top minimize, maximize & close buttons aren't working but only for mac apps in the background

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Etrecheck – System Information

When you create a new account, it gets set to a default state of various plist preferences files. Then when you try this new account and things all of a sudden work, you can pretty much determine the culprit causing the problem is some plist file that is either corrupted in some way or has some setting that is causing the problem. It simply eliminates the need to look at system problems and lets you narrow it down to just what is wrong with a single user. It doesn't solve the problem, unfortunate, but eliminating a system issue makes it a lot clearer where the problem lies.

So, if you spend a minute to create the new account and then log out of the old account and into the new and things all of a sudden work fine, then think of all the time you'll have saved 😉

Good luck...

If only you had done this when first asked - would have saved you and us all a lot of time. Please remember this second account trick for any future weird problems. It really is the thing to do first for really weird stuff like this.

The thing about all those plist files - there are a lot of them and control all kinds of settings. Some apps may not even run if things like license numbers and such are squirreled away in them.

But, now that you have a pretty good case for a corrupt plist file, I would start by booting up in single user mode by using Command+s. Do you have everything on the one internal drive (system and all your /Users files)? If so, then just follow the instructions that are on your screen to do a "fsck" and then mount the boot volume so it's writable.

Then, do the following (all these are Terminal commands and substitute your real user name that is bad for "yourusername"):

cd /Users/yourusername/Library

mv Preferences Preferences.bogus

sync ; sync ; sync

reboot

Don't forget, that you're the "root" user and you can do some real harm if you give a wrong command so be very careful and ask first if you're not clear about anything.

The system will reboot, and you can try to login in. The OS will recreate the Preferences folder and populate with defaults but things will behave differently than you're used to - some in minor ways and some in major ways. If everything works OK, then you can try copying the Preferences over from the bogus folder to the real Preferences folder in some ordered fashion being very careful of putting them in exactly the right place. If you don't understand how to do this, then ask and can give some hints. It's gonna be time consuming as you need to logout and back in and try and find the plist file that is the culprit every time you copy a plist file or group of them.

If you're happy with the way things work with the new set of default preferences you have, then you might not want to even bother finding out what the problem was, but that has to be your decision.

Now the bad news, if it wasn't something in one of the files in your ~/Library/Preferences folder that was causing the problem, then you need to undo moving the Preferences folder (reboot back to single user and do the reverse) and start looking for other places to do something similar - places like ~/Library/Containers or ~/Library/Application Support and on and on. That gets to be a giant pain in the rear. So lets hope you get lucky...

Ask questions if something isn't clear and be careful in single user mode. You really can do some bad things if you're not careful.

Good luck...

ps -- if anyone else sees any problem with this method please speak up. I've never had to do this but seems that it should work. In fact I think rywag should try the method out first on the second user account first before trying it out on your real problem account. The idea being that if there are any side affects that are big problems you will find out about them in the second account rather than the real account. Make sure you have a full backup in case you have to restore anything and double check it's integrity before doing any of this.

The procedure with moving the Preferences in the second account (not the problem one) was merely to see that nothing bad happened when you move that Preferences folder. Wasn't meant to fix the problem, just make sure it didn't get worse.

Good luck...

The problem is in one of your personal files, not a system file. If it were something in the system, then the second account would have the same problem. So the install served no real purpose. A clean OS install will also make no difference if you restore the bad user account since that is where the problem seems to lie.

Have another idea - long shot but is easy to try. Do the following in a Terminal window for each of the "bad" and "good" user accounts:

defaults read | grep -i window | grep -i min

defaults read | grep -i window | grep -i max

The idea is that there is some setting in some plist in some location that is making some of the app windows minimize and maximize requests behave oddly, so guessing that the setting would have the words "window" and "min" or "window" and "max". Compare the results of the two commands for each of the good and bad accounts and see if there are any differences. If this turns up nothing of consequence try "window" and "back" or "window" and "under", or other keyword combinations that make sense.

Does this seem like it might provide some useful information?

You might also pose this question of what event type could possibly account for this sort of odd window behavior in the Apple Developer forum. In other words what would need to happen if you wanted to see this sort of behavior? I'm not very familiar with app development, so perhaps someone who is might be able to give a clue.

Good luck...

Well, I said it was a long shot.

But I think if you look closely you will hopefully spot something that looks like it might be applicable. Another thing you should do now is to save the defaults to a file for the working account. Then if the same behavior ever shows it's ugly head on this other account, you can save the defaults and do a diff and see if you spot a difference. See above comments for how to do this.

Another idea is to try and install the Xtra Finder app and see if that breaks things again - but do it to another test account, not the one that is now working OK.

Good luck...

Hmm.. not here. Mine has always closed or minimized windows in the background. In this screenshot my TextEdit window is in the background yet when I mouse over it the buttons become active.

rywag wrote:

is there a way to delete or/and reinstall specific apple apps?

Only by reinstalling Sierra or running the combo update.

Download macOS Sierra 10.12.3 Combo Update

"modes behavior" should have said modifies behavior in third paragraph...dang autocorrect...

And meant to say the 10.12.4 combo update, in case there is more than one.

Good luck...

Thanks for the clarification. I must have misread the question.