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Cinch requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
What is Cinch?Screencast
Cinch gives you simple, mouse-driven window management by defining the left, right, and top edges of your screen as 'hot zones'. Drag a window until the mouse cursor enters one of these zones then drop the window to have it cinch into place. Cinching to the left or right edges of the screen will resize the window to fill exactly half the screen, allowing you to easily compare two windows side-by-side (splitscreen). Cinching to the top edge of the screen will resize the window to fill the entire screen (fullscreen). Dragging a window away from its cinched position will restore the window to its original size.
CinchScreencastThumb
If you prefer a keyboard-centric approach to window management, you might also take a look at SizeUp. Use Cinch together with SizeUp to cover both your mouse and keyboard workflow.

Tips
  • Drag windows by the title bar for best results.
  • Cinch works best with single monitor systems as the edge between monitors is difficult to cinch to, but it can be done. Here is a trick to make it easier.
    In System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement tab, you can skew your displays by a little bit, giving a "lip" to easily cinch to.
    Arrangement
  • If you have Spaces enabled, holding a window on the edge of the screen for too long will activate a Space change which may interfere with using Cinch. You will quickly get used to the timing, but you can also change the delay with this handy trick.
    To change the delay before windows move between Spaces, you can either download the free application Warp, or if you're more adventurous, you can follow these steps to do it manually:
    1. Open Terminal.app located in your /Applications/Utilities directory
    2. In Terminal, type the following command all on one line, where 2.0 represents the new delay in seconds that you can customize. The default delay is roughly 0.75 seconds: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 2.0; killall Dock (Warning: Any windows minimized in the Dock will de-minimize when you run this command)
    3. Press return

    To change back to the default delay, follow these steps:

    1. Open Terminal.app located in your /Applications/Utilities directory
    2. In Terminal, type the following command all on one line: defaults delete com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay; killall Dock (Warning: This command is more risky than the command to increase the delay, please make sure you have the exact command before continuing. Also, any windows minimized in the Dock will de-minimize when you run this command)
    3. Press return

Known Limitation
Cinch works with most applications as long as standard window types are being used. Non-standard windows may exhibit unexpected behavior or not respond at all. List of known "trouble" applications.
  • Some application windows do line-based resizing and may not completely fill half or the full screen. In this case, you may see a small gap between the edges of the window and the screen.
    Known "trouble" applications:
    • MacVim
    • Terminal
    • Xslimmer
  • Some application windows resize, but the inner content becomes garbled. Don't worry, your content is fine, and in most cases you can just manually resize the window a little bit and the content will re-appear. In other cases, you may need to close and reopen the document/application.
    Known "trouble" applications:
    • All Microsoft Office 2004 applications (note: Office 2008 applications work just fine)
    • MacPilot
    • SQLiteManager
    • Tweetie
  • Some application windows have minimum and/or maximum sizes and may not resize correctly. In this case, the window may fall over the center dividing lines or may not fill the desired size fully. Resizing the window manually will give you a feel for how small or large a window can be resized.
    Known "trouble" applications:
    • Dictionary
    • HoudahSpot
  • Some application windows have locked aspect ratios and may not resize correctly. In this case, the window may not fill the desired size fully. Resizing the window manually will give you a feel for how the aspect ratio is locked.
    Known "trouble" applications:
    • Chess
    • DVDPlayer
    • QuickTime
  • Some application windows are not resizable using Universal Access (Accessibility). In this case, the window can not be cinched.
    Known "trouble" applications:
    • Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe applications
    • Parallels Desktop in Coherence View
    • Seesmic Desktop
    • Stickies
    • VirtualBox
    • VMWare Fusion in Unity View
    • X11
  • Please report any applications that behave strangely so we can continue to improve Cinch


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