Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues

https://noheger.at/blog/2026/02/12/resizing-windows-on-macos-tahoe-the-saga-continues/

151•erickhill•2h ago

Comments

xvxvx•1h ago

I’m a Windows guy, but was given a MacBook for my current job. Fair enough. But I laugh at how horrendous such a simple thing as resizing windows is. Want Slack to take up the right third of a screen then fill the rest with browser? In Windows, it takes 2 seconds. Not on Mac. I have to resize the window myself? There’s no auto-snap?

I’m sure someone will buzz in with some hidden way to do it. ‘Hold cmd-shft-9 then say these magic words and voila!’ No. Dragging the window with the cursor should suffice.

Edit: I’ll also add that having to buy a huge $200+ display adapter so you can connect 2 external monitors to a MacBook, whereas a slimline $30 device will do the same for Windows laptops, is total bullshit.

egypturnash•1h ago

Double-clicking the edge or corner of a window (anywhere a double-headed arrow cursor shows up) will resize it to the edge of the screen.

Hovering over the green dot in the title bar will bring up some simple window tiling options.

https://support.apple.com/guide/macbook-air/manage-windows-o... has more to say on the subject, more recent versions of the OS than I use have added more stuff in this vein, personally I just use Moom and have been for years.

metabagel•1h ago

Moom looks great! Is there a Mac app which enhances the functionality of desktops/workspaces?

thesh4d0w•1h ago

I'm also struggling with a macbook for work, but hold your mouse over the green circle in the top left for a few seconds and it'll pop up. (You don't get the nice snapping that windows does though)

vesrah•1h ago

Holding option while hovering gives you more placement / sizing options too. If you click and drag a top bar to the right or left it'll snap to the right or left half of the screen. Dragging it to the top or double clicking will snap it to full size. Dragging to corners will snap to quarter.

lsbussell•1h ago

I don’t see options for thirds, though. Even on an UltraWide monitor.

universenz•1h ago

tHaTs BeCaUsE wE dOn’T SeLL wIdE ScReeN DiSpLaYs YeT! -Apple Genius

FireBeyond•1h ago

Rectangle Pro.

I'm actually agreeing with you. You shouldn't have to resort to third party apps.

rv3392•1h ago

I've been using Rectangle (https://rectangleapp.com/) for years now. IMO the shortcuts actually make it a massive improvement over Windows.

anon7000•1h ago

Lots of 3rd party tools to help, like Rectangle or Raycast. And at least the most recent macOS release has auto-snap and tiling features: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlef287e5d/...

There is also this option you can enable to drag windows around when holding a shortcut: https://petar.dev/notes/drag-windows-on-macos/

behnamoh•1h ago

Raycast does it. You need Raycast anyway; spotlight sucks.

akersten•1h ago

Yeah window management and the desktop experience in general on Mac just feels like I'm dragging my hands through tar.

For example, "open two file browsers, navigate to $home in one and $downloads in the other, move and rename a few files between them" is a 10 second task on Windows (Win+E x2, quick clicks on the explorer links, easy to scroll around, move files, drag, rename, anything you want). On Mac I get about 7 system ding sounds and Finder windows bugging off the side of my screen while simultaneously deciding the best way to show downloads in a list is alphabetically and with 256x256 tiled icons. It's just an indescribably bad and slow experience to do any kind of file management on Mac.

Another example. Take a screenshot and quickly redact some info with a black box. Easy on windows that I can type it out exactly (win+s, drag box, win key "paint" enter control v box tool save boom). On Mac?? After command shift 4 to take a screenshot I think it's actually physically impossible to edit it within 60 seconds.

dagi3d•1h ago

you can edit the image with preview any time you want

sneak•1h ago

> After command shift 4 to take a screenshot I think it's actually physically impossible to edit it within 60 seconds.

This is completely incorrect, and the solution is way more discoverable than needing to know obscure things like Win+E. Click the thumbnail that appears in the bottom right, then click the marker icon.

> For example, "open two file browsers, navigate to $home in one and $downloads in the other, move and rename a few files between them" is a 10 second task on Windows (Win+E x2, quick clicks on the explorer links, easy to scroll around, move files, drag, rename, anything you want).

