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Well, because it has? Hover over the green stoplight, you get a popover with fullscreen options. Press Option and the fullscreen options mutate into snap left

• gamegoblin 3y ago
  I've used a mac for 10 years now, and TIL The Windows snapping UI is much more intuitive, though.
  • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    But also annoying when you're trying to tile some (of a bunch) of windows at full height. Yes, there are ways to do it without unintentionally maximizing, but it takes more attention to detail.
    • ethbr0 3y ago
      Is there any way to static tile in Windows without an external application? I.e. pre-configure a tiling layout of application windows, that will be restored as specified (or at least on boot)
      • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Revert back to Vista or whatever version of Windows had an active desktop and embed applications in the HTML file used as the active desktop? Beats the heck out of me.
      • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Windows PowerToys are technically external applications, but they are made by Microsoft. Perhaps a startup script in conjunction with the FancyZones utility could do what you want. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon...
    • kitsunesoba 3y ago
      Windows-style snapping can also be extremely irritating with how easily accidental snap-proposals are triggered when moving around windows that you don't want snapped or maximized. I would say that when using Windows (or Linux DE with similar snap proposal UX) the bulk of proposals triggered are unintentional. In aggregate it's a surprising amount of unnecessary noise. This is why on macOS I prefer utilities like Moom, which tucks snap options behind a little popup that replaces the native macOS zoom button hover popup. It gives me snapping on the odd occasion it's actually useful without the spammy accidentally triggered border zoom animations that come with Windows snapping.
      • SpikeMeister 3y ago
        I don’t have the same experience. Is your mouse sensitivity turned up very high?
  • dbbk 3y ago
    This is totally undiscoverable, I also only just realised.
• saghm 3y ago
  The only Apple device I use is the laptop I was given for work, and I've always disliked that the button that would "maximize" the window on other OS instead makes the window "fullscreen" (getting rid of the menu and everything else that entails). I recently discovered that I am actually able to "maximize" by double-clicking the top bar of the window, but I have no idea if this is something that works by default or if one of the various utilities I installed added this functionality. Either way, it seems basically impossible to discover other than by chance; if I hadn't double clicked that area by accident, I still wouldn't know.
  • serhack_ 3y ago
    Works by default
    • 16bitvoid 3y ago
      Yes, but it's not very consistent. For example, Safari will not maximize if you double click the title bar. It'll just maximize vertically.
      • wrs 3y ago
        "Maximize" on MacOS means "go to the largest useful size", not "fill the screen". It's application and context dependent. ("Fill the screen" is a separate mode which the top comment is complaining about, justifiably IMO.)
        • lloeki 3y ago
          That's because it's not Maximize, it's Zoom, which uses content hints to resize the window while not wasting space with useless empty space inside the window, thus still allowing one to see other windows. When there's no content size hint it falls back to what Windows and Linux call Maximize, which is more like a windowed fullscreen mode.
          • pxc 3y ago
• ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Apple loves to hide functionality to the point where it essentially doesn't exist. When I started at Apple as an engineer, the first bug I filed was "Can't resize windows from their edges" (or any corner except one). Just mind-bogglingly stupid. And when Apple finally does capitulate and admit that others have done it better, they petulantly try to hide the functionality anyway. In the case of the windows, there's no window border and the cursor frequently fails to change to the "resizing" one. In the case of two-button mice, Apple came out with a mouse that hid the second button and in fact was nearly unusable because the entire shell was the button so you couldn't lift the mouse and keep the button held to continue a scroll. And on and on. Oh, and then Apple added Alt-Tab-style app switching... but it's often useless because when you Command-Tab to an app, Apple doesn't restore its window. It remains minimized and useless in the dock. There is a utility called Alt-Tab that lets you fix this, at least. And those are just a couple...
  • baq 3y ago
    > utility called Alt-Tab I think you’ve saved my life
    • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      The developer is cool and responds to requests, including this one I made: If you Command-Tab to an app that doesn't have a window (AKA Finder), it will create one for you (optionally).
  • vladvasiliu 3y ago
    My favorite is how, if you have multiple windows of the same app visible, when you cmd-tab to that app, it moves all of the windows to the top of the stack. So if you want to switch between windows of two different apps, you better hide the ones you don't use.
    • squeaky-clean 3y ago
      For me it's almost the opposite. I can't cmd-tab between different windows of the same app. I can use cmd+~ to switch between windows of the same app, but I always forget that and end up cmd+tab'ing though all my apps trying to find where my second Chrome window is.
