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Comment by skohan | Hacker News Reader

> Screen density and pixels have improved dramatically in that time frame, we have larger screens, more resolution, and retina display

I'm typing this on a new 13" MacBook Air, and the screen is pretty small! don't know if BigSur is optimized for a 27" iMac display, but on a small laptop, I certainly feel like the decreased UI density feels like a hindrance.

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One of my minor bugbears with macOS since Yosemite has been changing the green button from zoom to full screen.

I just don't use full screen mode much. On my 25" displays the only application that gets kept full screen is my IDE. I don't need a dedicated button that slowly animates the window to fullscreen if I accidentally click it.

Speculating here, but given that most people using a mac are looking at a 13" screen, it seems like this change was made to benefit them. And that's fair enough, but why can't there be a toggle in the system preferences to change it?

macOS has some preferences like this, but they all seem to be things grandfathered in from the old days. Future updates that change things like the green button or Mission Control don't get any preferences to tweak behaviour and it's so frustrating.

It bugged me too. If you hold down option, you get the old behavior.

Yeah I feel like I want fullsreen almost never. Even on a 13" laptop, almost all of my workflows involve having at least two applications open and at least occasionally having both of them visible at the same time

Which is often not the case for a writer, a video editor, an electronic musician, and many other jobs...

You can have two apps in full screen mode side by side

I personally really enjoy full screen mode when using my laptop undocked

ummm, how? When I hit the green button for full screen, it takes over the screen like a Spaces screen. How are you able to have side by side full screen of 2 apps. That seems like you are breaking the definition of the word full. If 2 apps are "full" screen side by side, you either have "half" screen views or 2 monitors.

Open Mission Control and drag a window into an already full screen application. You can also drag two windows in a new full screen space, or drag a full screen space into another to merge them.

Press and hold the "full screen" button and you'll get the option to go full screen with 2 apps.

this was unknown to me. thanks for sharing

Of course! Holding Option and clicking on it gives you the older "Zoom" functionality too!

Full screen and split screen have become my default modes of using almost everything on macOS. It's a pleasant, generally better focused, way of interacting. I just wish it were richer like the tiling WMs I used on Linux. Maybe not as useful on a laptop (due to screen size and my aging eyes), but when attached to a high res monitor it would be nice to be able to split the screen into quarters, at least, instead of halves.

This is also what I generally want and we're not alone. There are a few active projects to facilitate this. Personally I like <ahref=https://freemacsoft.net/tiles/">Tiles</a>

This continually drives me nuts, especially watching people from windows use macs. They want to get normal maximize behavior to not have to manually size a window, and instead get thrown into fullscreen. This causes an immediate wtf moment, asking me how to undo it, and then living with a tiny little window. sigh

Tell them to double click the title bar of the window. This will maximize it for most windows, similar behavior to what they should be familiar with in Windows on that front at least. Sometimes this results in a "smart" maximization, like if it's a PDF in Preview it'll take all the vertical space it can get, but won't widen if it's in a single page view beyond what's needed. You can also hover over the edges (left/right, or top/bottom) until you get the double arrow cursor and double click to extend in horizontally or vertically, again just like Windows offers there.

I agree with the annoyance at the change.

I would recommend BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai/) to get back the ability to maximize windows with a click. Also you can drag windows to the right or left of the screen, and it resizes to half the screen. Wonderful to put two applications side by side.

You can still double click on the app’s menu bar to have it expand to fill the screen

Double-click a blank part of an apps’ title bar, yes. Or hold down the option key and click the green button, for apps that don’t support this due to a custom layout. Still not every app scales as you might want it to, but it’s the old behaviour restored, just behind an option key…

Just in case you weren't already aware, you can hold Option when you click on the green + and it'll Zoom instead of going full screen. I'm the same way as you in that I don't really use full screen too much but I can understand that most people prefer their browser and email and stuff in full screen so that being the default makes sense to me.

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