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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

10 years later, and what I would consider a "power user", and I still spend time every day trying to maximize windows on OS X. It's usually a game of hitting the "+" button to see what will happen, and usually being disappointed by the results.

Does anybody know how to maximize a window with OS X?

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Check out Optimal Layout[0]. It's a wonderful cross between a tiling window manager and the normal GUI and something I wish every computer had.

You can bind a single keyboard shortcut to cycle through different possible positions for a single window size. For example, let's say you want a window to take up half the screen. In my case I press F2 once or twice depending if it's on the left or right half.

Another tool to script the GUI is Keyboard Maestro[1]. Almost any GUI action is possible such as closing a specific application on open or moving mouse to x,y. In my case, I set up a keyboard shortcut to activate iTerm (a almost terminal.app) and enter %run<up arrow><enter> to run a python script.

Both cost money but I couldn't live without it after the free trial ended.

[0, 1]:(I'm on mobile otherwise I would post a link; use google).

[0]: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/

Agreed. Optimal layout is great, I can't recommend it highly enough. Watching the video on the site gives you a good idea of all the things you can do with it. Also the developer is very responsive to support questions and feature requests.

I use Spectacle. Full screen is Command-Alt-F. you can also make the window take up a half, third, or quarter of a screen with 1 shortcut. It takes some getting used to, but I find it hard to go without it.

http://spectacleapp.com/

I tried EVERY OS X window management app, spectacle was the one I settled on. I don't remember if I changed my short-cut keys to match Windows arrow snap or not. But OS X window management, especially on multiple monitors was one of the biggest pains when I switched from Win to OS X. At least multi-monitor support by default on OS X is better now days, but they could use some default window management tool improvements.

Here's another vote for Spectacle; shortcuts/key bindings are configurable and the ability to segment your available screen into grids is something I can't live without anymore.

I use Spectacle with alt+cmd+up mapped to 100% window, which I tend to prefer to actual "fullscreen" (OSX is weird with fullscreen on multiple monitors).

Do mention that this is a FREE app, which just works! The most of the other suggested apps here are paid.

BetterTouchTool lets you snap windows at the top to maximize. http://www.bettertouchtool.net/

The author mention a great little app in his previous blog post called Moom [1] I just tried and it's awesome! You can resize, full screen, put windows left and right immediately without the mouse.

[1]: http://manytricks.com/moom/

+1 for moom;

I have cmd+period set to activate moom, then just period (when moom is activated) set to maximize.

I use that key sequence dozens of times a day (I also have many others, and custom layouts, configured.. but that alone makes it worthwhile.)

Like most things with OS X, the built-in tools and behaviors are horrible and broken and is fixed by installing any one of a few dozen community built fixes (there seems to be a category of roughly equivalent utilities like this for virtually every single piece of the OS).

Apple simply refuses to fix this basic stuff and I avoid interacting with the GUI bits of OS X as much as possible. At least you can finally resize windows from more than just the bottom right corner, that's a win I guess.

Yes - Hold shift when clicking the maximize button.

https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ works well, but costs money.

Well, classically at least, the + button should enlarge the window to the largest size that fits the content... Hence no Windows-style maximize feature.

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