How to Work in Ultrawide with Edge

Never used an ultrawide monitor before? We explore the best ways to make use of all that extra screen space. 

Edge’s 21:9 Ultrawide QHD screen has a resolution of 3440x1440 pixels, which is the same as if you took a regular 2K screen (2560x1440 pixels) and just… stretched it out about half as much again, without losing any of the detail.

This means that Edge has an awful lot of horizontal real estate for you to work with. Although we call it a Ultrawide QHD display abecause of its 1440 vertical pixels, in terms of width it’s a lot closer to a 4K display, which has 3840 horizontal pixels.

Aside from watching anamorphic widescreen (aka Cinemascope) films without letterboxing, you have a few ways of taking advantage of all this extra screen space Edge offers over a standard 16:9 widescreen monitor.

Edge is ideal for multitasking

The first and most common way is to use two windows side by side, where Edge provides a pretty similar experience to having two regular QHD monitors.

While it has a bit less horizontal space than two 2560x1440 monitors would provide, the reality is that most software we run really doesn’t need that much horizontal space.

Think about it. How much empty space is there on your screen right now around this article? Around the list of songs you’ve got queued up in Spotify, the body of your email or the meme channel on the company slack? How often do you scroll sideways instead of up and down?

By cutting down on all that wasted space, you’ll have plenty of room to multitask on Edge, whether you’re copying research from a PDF into a word doc, keeping track of emails while you work or desperately trying to procrastinate.

Many ultrawide monitor users ultimately end up deciding to split their screen between three programs, such as a chat window, a document and a web browser.

On Windows, you can snap windows to occupy a third of the screen by dragging the window up to the top centre of the screen and mousing over the picture of three vertical rectangles. For additional features like saving desktop layouts and setting custom shortcuts for easy access, you can download Microsoft’s FancyZones utility.

macOS doesn’t support triple window snapping out of the box, so if this ends up being your favourite way to arrange the screen, you’ll want to download a program like Rectangle for macOS, which let you save desktop layouts and set custom shortcuts for quick rearranging.  

Edge is perfect for working wide

The other way people take advantage of ultrawide screens like Edge is to use them in workflows that involve the rare program designed around horizontal, instead of vertical working space.

An example you’re probably all too familiar with would be the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that goes way beyond Z and moves into the AA, AB and AC columns. With Edge, you can see almost twice as many columns at once when compared to a Full HD monitor, making it easier to compare data or navigate expansive spreadsheets.

Lots of project management tools, especially those depicting timelines with Gantt charts such as Jira, Monday or Microsoft Project, can provide a better holistic understanding your project with extra horizontal real estate.

Edge’s ultrawide format is also great for more creative programs, especially those with long timelines as such as video editing in Adobe Premiere or arranging a track in Ableton Live, giving you access to more of your project on screen without scrolling around.

Ultrawide even gives you 33% more space for tabs in Chrome or Safari, making it the aspect ratio of choice for those of us who would sooner restart the computer than tidy up our browser.

Excited by all the possibilities of an ultrawide monitor? Click here to find out more about Edge.