Desktop inaccessible, in some kind of split mode? Top menu bar gone. what's up?

[zeppo2]

After using Skype I was trying to exit full screen mode when I noticed the menu bar at the top to do so was not only hidden, but would not reappear when moving the mouse to the top of the screen. I hit escape to get out of full screen, but then I noticed another peculiar thing. My desktop was shaded on one side. None of the icons on the desktop respond to being clicked to open. The top menu bar is still missing, and not just hidden (or doesn't reveal itself with mouse action at top). I decided to close out of all apps, but wanted to save a page to safari bookmarks first. The menu to manage bookmarks, etc was missing. (No "view" menu, etc). Closing and reopening all doesn't change things. Option+Command+Esc shows nothing to Force Quit when I check it.

When click on the top bar of a window of an open app to move it from one side of the desktop to the other, the shading of the half of the desktop switches to whichever half the mouse is hovering over as I hold it down and move the window around.

Of course, my guess is this will resolve itself with a restart of the macbook. But does anyone recognize what "state" my macbook is in right now. Does this odd shading of half the screen, split right down the middle, indicate some function that I have inadvertantly activated but am just not familiar with?

Thanks

 

[davidmartindale]

Does relaunching Finder via the Force Quit menu resolve?
Do you have any window management apps installed such as Magnet?

 

[zeppo2]

Does relaunching Finder via the Force Quit menu resolve?
Do you have any window management apps installed such as Magnet?

I didn't think to try a relaunch of Finder. I ended up restarting into Safe Mode, and then downloaded MalwareBytes and ran a scan which found nothing. The problem by all appearances resolved after this restart, as I figured it probably would.

Restart back into normal mode seems resolved as well.

I was thinking perhaps I had activate some kind of mac function that I wasn't familiar with and was curious as to what it might be. But in the end, I think it was probably just a bug with Skype related to having it in full screen mode with the chat panel open while on a call. Also, I think I clicked on a link that was sent to me in the chat that was to a Google docs page with some text content about what we were discussing. I'm trying to recall now, but I think it was when I copied the link and was going to pull it up in safari that I noticed I had no way to exit the full screen Skype (until I finally hit Esc ).

I guess I'll see if it happens again when I use Skype in the future.

 

[zeppo2]

to follow up, I happened to accidentally come across the Split View feature of Sierra which I didn't even know existed. I can tell that whatever was going on with my screen had to do with getting stuck in a sort of limbo between activation and set of the Split View. I must have clicked on the green button that activates Split Mode but some how the system froze in some intermediate state before Split View ever activated-- odd.