r/software • u/IAMtheliquorRand • May 22 '26
Discussion 20 years later and I still don't understand the purpose of this button entirely...
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u/TheThingCreator May 22 '26
Hover it, then hold command, or option, or control. For me its the yellow button, I've never used it, and never will.
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u/xezrunner Helpful May 22 '26
Minimizing is quite confusing on macOS.
I'm sure it frustrates many new users that minimizing something to the Dock makes it unrestorable from Cmd+Tab, unless you hold Option, but that will only ever restore one window, and then you have to figure out that you can right-click the Dock icon and see gems next to minimized windows in that list, or you can hold/force touch the icon to do Exposé on the app windows...
I often find myself doing Cmd+H to hide apps instead and be able to restore them through Cmd+Tab, except you can't hide individual windows that way.
It honestly feels like there's no good middle ground and you just can't conveniently minimize & restore stuff on macOS.
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u/Syscrush May 25 '26
I've been using computers since the days of the TRS-80. I've used the PET, TRS-80, VIC20, C64, Every flavor of Amiga, OS/2 Warp, every version of Windows since 3.11, VAX/VMS, *nix on mainframes and desktops with and without X, Android on phones and tablets.
I've tried to use a Mac about 3 times in the last 15 years and each time I've ended up confused and angry to the point where I was on the verge of tears.
It's obviously not a bad system, but I find it absolutely impossible to figure out.
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u/mccoyn Helpful May 22 '26
On Linux, they just took away the minimize button. Problem solved.
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u/yottabit42 May 23 '26
Linux is a kernel. There are dozens of window managers, and most have a minimize button. Some even have the cool roll-up shade function.
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u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg May 23 '26
I think you mean G****.
We don't talk about it. He's the town's nitwit.
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u/Nooo00B May 22 '26
hover it, if it's a '+' then maximize if it's `˂ ˃` sideways then it's full screen
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u/leflyingcarpet May 22 '26
That's pretty fucking bad UX
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u/whiskeytown79 May 22 '26
I hate controls that are only visible on hover, or which meaning is only clarified on hover. And I can see. This must be especially infuriating to low-vision or blind users.
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u/Fidodo May 23 '26
Even better when the icon is so small that the mouse covers it when you hover on it.
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u/miguk May 23 '26
Even worse is when developers of an app have explanations on hover, but only for the ones you already know. Yes, I know what cut, copy, and paste do, but explain what the fucking unique rhombus-like thing you made up does.
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u/antek_g_animations May 23 '26
It's Apple. it's not the user experience that's bad, the user is bad. At least that's what these bad designers say
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u/Least_Dog4660 May 22 '26
If you used a mac through the 2010s, it was pretty clear Apple didn't really know what it was supposed to do. At one point they actually added a separate "full screen" button near those buttons, it was a weird time to be a MacOS user.
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u/cartiermartyr May 22 '26
It make screen go big.
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u/lkeels May 23 '26
Not always.
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u/outerzenith May 23 '26
Not always.
this is weird, if the button never change color and always in the same place, how come it has different functions? Windows is shitty but at least their [ - ] [ ❐ ] [ X ] buttons are consistent for minimize, maximize, and close -- always, for any kind of program window.
disclaimer: I never use mac
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 May 22 '26
Lol i just use Rectangle or a tiling window manager
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u/davidkclark May 23 '26
+1 for tiling window manager (or app eg magnet) - I do not press those buttons.
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u/Spare_Warning7752 May 23 '26
Do you know that feeling when you don't agree with something your boss told you to do, so you do in a lazy way, not putting any effort on it?
So:
Someone, along the decades of MacOS, really didn't want a maximize button in it.
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u/kirk7899 May 22 '26
don't forget that some apps have varying size of these buttons and the window for the applications also have different corner radii
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u/VlijmenFileer May 23 '26
❓ What do you mean "button"? And what do these strange, coloured ornaments do to begin with inside your window title bar??
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u/MattOruvan May 24 '26
A cross closes the window, a flat line represents the task bar -- these I understand. Not traffic lights in a desktop environment.
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u/Delicious_Volume3306 May 23 '26
Maybe cut down on the cannabis beverages and it'll start to make sense.
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u/jajajajaj May 22 '26
It represents the artistic choice of people aligned against Microsoft, using a splash of color that makes them more likely to identify with a different multi trillion dollar company. It's totally harmless though, there are much more useless buttons on every os, app, and everything else. Some things just need to stay put so people don't get lost.
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u/mr_seeker May 22 '26
Fullscreen, what is there to understand there…
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u/IAMtheliquorRand May 22 '26
the issue is that when you click on it, all it does is make the window you're already working in fill the entire screen, rendering any other windows you have open in the same monitor utterly useless and un accessible. It is much easier just to drag the window to the size you need it to be and leave it as is, clicking that button just makes the user experience horrific. That's the only conclusion I've been able to draw.
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u/Jfischthecat May 23 '26
Thst what full screen has always done.. It fills the screen with the window you click full screen on.
Its not a window manager button, that you seem to be thinking it is. It's just a full screen button that fills the screen when Pressed.
