Mac Toolbar and Window Controls Not Appearing in Full-Screen Mode – Any Advice?

Hi everyone,

For the past few months, I’ve been dealing with an issue on my MacBook Pro M1. When I move my cursor to the top of the screen in full-screen mode, the toolbar and window control buttons (the close, minimize, and expand options) often don’t appear. This happens in pretty much every app, including Word, Safari, and Pages. It’s also a problem in apps like Obsidian and PDF Expert, but it’s clearly a system-wide issue rather than being app-specific.

This means I can’t quickly minimize or exit full-screen mode using the mouse, and I have to rely on Command-Control-F. While that works in most cases, it’s not ideal since I use that shortcut for other purposes, like adding footnotes in certain apps. On top of that, not being able to access the toolbar in apps like Word or Safari means I can’t easily change settings like font size, formatting, or other options.

I’ve already tried the following:

- Restarting my Mac and all apps.

- Resetting NVRAM/PRAM.

- Making sure my macOS is fully updated (I’m on the latest version as of January 2025).

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Any advice or potential fixes would be massively appreciated.