I’m looking for a “center a window” alternative to the ‘view split’ shortcut (Super+left/right) configurable in the Gnome settings. When activated, windows take horizontally half of the screen, vertically all available space.
I often am not a fan of running programs in fullscreen, with the exception of video of course.
This discussion may point you to the right direction: Center windows in GNOME : gnome
There are, as far as I know, no such shortcuts because there’s no such feature in Mutter. Window snapping is to either the left or right half of the screen, and windows can be maximized any of horizontally, vertically, or both. But in all honestly I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to center a window horizontally, which seems like it would just leave you with underutilized space on both sides — I’d be surprised if the community demand for that feature comprises more than yourself and a handful of others, sorry to say. It may just be too esoteric a feature to be offered in the standard/baseline system. (Mutter, like all of the modern GNOME core, prioritizes simplicity over clutter and defaults over configurability. Arguably to a fault, but it is what it is.)
The option to maximize a window (only) vertically does exist, as I mentioned, and there’s a keyboard shortcut slot available to configure that action. I’ve always made a point of switching my Super+⭡ binding to be a maximize-vertically toggle, which I use all the time whenever I’m working in a terminal window and have a lot of output to scroll through. Like you, I have no use for full maximization and/or fullscreen, with the exception of VLC.
Along those same lines, I’ve also always reconfigured the window manager to make a double-click on the window titlebar perform a “windowshade” toggle, since reducing a window to just its titlebar temporarily strikes me as far more useful than maximizing it.
And I’ve had to face the uncomfortable realization, as more and more applications make the move to client-side decorations (no titlebar, and therefore no windowshade feature) that I’m in the too-obscure-to-alter-the-course minority who’ve mourned — or even noticed, probably — the loss of that functionality.
This would help ergonomics-wise with websites which align content to the left - something such as the “old” Reddit design is uncomfortable to use, and Wikipedia to some degree. I could see myself running Firefox permanently in “4:3”-like window size even though I’d lose some useful space (tabs, the bookmarks bar, address bar, at least).
Thanks for the tip, this shortcut at least brings us closer to the solution. Media players of course have their own fullscreen hotkeys (F).