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Comment by Liskni_si | Hacker News Reader

First thing that came to my mind when I opened this: hey let's test if maximization is just as broken as in real MacOS. And oh my god it is indeed! Safari won't maximize to the entire screen, just like in the real thing, and other apps like the terminal maximize correctly. Wow, this level of attention to detail is really crazy! :-)

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macOS’s zoom functionality isn’t broken, it’s just content-size based rather than screen-size based: I like this, but some applications to implement the necessary hints and so it falls back to zooming to full screen.

macOS’s resizing has some useful functionality here: dragging an edge resizes in that direction, double-clicking an edge maximizes in that direction (including diagonally) and option+any of these resizes the opposite side of the window as well. So, if you hold option and double-click a corner, it’ll do a Windows-style maximize.

> So, if you hold option and double-click a corner, it’ll do a Windows-style maximize.

I've used Linux command lines with more discoverability than that. Good to know if I ever need to use macOS, though, that's a nice trick.

It depends what you mean by discoverable: option+mouse action is a pretty standard macOS convention for alternate behavior and “double-click == drag all the way” isn’t unreasonable. The behavior of option+double-click is discoverable by simple composition of these features.

Also, most of this sort of functionality is documented in the built-in help system accessible through the help menu.

(The option+mouse action is also a natural extension of the longstanding macOS convention that control+click == right click.)

I used macOS for about seven years before someone told me about this behavior. Never would've found it, otherwise.

I guess if I had been using it for twenty years I would've known about those old patterns you describe and would've thought to randomly try that key combination.

A tooltip at some point would've gone a long way. Pretty much an impossible feature to discover unless you're a toddler randomly pressing buttons or a greybeard that remembers OS 9

If only there was a website that could provide few relevant links to the “macos tips and tricks” query.

macOS user here since 2006. and i never knew about this or even thought to hold a button and click. you learn something new every day!

Apple Finder engineer here from 2000 - 2006 and would never have guessed about double-clicking or option-clicking window edges. This seems more like something I would have added to the Nautilus code in 1999.

Perhaps more intuitively, you can also option+click on the green 'maximize' bubble to maximize the window.

> macOS’s zoom functionality isn’t broken, it’s just content-size based rather than screen-size based

So it is indeed broken. The fact that it's not humanly possible to fullscreen Safari without Spectacle/Rectangle clearly means it's broken, whether it's what th ey wanted or not.

I generally prefer the content-based zoom functionality. This is a case of people not used to the Mac conventions disliking that Macs don't work like Windows.

And, as I've pointed out, both behaviors are possible on macOS out of the box.

> I generally prefer the content-based zoom functionality

Why? This makes absolutely no sense. It's the same thing as macOS' windows not closing when you close them. It's stupid. They should copy Windows on what makes sense.

Because I use a 55" TV a lot, and it's useful to make Preview or whatever just big enough that I can see an entire page without being too big to fit in the "comfortable reading" part of the screen. (I also like the App/Window/Document model of macOS)

Maximizing sites that take 1024 px out of 1920 or even 2560 px doesn’t really make any sense.

macOS' windows not closing when you close them

Windows’ apps closing when you close their windows is no less absurd. The same for forcing you to either save or discard documents on quit/reboot.

> Windows’ apps closing when you close their windows is no less absurd

???

With macOS’s setup, I can command-tab to any open app (e.g. preview), hit the up arrow and then use the arrow keys to quickly open a recent document. Without the app model macOS uses, this is a lot less convenient, and I miss it every time I use my KDE Plasma Desktop.

If you use the cascading Application Menu widget, Win -- Arrow Down -- Arrow Right gets you to the recent files menu.

I don't want to have any non-maximized windows on my screen. I despise overlapping windows, and I want every single application I run to be full-screen, just like on a phone.

I want every single application I run to be full-screen, just like on a phone.

So run them in full-screen mode. No one is stopping you.

I hardly ever run into a program on macOS that doesn't support full-screen. View → Enter Full Screen, or Control+Option+F.

