CTile

A Cinnamon desktop extension that brings snap layout overlays to window management — drag any window toward the top of your screen and a layout picker appears, letting you tile it into a preset zone without touching the keyboard.

How it works

1. Start dragging any window by its titlebar
2. Move the cursor within ~50px of the top screen edge — the layout picker appears
3. Hover over the desired zone (the overlay stays visible as long as your cursor is within 20px of it)
4. Release — the window snaps to that zone

The overlay displays 14 layout presets across three rows:

Row	Layouts
Basic	Full, Left ½, Right ½, Top ½, Bottom ½
Quarters	Top-left, Top-right, Bottom-left, Bottom-right
Thirds	Left ⅓, Center ⅓, Right ⅓, Left ⅔, Right ⅔

Layout previews are drawn in your system theme's accent color and update automatically when you change themes.

Installation

Copy (or symlink) the repo directory to Cinnamon's extensions folder under the extension's UUID, then enable it:

cp -r /path/to/ctile ~/.local/share/cinnamon/extensions/ctile@ctile

Then open System Settings → Extensions, find CTile, and enable it. Or via the command line:

gsettings set org.cinnamon enabled-extensions "['ctile@ctile']"

Restart Cinnamon (Alt+F2 → r → Enter) if the extension doesn't appear immediately.

Development

After editing, sync and reload without restarting Cinnamon:

cp extension.js stylesheet.css metadata.json ~/.local/share/cinnamon/extensions/ctile@ctile/

Then reload via Looking Glass (Alt+F2 → lg) or with:

dbus-send --session --dest=org.Cinnamon /org/Cinnamon org.Cinnamon.Eval \
  string:'const es = imports.ui.extensionSystem; es.disableExtension("ctile@ctile"); es.enableExtension("ctile@ctile");'

Debug output goes to ~/.xsession-errors — search for [ctile].

Tunables

At the top of extension.js:

Constant	Default	Description
TRIGGER_Y	50	Pixels from top edge that triggers the overlay
POLL_INTERVAL	40	Milliseconds between pointer polls during a drag
THUMB_W / THUMB_H	66 / 44	Layout preview thumbnail dimensions
SHOW_ANIM_MS / HIDE_ANIM_MS	120 / 100	Fade in/out duration

Compatibility

Tested on Cinnamon 6.6.7 / Muffin 6.6.3.

Note for porters: Muffin 6.6 passes four arguments to grab-op-begin — (display, screen, window, op) — unlike older versions which passed three. If you see the overlay never appearing, verify the signal arity with Looking Glass.

File structure

ctile/
├── extension.js    — all extension logic (~460 lines)
├── metadata.json   — UUID, name, supported Cinnamon versions
├── stylesheet.css  — overlay and button styles
├── README.md
└── AGENTS.md