Click twice on mac icon in dock to minimize it

In Sonoma, there is a quick method that lets you minimize an open app. If you go to System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Double-click a window's title bar to. Change that setting to 'Minimize'. I realize it's not the same as MS Windows but at least a handy way to minimize open apps.

I found a way to easily close an app from the dock icon! With the app BetterTouchTool (45 day free trial).

It may be possible to make it minimize by tapping the icon again, but what I did was to minimize when double tapping the icon. Picture below shows how. I also told it to minimize when 2 fingers swipe down over the icon. And with 2 finger swipe up I made it to activate/open the hovered app as another alternative to clicking the icon.

You can play around with it to make rules you prefer. I also added a rule that minimizes the window under my cursor when swiping down/left/right with four fingers while hovering over the window itself (not the dock icon). The reason there are many actions here rather than just "minimize window under cursor" is to make it work for the system settings app too.

If you use swiping triggers like me, I found it useful to adjust the swipe sensitivity in settings:

Cheers!

You can also hide the active app with Command-H. Command-Tab will show you all the open apps, hidden or otherwise, if you hold down the Command key. While holding down Command, tap the Tab key to select different apps.

Wisely, Apple did not consult with Microsoft about designing the macOS operating system, so don't expect similar functionality. Use macOS as it is intended. It is about adaptability between operating systems…

In Ventura and Sonoma, the System Settings : Desktop & Dock panel allows one to configure minimizing an application by double-clicking its window title bar instead of the yellow traffic light, and there is a setting where one can minimize application windows into their Dock icon. These settings are in preceding versions of macOS, but in System Preferences.

I found the solution. Press and hold Option button (on Sonama) and then double click app icon on the dock. It hides the window. Pressing Option and clicking on another app would hide the previous one and only show the new one.

Just to add, if you right or control click on an open app's icon in the Dock, you can choose "Hide" from the popup menu.

The logic is, that’s not how the dock works. The minimize button is the yellow dot in the middle of the three in the left-hand side of the title bar.

I’ve also never had the need to minimize a window in macOS so maybe there’s some logic there.

You can press and hold, then choose Hide if two hands are not possible.

magzestar wrote:

And is there a setting to change it?

No. Nor does there need to be. If you need that function, perhaps you should stick with Windows. That would be logical.

I realize what you were describing is not minimize, but hide.

If you want to hide the app that you’re leaving for the app you’re activating, hold down the option key when you activate the other app.

Any feature or function windows does, on Mac just remember the "option" key OR press and hold on the trackpad.

This is exactly what I'm sorely missing as well. I love the hardware of Mac and the power efficiency of the M chips, but there are still some very important basic things missing in MacOS, that make me want to go back to Windows or simply hope and pray that Intel finally starts making chips that can compete with Apple's M lineup.

Please, please, please Apple, just make it a setting in MacOS that when you click the Dock icon of an open window, it hides. So click once on the Doc icon to open, click it again and it hides. This is a much faster way to quickly check another window/app and then go back to the one you were using before.

I recently bought an M2 MacBook Air just to use on the couch and on the go because my Lenovo 7i with RTX 4090 lasts only 2 hours on battery and gets too hot to use comfortably on your lap. Again, I love the hardware and also the 'solid' look and feel of MacOS, but the Window management is just so much less efficient and intuitive than on Windows. If Apple could just fix this (and deliver window snapping and window previews out of the box instead of making me buy 2 third-party apps for such basic things), I would never have to go back to Windows again.

This kind of Apple snobbery is very unhelpful, sorry. Sometimes Apple does things better, sure. But what I'm saying, and I believe most people here would agree, is that it is simply easier and faster if clicking once on a dock item maximizes/shows the app/window, and clicking it again minimizes/hides it.

If you want to briefly glance at another window/app while working on something and then quickly switch back to whatever you were in before, this is simply much faster and more efficient than having to long click or double click, and then clicking again to hide, or moving the mouse all the way from the bottom of the screen to the top to double click the title bar of the window (especially with browsers with a lot of tabs open, even that can go wrong).

Instead of defending something inferior based on the assumption that it must be better because Apple made it, it is better to acknowledge those instances where Windows does it better and improve. The same goes the other way around, if Windows improves on the things that Apple does better, all of us consumers win.

If you want to briefly glance at another window/app while working on something and then quickly switch back to whatever you were in before,

I cmd-tab, but clicking on the icon in the Dock works as well. Not sure why you need to hide the app.