If that’s your preference, just do it. My comment wasn’t not about you or me, it was about what you get if you choose macos, how it works, and the reasoning behind that. This “I want how I want” sounds like a christian complaint in a mosque.

Use another OS then, macOS is not for you.

Why does it make sense that an application must have windows to keep running?

It's more intuitive for non-technical users, in my experience.

Is there even a pattern behind what gets downvoted here?

Not doing that results in closing everything you can see easily in the GUI but it’s still burning RAM and being obnoxious where you can’t easily see it. If I wanted that to happen, I’d tell it to do that.

Why, if I want to close one document and open another, should it matter which order I do this in?

> This makes absolutely no sense

I don’t understand the fascination with maximising windows, especially web browsers. What the hell is the point of filling my screen with the window when, for the vast majority of websites, half or more of it is gonna be empty margin?

Kiosks/dashboards where the display is what matters, not the navigation.

Centering. If it's not fullscreen, it's hard to center the windows properly, and I hate looking at a floating window.

The Mac has behaved like that since the classic days. This is the platform that invented overlapping windows. They aren't supposed to be maximized, as it's almost always a waste of screen real estate.

You're just used to other platforms.

Then why does basically every other application, including Apple provided ones, work correctly?

They don't? Some applications don't seem implement the content-size hints (or "content size" doesn't really make sense: e.g. iTerm) and macOS falls back to using the full screen size: but, Finder, Safari, Preview, Pages and even MS Word all do zoom the way I described.

Exactly.

On the surface, it may seem as if we’ve reached a common interface for mainstream desktop OSs, that one could use Windows and macOS interchangeably.

But there are still fundamental concepts that are unique to the Mac that always trip Windows users, namely, apps that keep running after all windows are closed and maximize vs full screen.

There’s obviously a common ground that has evolved over the years, but you must understand the platform in order to appreciate its subtleties or you’re bound to be frustrated.

Eh, I’ve been using MacOS as my daily driver for at least a decade. Before that was a variety of window managers on Ubuntu and Slackware. 20 years ago, and randomly when I can’t avoid it I’ve used windows.

But I’m far from a fan.

A lot of just plain silly defaults and UX weirdness gets attributed to some massive usability genius, but near a I can tell (from using all the platforms), it’s just designers making what could be straightforward functionality overly hidden or obtuse because of UX purity and insider cachet with power users or whatever - ending up with changes/behavior for everyone that is surprising and ends up getting in the way for people.

I have actual work to do, I don’t want to have to learn yet another secret handshake gesture in this version of MacOS or turn off new settings to stop it from screen locking me if I accidentally bump my mouse over.

Example - this thread and others like it, or the massive numbers of bug reports and forum complaints on the hot corner screen lock functionality when it came out. and now windows is copying it, yuck.

> You're just used to other platforms.

I've been a daily macOS user for 2 years. Window management on Windows still makes more sense.

Which platform did you learn first? Your formative years?

Best to just install Rectangle app (formerly Spectacle) and use sane shortcuts like alt+option+enter for full screen.

I use and like Rectangle a lot, but fullscreening an app on macOS brings real performance and battery benefits. It's not just fancy for being fancy.

How is this, does it put other applications to sleep or something?

Yes, it's called "App Nap":

Apple MacBook Pro lasts 135 minutes longer on battery in full screen mode https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14947703

Apple MacBook Pro 15: How to get 2 more hours of battery life with this simple trick https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-lasts-135-mi...

Why do Macs have a longer battery life when in full screen mode? https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Macs-have-a-longer-battery-life...

I quite like window management through https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ magnet.

You get keyboard shortcuts for tiling things and can drag/snap to edges of the screen.

For anyone that hates resizing windows in general on a mac, I've found the combination of using a Hyper Key[1] + Moom[2] to be amazingly ergonomic.

Here's a quick demo[3] of what this looks like on my machine.

[1] https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabi...

[2] https://manytricks.com/moom/

[3] https://my.supernotes.app/share/wire+unaware+noble+meadow

Double click the top/title bar to maximize a window, it's easier to hit since you have one giant area at the top of the window to click on too

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