One layout at a time. Multiple layouts and rules that pick a layout per
  monitor — including monitors that are not plugged in — come after that.
• The editor cuts and moves zones. It cannot yet type exact numbers, draw a free
  overlapping zone, or manage layouts; the file does all three. It does not draw
  the maximise band either — it edits zones, and the band is not one.
• Starting a drag on top of a modal sheet moves the window behind it instead of
  doing nothing.
• Pinning the ⌘Tab switcher needs the Dock at the bottom of the screen, and it
  will say so if yours is not.
• Everything here was measured on one Mac with two screens. If something behaves
  oddly on a different multi-monitor desk, that is the most likely place for it.

Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.