Similarly, if you know the platform-specific shortcuts, this is less than 10 seconds on macOS. Click finder in dock, hit Command-N twice for new windows, drag each window to one of the L/R edges of the screen to tile, click downloads in the sidebar on one, click the home icon/username in the sidebar on the other.

noduerme•53m ago

The bottom right thumbnail thing really bugged me and confused me when it came out, because I always just want the screenshot on the desktop right away, as it used to be. I don't know why they couldn't have the delay/thumbnail AND put the file somewhere I could reach it immediately. But IIRC, there is some setting that disables the thumbnail behavior and lets the file be written instantly.

jezzamon•1h ago

The answer, unfortunately, is to install a 3rd party program. Once you do that, it works well enough

cleaning•1h ago

The defaults in every OS are set made for power users (i.e. anyone doing more than browsing the web and using office).

With Windows you need to remove most of the cruft, Mac is no different; most people are using some combination of Raycast, Rectangle, Alfred, etc...

Someone1234•57m ago

On Windows you have to change a few settings, on Mac you're suggesting all third-party software to manage core functionality. Apples Vs. oranges.

I mean, yes, Windows has PowerToys which is an installed add-on, but on Mac we're not talking about Mac Vs. PowerToys, Mac isn't even competing with basic Windows features. PowerToys is competing with the PAID third-party software for Mac.

iamflimflam1•1h ago

Sorry to be that guy who buzzes in - I might be missing something, but don't you just mouse over the green button?

jazzyjackson•1h ago

Also takes 2 seconds... You don't need 3rd party apps like everyone's saying, only if you want tiling or to copy Windows behavior.

  Press Control-Up Arrow (or swipe up with three or four fingers) to enter Mission Control, drag a window from Mission Control onto the thumbnail of the full-screen app in the Spaces bar, then click the Split View thumbnail. You can also drag an app thumbnail onto another in the Spaces bar.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-apps-in-split-v...

Someone1234•59m ago

I feel like anyone reading that, and thinking that is a reasonable/intuitive design, may be quite far down the rabbit-hole.

It reads like a parody.

xvxvx•57m ago

It’s significantly worse than I even imagined.

pram•1h ago

This has been built in since Sequoia. It’s literally dragging the window like aero snap.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-window-tilin...

tom_•44m ago

This does require displays to have separate spaces though!

cosmic_cheese•39m ago

The mac desktop works on a totally different paradigm than the Windows-like model most other desktops have adopted. It’s built around not managing windows and instead letting them be whatever size fits their content and pile up like papers on a desk, complete with having relevant bits of some windows peek out from underneath other windows.

For those it works for, it works really well. For those who came from windows always being maximized or split into a grid, it’s a nightmare.

Pretty similar to differences in real world desk styles, actually.

ndiddy•11m ago

That used to be the case, but in 10.7 they changed the green window button from being "zoom" (snap the window to fit its content) to "fullscreen". They let you change the default behavior back to zoom for a few years but seem to have gotten rid of that setting. You can still access the zoom behavior by option-clicking the green button, but on basically every program I've tried, zoom just means "maximize" like on Windows now. The only exception I've found is Preview, where "zoom" seems to mean "make the window take up most of (but not all of) the screen and scale the image up to some random value". One image I tried got scaled to 146%, another got scaled to 207%. I would think it should mean "scale the image to 100% if it's smaller than the display resolution" but who knows, I don't work at Apple.

Edit: Finder still has the correct zoom behavior, it's the only program I've found so far that does.

cosmic_cheese•1m ago

The behavior of the (now option-clicked) zoom button is actually determined by each individual program. Most stock apps will either fit to content or toggle between the last two recent sizes, but a lot of third party apps (especially those built with foreign UI frameworks) tend to turn it into a maximize button.

undeveloper•3m ago

you're not wrong, but for convenience's sake you should probably know that you can hold option and click the green "expand" button to fill the workspace

refulgentis•1h ago

Many moons ago, I invented* a rule that "you can always make people feel what you want about a #. either use percentages where they don't make sense, or whole numbers when a percentage does"

I hear it when I read 7 px -> 6 px means 14%(!!!!) less likely to find the horizontal/vertical only drag area.

