Do you have apps take up the whole screen (not full screen)?

[The Cockney Rebel]

Digressing, is there a reason why swiping left with two fingers, from the ride edge of the screen, is not invoking Notification Centre for me?

I currently use the top, right hot corner to access it.

 

[generdude]

You can use the orange button with the Option key pressed to reduce all windows in an app to the Dock. This is handy if you have more than one app open. Option press one of them in the dock to restore all of them or just press one without the Option press to restore just one.

 

[koelsh]

no, you can't... at least not reliably

it is usually far from filling the whole screen, at least in my experience it is just enlarging the window for a bit to fit more content inside,, but i've heard that there are supposedly a couple of apps around that in fact "zoom" to fill the whole screen

but maybe they've fixed this in Ventura

For whatever reason, Safari and the Finder are weird about it and don’t go to the full width. Other applications like settings that have an absolute maximum width won’t bother to honor it either. No change in Ventura.

However, all third-party applications I’ve seen do go full zoom if they do not have a pre-defined maximum size.

 

[MBAir2010]

I was having trouble sharing a screen with "files" on Ventura, MacBook Air M!
that green dot is getting tricker every "California"!

 

[curnalpanic]

You can do this, with many apps, by holding the Option key and clicking on the green traffic light.

I use Rectangle to snap windows to fill the screen (still showing the menu bar and Dock of course) when necessary. But mostly there's just a lot of partially overlapping windows on my screen.

 

[boss.king]

It may seem like a silly question, but I was wondering if many of you view apps in whole screen (not full screen) view?

You can do this, with many apps, by holding the Option key and clicking on the green traffic light.

I have always had apps in as small a window as possible, but I just resized all of my apps to take up the whole screen, not including the dock or menu bar.

I adjusted fonts, where possible, ever so slightly, and things are much more legible.

I also use hot corners, and have bottom left for Mission Control, and bottom right to view the desktop.

How do you have your setup?

I do the whole screen view for pretty much everything (or some form of split tiling that uses the whole screen) but Apple's native window management is basically uselss. I use Swish to manage windows with swiping (I came from using Hyperdock for years, really like how swish works though and the dev is great). I autohid the dock because it just takes up space and I launch most things with Spotlight using Command+Space anyway.

I don't remember the last time I even touched the traffic light buttons.

 

[stevec618]

I use every single app this way. It seems odd not to.

I also keep the dock hidden. There is nothing on it that I need to see at all times.

 

[ElRojito]

https://rectangleapp.com/ I just use rectangle app to resize and move windows. It’s really nice, actually. Makes work a lot more efficient when I’m moving terminals and stuff around

 

[Choco Taco]

I use magnet to gain whole screen view for almost any apps. The Apple’s full screen mode is not really desirable for my multitasking flow.

I use Rectangle: https://rectangleapp.com/

 

[Mac47]

Rectangle is amazing. My favorite feature is the ability to “throw” a window wherever you want, and have it take up a pre-set portion of the screen.

 

[Shirasaki]

Do you use scaling much?

Currently no. Could change in the future of course. 13” is not a very big screen.

 

[Shirasaki]

I use Rectangle: https://rectangleapp.com/

If the rectangle is being actively maintained in the future, I could consider a switch incase apple decides to break these apps.

 

[adrianlondon]

I run almost every app zoomed to full-screen, and have each app set to open in its own space. Four-finger (or ctrl-n) swipe between spaces.

Double-clicking the header on any app (apart from Finder - and I don't use Safari) zooms perfectly in case I shrink them for any reason.

I tried Stage Manager a few times over the betas and never got on with it. On my laptop screen I don't want any space wasted by those icons.

I'm running "More Space" 1680x1050.

 

[Asbow]

Seeing as Adobe doesn’t support Stage Manager I mainly use full size windows and tabs.

Stage Manager just feels like a gimmick to me. Use Alt tab to switch between apps like I’ve always done since macOS 10.2 Jaguar.

 

[v0lume4]

When I'm using my laptop I'm more inclined to have things full screen (FULL screen or not-totally-full-screen as you're asking). On my desktop I don't usually have things maxed out because it's just a bunch of white space.

You mentioned the option key shortcut which I did not know about. Thanks! You also can achieve the same effect by double clicking the top of the window. Any part of it that isn't a button.

 

[rwhg]

Interesting discussion. Many of my students (most first time Mac users in a high school with a 1:1 laptop program) use full screen mode but I’ve learned that in most of their cases, it’s because they don’t know how to switch between apps other than by using four-finger swipe to move between different Spaces that have apps in full screen mode.

When I show them the Command-Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between apps: 🤯

Seems silly but happens with every new batch of students I see.

For my own purposes Moom is essential:

Moom

Move, zoom, and snap windows. Arrange windows in layouts. Auto-adjust to display setups.

manytricks.com

I never use full screen mode. I have keyboard shortcuts set up to move apps between the left and right half of the screen and to bounce apps from one display to the next (my office and classroom setup both involve three displays).