• alexfromapex 3y ago
  You can also click and hold the green
• s3p 3y ago
  That's awful. Instead of windows where you can BAM drag a window to one side and snap it in 0.2 seconds, you have to hover over the window, wait a second, press option, wait .1 second, figure out which option you want, mouse over to it, then finally click it. That's insane.
  • latexr 3y ago
    > Instead of windows where you can BAM drag a window to one side and snap it in 0.2 seconds You can do just that. Drag it to either side to make it half-width or to the top to make if full width and height.
    • ninepoints 3y ago
      Still sounds like a miserable experience compared to fancyzones though
  • lloeki 3y ago
    In terms of discoverability, yes, that UI is super awkward and feels tacked on. In terms of speed, keyboard shortcuts take the cake any day as they make snapping a 0.0 second affair.
    • mhdhn 3y ago
      That's ridiculously complex. Plus you cannot use the same gesture on your other computers, or those of your friend, coworker, family members, etc., without repeating same complex setup.
    • HelloMcFly 3y ago
      Windows default keyboard shortcuts: Windows + Left/Right Arrow to snap to half of screen. Add SHIFT to the mix to do the same, but transport it to the other monitor.
  • Too 3y ago
    It’s not only slow, it takes lots of precise mouse movements. I get RSI just reading about it, brrr.
• throwawayadvsec 3y ago
  it's still incomplete unity/gnome or mint have better window system
• lolinder 3y ago
  It's weird that Apple is obsessed with gesture-oriented interfaces—even for things that really don't call for a gesture—but when there's a super intuitive gesture pretty much everyone else has settled on they decided instead to rely on a hidden context menu.
  • gibbitz 3y ago
    Like scroll direction, having a sim card in your phone, using accepted standard cables, giving users access to their own files, using standardized file formats, etc. These guys abuse their users and somehow they believe Apple cares about them. Not sure when everyone will wake up and realize that arbitrary change isn't better than expected behavior. I guess when the industry points "AI" at generating OSes then Apple will start questioning their decisions to stay viable in a sea of clones that actually "just work" as expected. Until then they'll just keep treating their users like crap.
    • mahathu 3y ago
      The default scroll direction on macOS absolutely makes sense from a UX perspective. On a phone, you scroll up by physically touching the same display your content is on, so you have to move your finger down on the screen, which makes sense on phones but not on computers where the content is separate from the touchpad.
      • abeyer 3y ago
        Which is exactly why it shouldn't be modeled as manipulating the content, but rather the viewport/scroll thumb.
        • Tagbert 3y ago
          But why does that argue for “opposite” scrolling? Why add an extra layer of abstraction for no benefit other than habit?
      • oblio 3y ago
• modestygrime 3y ago
  It's much worse than Ubuntu or Windows though. I just want to snap a window to the sides. The macOS solution forces you to go full screen to snap.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Tagbert 3y ago
    That’s why there are dozens of their-party apps to provide keyboard or drag methods to snap and size windows. Rectangle, Moom, BetterSnapTool, and others give you different ways to doing window management.
    • modestygrime 3y ago
      Of course, but the conversation here is why does macOS not support this natively?
• bayindirh 3y ago
  Also, there's Magnet which does KDE-like window snapping since ages. It's not expensive, works flawlessly and doesn't tax your system in any way.
  • thrtythreeforty 3y ago
    Rectangle does the same thing and it's free to use. First thing I install on a fresh Mac.
  • Noumenon72 3y ago
    What I love about my Mac is anything I found that seemed weird to me on first go, there was an app to make it behave exactly the way I would want. I love Magnet and sure hope I will always have it.
    • pxc 3y ago
      I'm hoping things will go better for me this time, but the last time I used a Mac for work (5 or 6 years ago) I found the exact opposite. Many things I wanted couldn't just couldn't be done, even with paid third-party apps. Many more behaviors could be put back in with third party apps, but were either inherently broken or at some point broken by Apple with a new OS release. From a desktop Linux perspective, Apple is a bit like opposite world. The desktop environment itself is extremely barebones and inflexible, but proprietary app publishers are much more likely to target the platform. macOS blows what I'm used to out of the water when it comes to the availability of apps (that I'm mostly not interested in, because they're proprietary, single platform, and/or cloud-based), but then the core operating system, from the filesystems to the desktop itself, feels basically extremely incomplete.
