The 'workarea' property

Read-only, Four-element numeric vector

Valid for: System

The workarea property of the System object returns the rectangle of the usable screen size, in System object's current scale (by default, character units). The first two elements are the Top and Left of the usable area. The third and fourth elements are the Height and Width of the usable area.

The distinction between the 'usable' screen rectangle and the full screen size (as returned by the size property of the System object) is that the usable screen rectangle takes account of any space reserved by the operating system (for example, for the Windows 'taskbar' or the MacOS 'dock'). When creating windows, you should normally ensure that they fit within the rectangle returned by the System workarea property.

Under Linux, the workarea property may return the full size of the screen rather than the area which is truly usable by applications. This is because the usable area depends on the particular X Window manager which is in use.