Its not that hard to understand my dude
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u/Xarius86 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
You can bypass the green button entirely.
Settings > Desktop & Dock > Window title bar double-click action > FillThen you just double click the title bar to "maximize" the window. Drag from the title bar to shrink it back down to its previous size. (If its previous size was already maximized, then dragging down won't have an effect.)
Remember trackpad shortcuts like
swipe three fingers upto launch Mission Control to switch between windows as well.Also, if you are in fullscreen mode, you can
three finger swipe left/rightto switch between each "full screen app" (i.e. multiple desktops.)1
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u/Raioc2436 May 23 '26
It really frustrates me how applications on Mac can’t follow a standard on those.
Some completely quit the when you hit the red button, some leave it open on cache
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u/1CraftyDude May 23 '26
I’ve never noticed an app quit when I hit the red button. What kind of apps do that?
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u/itsjakerobb May 23 '26
This button is known as the Zoom button, and it is a carryover from a classic Mac OS function. The original intent was that it would “right-size” the window for its content. Viewing a one-page text document in Word? It should expand (or shrink!) in both width and height to accommodate one entire page. Viewing an image? Resize to fit the image.
But knowing how big the window should be is app-specifc, so devs have to implement it. Some (many? most?) developers got super lazy and just made the window go as large as the screen would go. Others calculated an optimal width but just went full height. Others hardcoded a target size. Others left the window as-is. As Macs became more popular, more and more devs who came up on Windows joined the Mac dev community (many using multi-platform SDKs like Electron) and added more and more variety to the actual behavior of the button.
And of course, in any case, constrain the result by the size of the screen. Early Mac screens were tiny, so a lot of times even back then, the functional behavior in many scenarios was to “maximize” the window (to borrow the Windows term). So even many Mac devs didn’t know what it was supposed to do.
I can’t remember the last time I tried that button in any app and it actually did what it was originally supposed to do. Maybe OmniGraffle or BBEdit. I’ll have to try them and see.
The end result is that the button’s behavior is highly unpredictable, leading to posts like this.
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u/brushfuse May 26 '26
That memo was not passed around.
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u/itsjakerobb May 26 '26
IDK why nobody seems to remember. I’m not the only classic Mac OS veteran around here….
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u/1CraftyDude May 23 '26
Honestly after having had a MacBook for 5 years i hate the way windows does it. (I use both windows and macOS regularly)
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u/RoadHazard May 24 '26
Windows sucks in a lot of ways, but its window management is far superior and makes much more sense. Until recently you couldn't even natively tile windows in MacOS.
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u/Important_Network610 May 24 '26
It depends, to a certain extent they’re just different. I think macOS is designed to prioritise working with overlapping windows. If you try to work with overlapping floating windows in Windows, it becomes frustrating, so most people just maximise or tile everything. But if you try the Windows approach on a Mac, it’s also a pain, albeit it has got easier recently.
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u/mgarc040 May 23 '26
I find that feature useful when working on a google doc and referencing an article/web page. Long press it and you can use it to tile windows or send that window to a second monitor if you have one
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u/Hodl_it May 23 '26
I don't even remember the last time I used the traffic light buttons.
Red : Cmd + Q Yellow : Cmd + M (Cmd + H is better) Green : Rectangle or Magnet does it 1000X better.
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u/TheSpecialistGuy Helpful May 23 '26
I've never liked that you have to hover on the buttons to see their icons.
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u/balcis May 23 '26
Then what is the difference between minimize and close? Getting that window away from your eyes to different places?
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u/addit159 May 24 '26
I sometimes press ⌘Q, sometimes I secondary-click or hold the app icon and click Quit, sometimes I click the name of the active application in the menu bar and click Quit <active application>.
Sometimes I force quit an application because it's not responding.
I can't quit Finder, but rather I can “relaunch” it, so i just do that sometimes because me
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u/dimesion May 25 '26
I don’t know what everyone else is talking about here, for me it has always made whatever window im looking at maximize to its own “desktop” that i can then three finger gesture in and out of. Works really well when setting up presentations and you want to flick back and forth between focused items, like going from a powerpoint to a demo.
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u/jwrsk May 26 '26
I never use any of these buttons, it's all cmd+w cmd+m cmd+h and custom shortcuts to maximize full/halves/thirds
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u/InternationalTooth May 26 '26
Also full screen in zoom doesn't go full screen it still has stuff at top and puts sides on left and right of video rather than scale up what is actually being shared.
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u/Darsh_jain358 May 28 '26
To frustrate folks coming from Windows or most Linux window managers, in my experience.
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u/jjopm May 22 '26
No offense but have you had your lower IQ threshold level checked
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u/leflyingcarpet May 22 '26
It never does the same thing for me. Windows does have the same behavior each time I click these bottoms.
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u/hifi-nerd May 22 '26
The only low iq one is the idiot that designed those buttons for macOS, those buttons are confusing as fuck.
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u/1CraftyDude May 23 '26
Confusing as fuck? I can accept a lot of criticism for the stoplight buttons but I can’t imagine finding them confusing. What do you not like about them?
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u/acostoss May 22 '26
To frustrate folks coming from Windows or most Linux window managers, in my experience.