Fitts's Law is logarithmic, not linear, and at these sizes the dominant factor is whether the target is discoverable at all, not its sub-millimeter width. "14%" smuggles in precision that doesn't exist in the underlying motor reality; it takes an imperceptible physical change and launders it through a ratio with a small denominator to produce a number that feels alarming. You could just as honestly say "we moved the edge by 0.097 mm**" and nobody would blink.

* I think? It feels like there'd be prior art on this

  ppi = 262
  inch = 1/ppi
  mm = inch \* 25.4
  # 1px ≈ 0.097 mm ≈ 0.004"

learn_more•1h ago

14% over estimates it because the user isn't clicking with uniform randomness, their clicks are normally distributed about the center of the line.

Lucasoato•1h ago

Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave.

Nextgrid•1h ago

Attach a generator to him and the AI datacenter energy needs are solved. Even better, the more trash that AI produces the more energy is generated.

GaryBluto•1h ago

> Even better, the more trash like this that AI produces the more energy is generated.

Do you have any "inside knowledge" that this was caused by LLM use or do you just attribute everything you don't like to AI?

Nextgrid•29m ago

Edited. I'm not strictly saying this was caused by AI, but more of a general point that AI is really good at producing crap work which would make the generator spin faster.

dham•46m ago

Mac has always had horrible window management. Made worse because applications and windows are a separate concept. Used to seem clever but in the world of multiple workspaces it's a terrible decision. Now it's even worse trying to manage multiple llms and projects.

neodymiumphish•1h ago

I’ve tried many apps for window resizing on Mac, and none feel like they’re nearly as good as FancyZones (the PowerToys module for Windows). I don’t want secret squirrel key combos. I don’t want hot corners.

I want two things:

- Predefined zones à la FancyZones - Tied edges (there’s surely a better term for this) so that I can grab the edge between two apps and have them both resize together (one gets smaller as the other gets bigger).

Please someone tell me this exists without a subscription!

joedrago•1h ago

I think for preexisting solutions, the "best" one is Rectangle Pro, but it isn't free, so maybe that doesn't count. That said, eventually I realized I don't even want the whole "window split" stuff and I'd prefer to just have a few keybinds that throw windows into specific coords on my screens, so I installed Hammerspoon (free) and wrote a screen's worth of Lua to do this for myself. It is written for my two adjacent 1440p monitors and personal preferences, but the code is really obvious so if you're comfortable with making your own bespoke solution, this is pretty nice, and free.

* https://www.hammerspoon.org/

* https://gist.github.com/joedrago/bfc54f4083b070fe998d519cc6c...

metaltyphoon•54m ago

I like powertoys but it’s taking 1.17Gig of space. That should be illegal

_def•1h ago

I miss resizing windows with alt+right click

matja•1h ago

Did macOS support that at some time in the past?

I've used Linux as my daily OS for 20 years and got so used to alt-right resize and alt-left drag that the macOS and Windows way of actually needing to move my mouse to the corner or edge of a window feel almost barbaric in comparison.

I still have found no way free equivalent on macOS.

4b11b4•1h ago

Haven't resized a window with a mouse since using aerospace

learn_more•1h ago

>In total the thickness went down from 7 to 6 pixels, which is a 14% decrease, making it 14% more likely to miss it.

Pedantic, but chance of miss is actually less than 14% more likely since the user's click location is not uniformly random over the thickness area, it's biased toward the center (normally distributed).

dagi3d•1h ago

I had similar thought but didn't want to be that guy.

andrei_says_•38m ago

My take is sometimes we get paid to be that guy and precision has its place and value.

