Maximized window questions

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Maximized window questions

Hi,

two questions about the behavior of MacOS maximized windows that have puzzled me:

1. What is the exact behavior of getting the minimized dock by moving the mouse below the lower screen border? It seems to be a function of how fast I move the mouse. When I go slow it works better than when I go fast. I can continuously swipe down for a minute and the dock won't show up, but if I go down slow motion, the dock shows up more frequently (not always !?). Did someone use a random generator here?

2. Why can't you minimize a maximized window (yellow button)? This is an action that I often want to do, and the OS forces me to do a two-step click to unzoom with green button first, and then minimize. Ironically MS Word on OSX with their custom red-yellow-green buttons lets you minimize a maximized window.

Thanks for your help!

MacBook, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3), 2017 Model

Posted on Feb 27, 2018 8:50 AM

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Barney-15E

Level 10

112,620 points

Feb 27, 2018 7:37 PM in response to yougoyugo2

1. Bump the edge and leave the mouse alone or continue pushing towards the Dock.

2. It's just the way Full Screen is implemented. Full Screen puts the App in its own Desktop. It essentially exists separate from the rest of the OS. You have to pull it out of its isolated Desktop to manipulate it.

My version of Word does not work that way.

There is no need to minimize a full screen app. Just switch to another Desktop and it goes away.

I've always found Full Screen/Maximize to be completely stupid on both Windows and Mac. Why would I want to fill my screen with a completely empty window. I almost never use an app exclusively on its own.

You can set the Dock preferences to Zoom the window if you double-click on the title bar or border.

Note that Zoom and Full Screen are not anywhere similar to "Maximize" in Windows.

Zoom toggles the window size between a user defined size and the smallest window that will display the entire contents of the window. It was designed to maximize the use of your display space, not the window itself. If you set your user-defined size to fill the screen, you can fill the display with the entire window. For some Apps, like Safari, Zoom will fill the screen from top to bottom, but expand horizontally only to what is necessary.

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