How to Center a Window on Mac (Shortcut Included)

Centering a window used to mean squinting and nudging. macOS 15 Sequoia finally made it a command: Center, in the Window menu, with a keyboard shortcut — the window keeps its size and lands dead-centre on screen. Here's the shortcut, how to rebind it, and what your options are on older macOS.

The Sequoia way: one keystroke

On macOS 15, press fn + Ctrl + C and the frontmost window centres itself — same size, new position, perfectly balanced margins. The command lives at Window → Move & Resize → Center, part of the same tiling family as Fill and the halves and quarters — and like the rest of that family, it works in essentially every app with a standard Window menu.

Details worth knowing:

• Size is preserved. Center only moves; it never resizes. Pair it with a manual resize first, or use Fill (fn + Ctrl + F) when you want big and centred is beside the point.
• Undo is built in: fn + Ctrl + R (Return to Previous Size) puts the window back where it was, position included.
• It's per-display: the window centres on whichever screen it currently occupies.

Change the shortcut if it clashes

fn + Ctrl + C is awkward on some keyboards, and a few apps claim similar combos. Rebind it via the standard menu-shortcut mechanism:

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts.
2. Click +, leave Application on All Applications.
3. Menu title: Center — exactly as it appears in the Window menu.
4. Press your preferred combo (say Cmd + Option + C) and click Done.

The Window menu updates to show your binding, which confirms it took.

On Ventura and Sonoma: the honest picture

macOS 13 and 14 have no Center command — the Move & Resize submenu doesn't exist, so there's no menu item to bind a shortcut to. Your options:

• Eyeball it with help: drag the window while watching its gap to each screen edge; zoom (Option-click the green button) first to standardize the size, then drag. Crude, but free.
• Third-party window managers — the various tiling utilities all offer a centre action with a hotkey. That's genuinely the only keyboard route on 13/14.
• Upgrade, if centring matters to you — the whole Move & Resize suite is a Sequoia feature and one of its best quality-of-life additions.

Why centre at all?

On big and ultrawide displays, a maximized window is a neck workout and an edge-parked window is a squint. One comfortable-width window, dead centre, is the ergonomic sweet spot for writing and reading — which is exactly why Apple finally gave it a key.

A centred writing setup in three keys

Center's best trick is what it enables on big displays. The routine: size a document window to a comfortable reading width once (roughly a third of an ultrawide, half of a 27-inch display), press fn + Ctrl + C to place it, then Cmd + Option + H to hide every other app. You get the focus of full screen with none of its costs — menu bar present, Dock reachable, other windows one Cmd-Tab away instead of one Space away.

On multiple displays, remember Center is per-screen: move the window to the display you want first, then centre it there. Because the window keeps its size, the same keystrokes rebuild the setup on any screen you dock into — laptop at the café, ultrawide at the desk, same centred column of text. And if you run the routine many times a day, rebind Center to something one-handed using the App Shortcuts steps above; fn + Ctrl + C is precise, but it's a three-finger stretch on most keyboards.

The rest of the Move & Resize family

Center is one of a dozen new window commands in Sequoia — halves, quarters, Fill, and arrangements all have keys too: the full tiling shortcut list.