Can I restore previous functionality of the Maximize button in Yosemite

I used to use that feature a lot too. I did prefer the green zoom button and fullscreen buttons to be separate. However there is kind of a work around. If you install BetterTouchTool http://www.boastr.net you can set up a macro so when you say right click on the green button it will zoom (or as I have it, when I double click on the title bar).

BetterTouchTool is really useful, you can get an app for the iPhone too so you can use that to control the Mac as well.

You could also press and hold "Option" on the keyboard and click on the green button to maximise.... 🙂

Pressing alt while clicking should do the trick.

Edit: Too late…

It would be nice from apple to get an option to switch the default behavior of the resize button.

Both above suggestions ARE brilliant! You should utilise both...

Another solution is to double click on the empty space of the top bar of the app... This does the smart zoom.

It works on many native apple applications. Such as safari...

I think apple will make everything function this way soon... And eventually 3rd party developers too...

Darklykoz wrote:

Another solution is to double click on the empty space of the top bar of the app... This does the smart zoom.

It works on many native apple applications. Such as safari...

Unfortunately, there is not much free space left in the title bar of Yosemite-style apps these days…

You can insert space for example on safari (which is one of the culprits of having no space)... Right click on toolbar and click customise toolbar...

Then Drag: "flexible space" into toolbar...

Its not too bad... I mean the little circle isnt that big either.

I think thats the purpose of the Zoom function... If your window is small to begin with... to make it just the right size to see the whole text... And when pressing it again goes back to normal size previous size..... If your window was too big to begin with there is no "smart zoom" necessary... I mean if you wanted an original large window to go smaller... OSX would have no way to gauge or judge how small you want it... i.e. it would be too small to see text anyways... It kind of defeats the purpose... I believe Mavericks functioned the same way with regards to smart zoom...

A previous poster suggested you try BetterTouchTool... This has MANY MANY GREAT functions!!

One of my favourite is I can snap windows to left or right side taking half of screen (or quarter in corners)... This quickly allows me to multitask... Smart zoom can make it a bit bigger when I need it... and smaller very quickly...

Coming from Windows this was a very important function for me that OSX did not have... Better Touch Tool solves this issue... And really has so much customisability... you should try it.. You will never be able to live without it! Oh and its free...

I don't think this has been mentioned and I discovered it sort of by accident.

If you click the top empty grey space of a window, hold and drag it directly into the top Mac menu bar (keep going up if it doesn't work) the window will maximize in the way that I expect it to: go full-height and full-width without being totally full-screen and hiding the menu bar.

Then, dragging it downwards (or even upwards again) will bring it back to the exact same size that it was before you maximized it. It's awesome, when you know that it works this way!

As Darklykoz mentioned, this works with the left and right sides of the screen, to snap at half-width. Maximizing works similarly, "snapping" to the menu bar.

Hope that helps!

You forgot to mention that you need bettertouchtool for this (or bettersnaptool or some other similar 3rd party program)

But yes very usefull. Use it all the time. Much better than Maximise screen green button, because it doesn't go into new space.

That BetterTouchTool is just AWESOME! Why Apple can't make their system with awesome features like this instead of complicating your life changing buttons' behaviour? It was impossible to work, I was looking to downgrade to Mavericks because of this.

Thank you everyone for helping me find this solution!

BetterTouchTool completes me 🙂 I lose OSX dont get me wrong... But I was struggling on a MAC without window snapping... It literally saves me hours on end in workflows adjusting windows... I also love doing everything with my trackpad...

With BTT I can pinch zoom MS OFFICE

I can snap windows left right corners and maximise on top

I use 1 2 3 4 fingures in that order to Cmd-Q (Close window/quite application without the dot... I.e. properly exit)

Those are my main lifesavers... But I can do so much more.. And if you play with it you can customise almost anything very easily.

You can double-click the window's title bar instead of clicking zoom (or option-zoom).

Great tip! This is much quicker than the other solutions, and since you are already using the mouse to click the green button, you might as well just drag the window. Thanks!!