Methods and apparatuses for resizing buffered windows. In one aspect of the invention, a method to resize a buffered window on a data processing system includes: determining an estimated size for a window which has a first pixel image of a first size buffered in a first window buffer; allocating a second window buffer which is large enough to buffer the window in the estimated size; and buffering a second pixel image of the window in a second size in the second window buffer. In one example according to this aspect, a portion of a frame buffer is updated to the second pixel image to display the window in the second size. A portion of the second window buffer, storing the data that represents the second pixel image, is clipped to update the corresponding portion of the frame buffer.