3 ms·

And if you hold option (alt) when dragging left or right, it will mirror the drag on the opposite side, so you can quickly expand or contract the window size

dymk 4y ago
This is incredible, thank you for posting this. A few things I've discovered after playing with this for a few minutes: It works for the corners too - option+drag the corner of a window, and the whole thing resizes symmetrically. Hold shift and it preserves the aspect ratio of the window Double click + holding option on an edge will expand both edges to full screen size You can hold and release option / shift while dragging and it'll work as you'd expect.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  Wait... you can actually maximise without going full screen? I thought Apple would never back down on that - I use a third-party app to do this usually. If there's a similar thing to let me make a window full height and half width, and to center a window, I can get rid of that app altogether...
  - dymk 4y ago
    That seems to be the case! Double clicking on an edge will cause it to expand to the edge of the window. The shift + option trick doesn't just expand to the first edge it hits, it looks like both edges expand as much as possible. So when combined with double clicking on a window corner, that makes all for edges expand to display size (even if the window was partially off the monitor).
  - imadethis 4y ago
    You can also double click the title bar, or option-click the green full screen button to maximize to the current window.
    - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
      For me, double-clicking the title bar minimizes a window.
      - imadethis 4y ago
        That’s a specific setting, under Settings > Dock & Menu Bar > Double-click a window’s title bar to zoom | minimize. It should default to zoom on a fresh install.
        oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
        Excellent, thanks — that's very helpful! It's not quite perfect — it does the old 'make it big, but not as big as possible' behaviour that macOS used to do, but that seems to be app-specific, so it actually does what I want for some things.
  - philistine 4y ago
    Holding Option when clicking the green maximize button will expand the window without entering full screen mode. You know you're doing it right if the glyph inside the button turns from two triangles to a plus sign.
    - philsnow 4y ago
      When I do this with for instance a Finder window, it just "zooms" it. You can get the same effect if you go to the Window menu -> Zoom. "zoom"ing tells macos to make the window fit the content that's inside of it, however the app feels like doing that, even if you damn well just want the window to be as big as it can be. BUT, option + double-clicking any window corner will actually make even a Finder window take up the whole visible space of the screen without being "maximized" (without creating a new screen / workspace). (double-clicking any corner will make the window expand all the way towards the corner you've clicked; if you have a finder window in the middle of the screen and you double-click the NE corner, it'll get bigger in the N and E directions until it hits the menu bar + the right edge of the screen. similarly, double-clicking any edge will make the window expand all the way to the border of the screen in the direction of the edge you clicked, and option + double-clicking an edge makes it grow both in that direction and the opposite.) completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
      - lwkl 4y ago
        > completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind. I just found out that Apple has a pretty neat guide on all of this [1]. That you can find by googling or searching the builtin system help. I never looked at the system help before, but it looks like Apple did a good job documenting these features. Maybe I should start to RTFM for my OS... I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better. It makes sense that there isn't a button for these commands, but if there isn't you need a manual or a tutorial and who is going to look at these? Maybe someone smarter has a better idea on how to solve this. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windows-mchlp2469/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windo...
- divbzero 4y ago
  And, apparently, double click on an edge without holding any keys will expand just that edge out as far as possible.
_moof 4y ago
By convention on Macs option more generally means "anchor at the center." The selection tool in a proper Mac graphics program, for example, will pin the center of the selection to the point where you clicked instead of pinning a corner there. Resizing shapes in a well-made diagramming app behaves this way too. Been this way since the '80s.
scelerat 4y ago
There are some paradigms like this option-drag-resizes-both-sides one which have antecedents at least as far back as MacDraw circa 1984.
outworlder 4y ago
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH OMG THANK YOU This is amazing. Over a decade using OSX and I never knew this

dymk 4y ago

This is incredible, thank you for posting this. A few things I've discovered after playing with this for a few minutes: It works for the corners too - option+drag the corner of a window, and the whole thing resizes symmetrically. Hold shift and it preserves the aspect ratio of the window Double click + holding option on an edge will expand both edges to full screen size You can hold and release option / shift while dragging and it'll work as you'd expect.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
Wait... you can actually maximise without going full screen? I thought Apple would never back down on that - I use a third-party app to do this usually. If there's a similar thing to let me make a window full height and half width, and to center a window, I can get rid of that app altogether...
- dymk 4y ago
  That seems to be the case! Double clicking on an edge will cause it to expand to the edge of the window. The shift + option trick doesn't just expand to the first edge it hits, it looks like both edges expand as much as possible. So when combined with double clicking on a window corner, that makes all for edges expand to display size (even if the window was partially off the monitor).
- imadethis 4y ago
  You can also double click the title bar, or option-click the green full screen button to maximize to the current window.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    For me, double-clicking the title bar minimizes a window.
    - imadethis 4y ago
      That’s a specific setting, under Settings > Dock & Menu Bar > Double-click a window’s title bar to zoom | minimize. It should default to zoom on a fresh install.
      - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
        Excellent, thanks — that's very helpful! It's not quite perfect — it does the old 'make it big, but not as big as possible' behaviour that macOS used to do, but that seems to be app-specific, so it actually does what I want for some things.
- philistine 4y ago
  Holding Option when clicking the green maximize button will expand the window without entering full screen mode. You know you're doing it right if the glyph inside the button turns from two triangles to a plus sign.
  - philsnow 4y ago
    When I do this with for instance a Finder window, it just "zooms" it. You can get the same effect if you go to the Window menu -> Zoom. "zoom"ing tells macos to make the window fit the content that's inside of it, however the app feels like doing that, even if you damn well just want the window to be as big as it can be. BUT, option + double-clicking any window corner will actually make even a Finder window take up the whole visible space of the screen without being "maximized" (without creating a new screen / workspace). (double-clicking any corner will make the window expand all the way towards the corner you've clicked; if you have a finder window in the middle of the screen and you double-click the NE corner, it'll get bigger in the N and E directions until it hits the menu bar + the right edge of the screen. similarly, double-clicking any edge will make the window expand all the way to the border of the screen in the direction of the edge you clicked, and option + double-clicking an edge makes it grow both in that direction and the opposite.) completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
    - lwkl 4y ago
      > completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind. I just found out that Apple has a pretty neat guide on all of this [1]. That you can find by googling or searching the builtin system help. I never looked at the system help before, but it looks like Apple did a good job documenting these features. Maybe I should start to RTFM for my OS... I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better. It makes sense that there isn't a button for these commands, but if there isn't you need a manual or a tutorial and who is going to look at these? Maybe someone smarter has a better idea on how to solve this. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windows-mchlp2469/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windo...
divbzero 4y ago
And, apparently, double click on an edge without holding any keys will expand just that edge out as far as possible.

_moof 4y ago

By convention on Macs option more generally means "anchor at the center." The selection tool in a proper Mac graphics program, for example, will pin the center of the selection to the point where you clicked instead of pinning a corner there. Resizing shapes in a well-made diagramming app behaves this way too. Been this way since the '80s.

scelerat 4y ago

There are some paradigms like this option-drag-resizes-both-sides one which have antecedents at least as far back as MacDraw circa 1984.

outworlder 4y ago

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH OMG THANK YOU This is amazing. Over a decade using OSX and I never knew this