 

[DigitalAR]

BRING BACK SPACES

 

[MauiPa]

Don't you mean command and green light not option? or even control and green light, option does not do that

 

[adrianlondon]

BRING BACK SPACES

They never left. You also have a font issue

 

[DigitalAR]

They never left. You also have a font issue

No, the Spaces of Snow Leopard yonder certainly had not existed for well over a decade. Mission Control is not the same.

I just downloaded Ventura so didn’t even know Stage Manager was available on my MacBook.

 

[Saturn007]

Would someone post some screenshots showing the difference between these two? “Whole screen” vs. Full screen?

I'm on Monterrey and tried this with Photos, TextEdit, and Word.

In Text Edit, option-green light produces a pop-up menu with 3 choices— there is no “whole screen” option. Zoom simply shrinks the window! Now, just clicking the green light changes the view to a full screen view, identical to what is seen if I choose Full Screen. Cool! I've never used the green button, but that's a handy shortcut for a Full Screen view. Escape key let’s you escape from that mode, although it seems to take two taps to fully escape. Although for word processing, Full Screen displays huge useless, wasted margin space.

In Photos, option-green expands the window over to the dock. Perhaps that is what the OP meant by “whole screen”! “Wide View” might be a more apt term for it. I see that when the is hidden, this Wode View mode expands the window fully to the right edge of the screen (my Dock is on the right).

In Word, the green button is Full Screen. Option-green just keeps shrinking the document's window.

Such inconsistencies would keep me from using this.

Besides, like several others, my m.o. is to leave space on the right side of the window to have one-click or easy drag-and-drop access to the desktop and one-click access to the windows of other apps — e.g., the open dictionary is always available to the lower right and last window used in related apps are over there to the right, too.

But maybe I'm missing something entirely about what this is or how to use this!

 

[unrigestered]

if you want quick access to the desktop: assign one hot corner to it (lower right corner should be more or less the default, if it is not set that way already)
- swipe there once: desktop comes into view, "hiding" all open windows
- swipe there again: your previous window(s) come back into view

"full screen" is crap on macOS as far as i'm concerned, but for some apps it's not as bothersome

and regarding "whole screen" windows: in my experience, this is only possible by either dragging the window corners to that size, or option click on one of the corners (or third party tools like the aforementioned rectangle, which should bring macOS windows behavior closer to what you should expect from an OS made within the last 20 years)
if Word "zoom" does work as expected; this would make sense as it is coming from the Windows world and most Windows users would expect such behavior.

 

[adrianlondon]

No, the Spaces of Snow Leopard yonder certainly had not existed for well over a decade. Mission Control is not the same.

I just downloaded Ventura so didn’t even know Stage Manager was available on my MacBook.

Ah, that's before my time. I entered the Mac universe during Mavericks. It's amazing I didn't immediately run back out

 

[koelsh]

Would someone post some screenshots showing the difference between these two? “Whole screen” vs. Full screen?

I'm on Monterrey and tried this with Photos, TextEdit, and Word.

In Text Edit, option-green light produces a pop-up menu with 3 choices— there is no “whole screen” option. Zoom simply shrinks the window! Now, just clicking the green light changes the view to a full screen view, identical to what is seen if I choose Full Screen. Cool! I've never used the green button, but that's a handy shortcut for a Full Screen view. Escape key let’s you escape from that mode, although it seems to take two taps to fully escape. Although for word processing, Full Screen displays huge useless, wasted margin space.

In Photos, option-green expands the window over to the dock. Perhaps that is what the OP meant by “whole screen”! “Wide View” might be a more apt term for it. I see that when the is hidden, this Wode View mode expands the window fully to the right edge of the screen (my Dock is on the right).

In Word, the green button is Full Screen. Option-green just keeps shrinking the document's window.

Such inconsistencies would keep me from using this.

Besides, like several others, my m.o. is to leave space on the right side of the window to have one-click or easy drag-and-drop access to the desktop and one-click access to the windows of other apps — e.g., the open dictionary is always available to the lower right and last window used in related apps are over there to the right, too.

But maybe I'm missing something entirely about what this is or how to use this!

The inconsistencies may stem from some applications that don't support "fullscreen" and others that don't scale to full width when told to "zoom." Safari, Finder, Word and some others will "zoom" the window to the "contents of the window" with option-green.

I tried recording a video of the different behaviors but MR rejects it for whatever reason. The attached screenshots with descriptions might help.

The menu from TextEdit should only be showing up when holding green. "Enter Full Screen" is the same as clicking green and the "Tile Left/Right" are faster ways of fullscreen-ing two apps side by side.

Most applications will go "whole screen" with option-green. Another way to tell it "I want whole screen" is to option-double-click a corner. You can double click any side or corner to push that as far as it's allowed on the current monitor. Option tells it to do the same to the other side too. You can also option-drag a side or corner.

"whole screen" menubar and dock remain visible

"fullscreen" mode where menubar and dock are hidden

 

[PauloSera]

I've used Better Snap Tool for ages so I use "whole screen" windows or "half" screen windows regularly since resizing them is done easily. I combine that with Exposè gestures/Mission Control and can't ever imagine using anything else.

Tried Stage Manager for 2 minutes and its way too limiting.