Category: macOS

Updated by Svija

Maximize a Mac Window

TLDR: option double-click the corner of a Mac window to maximize it without going into full-screen mode.

Double-clicking any window edge will extend it to fill the screen; option causes it to also affect the opposite edge.

Often it’s nice to maximize a window, but on a Mac the way to do this is with the green “Enter Full Screen” button.

This can be annoying, because an app in full-screen mode can’t interact with other apps, and you can’t easily drag and drop from an app in full-screen mode.

I’ve been using a Mac since 1986 and I recently found out that you can extend any window by double-clicking its edge:

Double-clicking the corner will extend the corner of the window to the corner of the screen:

And option (or alt) double-clicking affects both the edge where you clicked and the opposite edge.

So to maximize a Mac window, just option-double-click one of its corners:

Updated by Svija

It’s not the Traffic Lights

Safari 15, shipped with macOS Monterey, enables changing the color of the browser chrome (if you’re not using Safari 15 on Monterey, see this Youtube video).

On seeing the previous page, some people noticed that the color red is apparently skipped — when red is specified, the browser chrome returns to its normal gray color.

The speculation was that colors that matched the three traffic light buttons (close, minimize and maximize) would be disallowed. However this page shows that this is not the case.

Here is the code for this page:

<html><head>

	<meta id="themeColor" name="theme-color" content="">

</head><body><script>

	var traffic = ['#ED6A5E', '#F4BF4F', '#61C554']

	var delay = 500;
	var current = 0;

	function setHeaderColor(){

		current += 1;
		if (current > 2) current = 0;

		var colorStr = traffic[current];
		themeColor.content = colorStr;
	}

	setInterval(setHeaderColor, delay);

</script><pre id="textBlock" style="font-size:30px;">

  Needs Safari 15

</pre></body></html>

Stack Overflow question.

Updated by Svija

Safari 15 Header Color

Safari 15, shipped with macOS Monterey, enables changing the color of the browser chrome (if you’re not using Safari 15 on Monterey, see this Youtube video).

Here is the code for this page:

<html><head>

	<meta id="themeColor" name="theme-color" content="">

</head><body><script>

	var delay = 50;
	var increment = 5;
	var current = 0 - increment;

	function setHeaderColor(){

		current += increment;
		if (current > 360) current = 0;

		var colorStr = 'hsl('+current+',100%,50%)';
		themeColor.content = colorStr;
		textBlock.style.color = colorStr;
	}

	setInterval(setHeaderColor, delay);

</script><pre id="textBlock" style="font-size:30px;">

  Needs Safari 15

</pre></body></html>

Stack Overflow question.