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I have to struggle with the mouse cursor, to grab the exact window edge or corner pixel in order to resize. The bandwith of how far the mouse can be from the exact window edge feels like less than three pixels, which is unpleasantly low.

How to I increase that draggable area?

Preferrably without necessarily altering the window borders.

muru
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neverMind9
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  • Alt+MiddleClick and Alt+RightClick is also an excellent solution I just found, so it is now less important. Would not be bad, however, if I could increase the window corner/edge grabbable area. Customizability is a part of Linux philosophy, and Android just pretends to be customizable (they're more customizeable than iOS, but not sufficiently customizeable to give me the green battery icon). – neverMind9 Apr 23 '18 at 16:34
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    How about trying the key combination of Alt+Space, R for resize, then you just start pressing the arrow keys in the direction you want to grow. – Terrance Apr 23 '18 at 16:45
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    I have the same experience and it looks like it depends on the the used theme. – mook765 Apr 23 '18 at 16:50
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    @mook765 so which is a nice theme that allows you to use the mouse more easily to resize windows without changing border thickness? – DK Bose Apr 23 '18 at 16:53
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    @DK Bose Currently I use NOX-theme, there are some other glitches though, in some cases text and background don't have much contrast, but only a few cases... – mook765 Apr 23 '18 at 16:59

2 Answers2

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Try Windows Manager by scrolling through the themes.

  • Settings
  • Windows Manager
  • Theme

You will notice a thickening or slimming of the window edge as you pick a different theme. Pick one that has thick edge because that means grabbing the edge to resize the window becomes easier.

Ofoe Nelson
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    This worked! I am surprised no one else has up-voted this solution. Thank you @Ofoe. I was going crazy. My default theme was 'Greybird'. This did not work. I switched to 'Default-xhdpi and now have no problem finding the edge of a window. – Gardener Jul 30 '21 at 11:51
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    Thanks for the solution. It would be even better if there were a simple way to customize the theme of your choice to fix this virtual bug. – James Bowery Sep 28 '21 at 17:17
  • I want thin border (like in other OSes, or even like in KDE) but thick 'area' to grab the border – razor Oct 30 '22 at 20:30
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    In Ubuntu Mate 22.04, I opened Control Center, then Appearance, Theme, Custom, Customize, Window Border, Atlanta. This gave me more "grab area". – OldGrampa May 26 '23 at 20:00
  • Moheli seems to have a wider border, too, and the title bar changes color nicely when a window has focus. – Mike Maxwell Sep 25 '25 at 02:52
6

You can not. All maintainers of all Linux distros, afaik, are proud to have them so tiny. User experience does NOT count. This annoying problem has been asked multiple times - no GUI maintainer seems interested.

"Solution"

Alt+right mouse = resize (most of the time)

Alt+ left mouse = move (no resize)

Michael
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    yeah, that's a problem with most linuxes, build for taking screenshots of your desktop, not for productivity :/ – razor Feb 07 '21 at 13:08
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    Well, I do not get the sarcasm part: Grabbing faster would certainly improve productivity. We are talking "grabbable part of window" i.e. mouse context NOT fat bold window edges. – Michael Feb 08 '21 at 20:04
  • @Michael as for the sarcasm part, the problem is that moving my other hand does not increase the productivity in case I use only one hand. – avp Jun 15 '21 at 15:35
  • also using executing Alt-right mouse hold on a notebook touchpad is not easy ... – razor Oct 17 '23 at 23:24