We get lost when being right is seen as having value - instead of improving clarity and precision if needed in a specific context.

montroser•39m ago

Yeah, and not to mention the increase in likelihood click events the user intends for the application will make it through successfully, rather than being stolen by the window manager.

dgxyz•1h ago

It's bad when stock Gnome is better. That's where I am now.

accrual•1h ago

Switched to KDE Plasma last month and very pleased I can have square-corner windows again.

dgxyz•1h ago

Corners are great aren't they! :)

krisknez•1h ago

I had a hard time with Gnome but now I got used to it and it's amazing for me. I just can't believe they still haven't implemented scrolling speed setting...

jazzyjackson•1h ago

I love gnome, at least how it's implemented by recent Fedoras. Whenever I go back to Mac I wonder why spotlight and mission control are two different functions

kiwijamo•34m ago

Agreed. Even Windows has some nice stuff when it comes to windows management IMHO. Every time I end up on macOS I miss the various Windows/GNOME behaviours e.g. window snapping to the right/left half, pressing the Win key to see all open apps, maximise buttons that doesn't put the whole app into full screen mode, etc.

argsnd•26m ago

macOS gained window snapping last year, and you can bind some keyboard shortcut to the “exposé” view (which is triggered by a trackpad gesture by default)

full screen is still its own thing as you mention, though

terhechte•22m ago

I agree that macOS has become worse, however your examples don't really count:

Window snapping was implemented some time ago: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/12/macos-sequoia-window-ti...

Instead of win key, you can press F3, or just set a hotkey that works for you in the System Preferences

Instead of clicking the red maximize button, you can double-click the window header / title. This will use an algorithm to try to resize the window to the best size for its content.

urbandw311er•1h ago

You have to wonder what’s actually going on under the hood when the curve of the hitbox is different to the curve of the window? I’m very curious to understand how Apple have got to this point.

sho_hn•1h ago

This is relatively common. The mouse interaction code doesn't necessarily look at the visual asset, and in many UI toolkits the ability to have interaction targets located and sized differently from visual features is a feature.

MBCook•1h ago

Trying to get Liquid Glass to work is such a clown show. Incredible.

The UI wasn’t perfect before. It’s slowly been getting worse with each of their dumb updates to make it look more like iOS over the years.

What we’re forced to use now is just a joke. Ignoring all the visual design issues they can’t even make basic stuff fully functional.

kyralis•56m ago

The worst part is that Liquid Glass isn't even good on iOS.

jasondigitized•1h ago

Rectangle Pro for the win

tonypapousek•16m ago

Rectangle is a must-have, it’s the very first thing I install after getting brew configured on a new Mac.

ivanjermakov•1h ago

Since the first taste of Linux WMs, I believe the best and only good way of handling window move and resize is super+lmb/rmb respectively. No more pixel-perfect header/corner sniping!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/qv0vmz/missing_supe...

garciansmith•1h ago

Yeah, it was one of those things I noticed when I first started using Linux and wondered why every other OS didn't just copy it.

cosmic_cheese•48m ago

Probably just simple resistance to use of modifier keys in non-technical users, at least on the Windows side. A lot of users never touch a modifier except for Ctrl for copy/paste and maybe Windows for start menu search.

On the Mac side where key combos and modifier use is more widespread among users, it’s probably because there’s no intuitive visual that can be associated with the interaction.

hota_mazi•20m ago

On Windows, I use AltDrag.

mmis1000•36m ago

windows does support [win] + [arrow key] though

paranoidxprod•49m ago

Recently getting a new Mac for work, coming from Hyprland has been tough, but I feel like I’m getting there. Aerospace and Karabiner-Elements have gotten me most of the way there. Have had to write a few scripts to get the workspaces working the way I’m used to, but overall I got a significant part of my workflow to mirror my Linux setup, but would still love to get the super+right click to resize working somehow (there is a native way to move windows with ctrl+cmd+left click which was nice).

airstrike•17m ago

Same here. I use both!

> get the super+right click to resize working somehow (there is a native way to move windows with ctrl+cmd+left click which was nice).

I've tried this with Hamerspoon to no avail and ultimately gave up... if you find a workaround, I'm all ears!

I really miss AHK...

ndiddy•24m ago

For window move I think it's a reaction to the popularization of putting UI in the window titlebar so there's nothing to grab onto. I don't mind it but I wish there was a dedicated "grab" button on the mouse because I find it clunky to have to use both hands to manage windows.

eqvinox•21m ago

I can tell you the feature of Meta/Super¹+L/R click to move/resize windows has existed on Linux long before UI in the window titlebar became a thing.

