Calculator misalignment issue finally resolved

Jan 24, 2019 10:54 GMT  ·  By

It’s not a secret that Windows 10 version 1809 (also known as October 2018 Update) has been one of Microsoft’s buggiest releases in a long time.

And in addition to critical bugs that caused the removal of user files, the update also launched with smaller issues that didn’t impact the functionality of the OS in any way but which were painfully annoying.

One of them was a misalignment problem in the Calculator app and which was discovered on reddit in late December (if you decide to click this link or the image in this article we should warn you, once you see it you can’t unsee it!).

Basically, what happened was that some buttons in the Calculator weren’t aligned with the others, causing a visual glitch when resizing the window.

And while this is quite a minor annoyance, it looks like the fact that it went viral prompted Microsoft to issue a fix, so the latest Windows 10 Fast ring update resolves it. As reported by redditor Leopeva64-2, the glitch is fixed in version 10.1812.10048.0.

What caused the bug

As for the reasons the whole thing happened, the problem was described in detail by reddit user jollycode in the thread here.

“Calculator is a textbook example of when to use a Grid layout, so there is no way it should happen if it was done correctly. So I did some inspecting, and while it does appear to use a Grid, it's divided into groups instead of being flat. These groups are kind of in a jumble so when you change the window size, they may not snap to the pixels together.

So what happens in the image is that the width of the root grid doesn't divide evenly into 4. The top row is one grid so it alternates between two widths that are 1 pixel in difference (e.i. 110,111,110,111). The lower rows are separated into two grids; the numberpad of 3 columns, and the operations of a single column. Since they are independent, they don't alternate widths the same way as the top row, so you end up with that misalignment.”

You can see the old and the new versions of the Calculator in the GIF below, courtesy of the same user who discovered that the issue has been fixed in the Fast ring.

Windows 10 Calculator bug
Windows 10 Calculator bug

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The misalignment bug in the Calculator app
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