      • bayindirh 3y ago
        I believe that I'm in a strange minority who can adapt to whichever computing environment, but macOS doesn't me bother me at all, because it has its own design goals and its own character. IOW, it doesn't try to mimic anyone, and it's fine with me. I use Linux for 20 years at this point, and it will be always my primary OS, yet I don't feel the need to modify macOS's behavior to behave like my KDE setup. Yes, I have magnet, and that's my only behavior modifying app I have, yet I use it only when I'm really in a rush and need to do something big in a short time (which generally needs me to connect to half a dozen remote machines and open a dozen terminals, no kidding). IOW, it's closed most of the time. What macOS lacks is composability, and it's OK, because it's a GUI first OS. I use a couple of Automator actions, and that's fine for most of the time.
• mook 3y ago
  FWIW, it seems like if you assign a shortcut to the snap commands, they show up in the menu even without Option. So as a workaround you could assign extremely difficult to use keys just to keep them in the menu.
• SoftTalker 3y ago
  Steve Jobs hated full screen windows. It’s why “maximize” expands based on content and not screen size. I haven’t used a Mac in years but that might still be part of the reason.
  • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Except he presided over an OS that shunned the evolution that every other OS arrived at: Menus belong on applications' main frames, not glued to the top of the monitor screen. This is why Mac apps have a long history of barfing out an irritating flotilla of windows all over the place. Mac OS turns the entire screen into the client area of ONE application, whereas other GUIs can treat the desktop as an infinite workspace. The welcome move to single-window applications on the Mac has made the blunder of the single menu even more obvious, as users minimize an application and think they're resuming work on the previous one... only to find that the menu is still owned by the application they have dismissed. Absurd and dumb.
    • ChrisLTD 3y ago
      Menus at the top of the screen provide consistency between applications. You don't have to wonder if an application's menu items are behind a hamburger menu, or missing entirely (I'm looking at you Obsidian for Windows). Also, having menus (or anything else really) at the edges of the screen make it easier to move to with a mouse. You can throw your mouse cursor toward the edge without worrying about the distance, because it will stop at the edge. This makes menu items easier to click on.
      • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
        "Menus at the top of the screen provide consistency between applications. You don't have to wonder if an application's menu items are behind a hamburger menu" Menus' consistency has nothing to do with where they are positioned. You're talking about bad design. You can just as easily have dumb, non-standard affordances at the top of the screen... you see it on iOS all the time. And the "slamming the cursor" argument is countered by having to move the cursor much farther, especially on large monitors with lots of real estate. Not to mention that vanishingly few users actually do this.
• sylens 3y ago
  I feel like this solution was designed for someone who is going to snap two windows just one time and work with them for several hours at a time, if not the rest of the day. Whereas I am constantly needing to snap different windows together, making this process feel tedious and cumbersome compared to Windows
• RexM 3y ago
  Thanks. I recently switched to macOS from Windows after changing jobs and didn’t know this.
• Justin_K 3y ago
  The fact that you had to type all this wrecked my brain.
• thiht 3y ago
  > Well, because it has? This is absolutely not the same thing. The full screen feature on macOS is ok because it’s very well integrated with the 3 fingers gestures. But the fact snapping requires to go to full screen mode completely sucks, it’s unintuitive and requires too many steps compared to just « drag the window to an edge ». I agree with OP that Apple stubbornly refuses to implement QoL features for no good reasons: - Snapping - clipboard history - proper alt tab between all the windows (yes I understand how cmd+tab and cmd+` work, yes I understand the rationale, but I still think it sucks compared to the more intuitive of Alt tab on Windows) These are the 3 utilities I automatically install on every Mac I use
  • toxicFork 3y ago
    Are they paid apps? Perhaps that's why. This way Apple can get a cut from the DLC.
    • rxhanson 3y ago
      Rectangle is FOSS. https://rectangleapp.com https://rectangleapp.com
    • Tagbert 3y ago
      And the paid ones are cheap, not a significant source of revenue for Apple.
  • lloeki 3y ago
    > snapping requires to go to full screen mode It does not; reread my comment: you're confusing tiling (no Option key) with snapping (Option key).
    • thiht 3y ago
      My bad you're right, I missed the Option key. I wonder how many people actually know it exists, and among these people, how many use it at all.
• pohuing 3y ago
  But that is completely different. If you have a full screen window/split in full screen, it breaks multi monitor setups. You can not drag a third window over your full screened monitor anymore, because it's in exclusive full screen. Triple monitor setups get broken in their usability if you have something full screened in your center screen.
• wappieslurkz 3y ago
  Gary from the YouTube channel MacMost made some amazing eye opening guides regarding window management, like this one: https://youtu.be/T9uGNidrTyM https://youtu.be/T9uGNidrTyM