¹ aka Windows key

2bitencryption•1h ago

The interesting part, for anyone who actually reads the article - the change was fixed in an RC and then reverted in the final release.

Which implies there was some regression, some issue, some incorrect behavior or negative impact. One has to wonder… what could it have been? What could the issue with having a more accurate clickbox for the corner of the window possibly be?

anematode•58m ago

Maybe it was just an oversight in the merge process? e.g. the diff was applied only to the RC and not to the release branch? idk

cardanome•29m ago

The AI reverted the change and no one does proper code reviews anymore so it went into prod.

adithyassekhar•10m ago

Nah then it won't show up in the known issues section. I hope.

GuB-42•15m ago

It can be some technical detail.

For example: imagine you have 2 windows, the lower right corner of one window almost touching the upper right corner of the other, so that the bounding rectangles overlap but the graphics don't.

With the inaccurate "false square" corners, you just had to check the bounding rectangles, to know which window to resize, now you have to check the actual graphics (or more likely, a mask).

I am not saying it is the problem, but that's the kind of thing that can happen. Or it may be a simple bug, like a crash, memory corruption, an unhandled exception, the usual stuff, but they couldn't fix it in time and it is better to revert instead of leaving the buggy code or pushing an untested fix.

jlaternman•6m ago

macOS does have weirdness with windows that span multiple screens. I bet some of that kicked in to an unacceptable level. It can create incoherent moving/snapping, for example. Has been kind of crazy-making for a while, for my set-up where screens are not joined but adjacent in a triangular configuration.

receperdogan•1h ago

finally

badc0ffee•51m ago

Doesn't the cursor change into a pair of <-> arrows when you hover over the clickable area?

akersten•47m ago

Only for the currently focused window which is inexplicably weird

argsnd•18m ago

A lot of the cursor weirdness on macOS comes from the window server owning the cursor and only passing events to active windows.

ggm•48m ago

This is a design flub which we are told Jobs simply wouldn't have let out the door. The Jobs who made people shave 50ms off boot times. The Jobs who demanded the no button mouse.

I get the cult of Steve is a bit oversold but the proprietor liked to check the finish on the car rolling out the end of the line and if his fingers felt a rough edge on a panel he had no compunction stopping the production line to find the problem. The current generation have a bit too much "fixed in post" going on.

staplers•43m ago

"Fixed in post" meaning fixed in version XX.00.2 now. Fire QA and use community feedback seems standard now.

trashcan•44m ago

Oh, this is probably related to why I cannot resize "live caption" windows at all on the latest version of MacOS. They have been mucking around with resizing and not testing it well.

jakub_g•39m ago

Since we talk resizing windows, for months I was _sometimes_ unable to resize windows at all, and couldn't figure out why. I thought it was a random bug of macOS.

Finally I realized the issue: if a window spans across two displays, it won't resize. Insane!

(I have an external monitor up, laptop down, and it's easy to move a window such that it stretches a few pixels from monitor to the laptop. No resize for you!)

Forgeties79•7m ago

You can turn this off in the settings, forgot exactly where. I actually found after 1-2mo I preferred not being able to haha

LeifCarrotson•3m ago

Easy to stretch a few pixels? Easier to move windows with super+arrows so they snap perfectly to the monitor borders, and then you'd never have this issue. I rarely drag windows "by hand" (by mouse) anymore!

AJRF•38m ago

Why doesnt apple just hire this guy and fix this?

nelox•26m ago

It is quite possible the proposed improvement was not implemented because it wasn’t good enough. Fingers crossed for the next version.

UltraSane•21m ago

I want a macbook for the insane efficiency of the M5 CPU but I hate the mac GUI.

keyle•11m ago

What the hell is going on at Apple?

Where are the engineers allocated to?

Who's driving the bus? Cause it sure ain't Siri either.

kakadu•6m ago

I cannot believe we do not have a good arm Linux laptop with a comparable price and battery to a MacBook at this stage.

I am forced to use this abomination of an operating system just because.

Come on Lenovo, make it happen

JadeNB•6m ago

Or maybe not Lenovo, I'd like my high-spec Linux laptop to come without a rootkit.

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Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues

Comments

Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues

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