A big monitor can do wonders for your productivity, not to mention your posture—but after working from a big screen at home, it's hard to get things done on a laptop with only 13 inches of space (or less). If your work is feeling a bit cramped on that tiny display, here are a few tricks to squeeze a few more pixels out of your screen.
Many modern laptops pack in high-resolution panels to make things look sharp—but they don't actually use all those pixels out of the box. Instead, the laptop uses scaling, increasing the size of your icons and text for extra readability and using the higher resolution to keep things looking crisp. Depending on your display, you may be able to get some of those pixels back by turning that scaling feature down (or off).
In Windows, right-click the desktop and head to Display Options. Make sure the correct monitor is selected in the top image (if you have more than one), and scroll down to Scale and Layout. By default, your display may be set to a value of 125% or higher. Knock it down a notch, or take it down to 100% to use the native resolution of your display. Experiment to find what works best for you—you may even find you need to click Advanced Scaling Settings and use a custom scaling value (like 110%) to find a happy medium.
On a Mac, you can turn scaling down by going to System Preferences > Displays, select Scaled, and then choose a setting that offers more space. On a Chromebook, head to Settings > Device > Displays and move the Display Size slider until you find something comfortable.
If you're on an older or budget-oriented laptop, you may not have a super high-res display that allows for scaling down far enough. In that case, you may be able to get a similar effect by zooming out in your browser—after all, you're probably doing a significant amount of work in Chrome anyway.
In most browsers, you can zoom in or out of a webpage by holding Ctrl and pressing the + or - buttons. This won't shrink down things like the browser's toolbar, but it may help you get more of that webpage visible at a time—which can be useful if you want to have two windows open side by side. You can even scale the OS down and zoom the web browser in to get things just right.
Speaking of toolbars, they've gotten pretty large over the years—enough that they may be eating precious pixels that could be used for stuff you actually need. So it may behoove you to hide some toolbars—even temporarily—while you work.
For example, in Chrome, you can hide the bookmarks bar by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B (after which pressing the same shortcut will bring it back). Many office suites, from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, have thick toolbars you can hide by pressing the arrow icon on the very right. And if your app has a panel coming out from the side—again, Google Docs has some share buttons pinned to the right—you can often hide those as well. Look for little arrow icons in the panels you want to hide, or dig through menus like Tools and Window in your given apps to see what you can get out of the way.
Finally, you can hide the Windows taskbar by right-clicking the taskbar, choosing Settings, and turning on Automatically Hide the Taskbar in Desktop Mode. (Or you can turn on Use Small Taskbar Buttons to shrink it a bit.) The same goes for the macOS dock, which you can adjust from System Preferences > Dock, as well as Chrome OS, where you can right-click on the taskbar and choose Autohide Shelf to slide it behind your bezels.
If you're having trouble arranging multiple windows in a way that helps you see them all at once, there are a few shortcuts that can help. Windows, macOS, and Chromebooks all have "window- snapping" features built in: Just drag a window to the right or left edge of the screen and it'll immediately resize itself to take up exactly half of the display. If you drag to the corners, it'll take up a quarter of the screen, so you can arrange four three or four windows together. (On Windows you can also press Win+Right Arrow or Win+Left Arrow to snap without using the mouse.)
If you want even more control, third-party tools like AquaSnap and DisplayFusion can give you plenty more layouts than Windows has built in, plus dozens of customizable shortcuts and other window management features. Both offer limited free versions, though the paid versions are well worth the few bucks for the extra features.
If the above tips just aren't enough, it's time to admit that one desktop is just not enough. But that's OK, because Windows, macOS, and Chrome OS all have a "virtual desktops" feature built in that allows you to slide between two or more workspaces.
In Windows, open Task View by clicking the two rectangles in the taskbar or by pressing Win+Tab. From there, click New Desktop at the top of the screen to create a new virtual desktop. (You can also create a new desktop without going to Task View by pressing Win+Ctrl+D.) Then, you can switch between your desktops from Task View or by pressing Win+Ctrl+Left Arrow or Win+Ctrl+Right Arrow—each desktop can have its own set of windows that you flip between, and you can move windows from one desktop to another by right-clicking it and choosing Move To.
In macOS, this feature is called Spaces, and you can invoke it by swiping up with four fingers on the trackpad or pressing Ctrl+Up Arrow. Move your mouse up to the top of the screen where it says Desktop, and click the plus sign that appears to add a new virtual space. You can then select that new space to start working on it, opening up new windows and swiping between the two desktops with a four-finger swipe to the left or right.
In Chrome OS, the feature is called Desks, and you can start it by pressing the “Show Windows” key on your Chromebook and choosing “New desk.” You can rename desks here, and to switch desks, press the Show Windows button again to choose the desk you'd like to switch to at the top of the screen. You can do the same to move windows between desks, and more.
These can be useful if your desktop is feeling overly cluttered, but neither allows you to see all your open windows at once—if you need more real estate than your one display can possibly fit, your only option is adding a second physical monitor. This isn't always practical on a laptop, but if you have the space, a portable monitor like the Lepow Z1 can give you a whole separate 15-inch display to work with. Or, if you already have an iPad, you can hook it up to your laptop and use it as a second display with Duet Display (for Windows and Mac users) or macOS' built-in Sidecar feature (for Mac users only). You'll have to give up a bit of desk space, but you'll have plenty of room for all your windows.
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