3 Different Ways To Maximize a Window On a Mac

If you want to maximize the size of a window on your Mac, using the obvious controls may not get you what you want. Full Screen mode removes the window from the current desktop and takes it away from other windows. Zooming doesn't always expand the window to fill the screen. Learn how to really expand a window to its maximum size.

Check out 3 Different Ways To Maximize a Window On a Mac at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you three different ways that you can maximize a window on a Mac.
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So often Mac users want to maximize a window on the screen. This can mean three different things and often what people really want is the third way to maximize. But the first two are all that they find. Let me explain.
So here I have a Pages document open up in the app Pages. Now I want to have this fill the screen. There are two really obvious ways to do this that people usually go to but neither of them gives them the result that they want. The first is to simply click this green button here. When you do that it will go into full screen mode. Now you see here if I actually hover the cursor there it gives me the choice and enter full screen mode if the first option. Then some other choices like Tiling Left and Right. So clicking this green button or selecting Enter Full Screen does the same thing. You can also go to View. Usually there's an Enter Full Screen command with a keyboard shortcut there.
All of these will do the same thing. They take the window full screen. The menu bar goes away. If you had the Dock there it goes away. It occupies the entire thing. What you've actually done is create a full screen app. If you go into Mission Control by using the Control key and up arrow you'll see here you've got your desktop and you've got a full screen app Pages. You go back to your desktop and maybe you've got other apps running there as well and you can go Control Up Arrow back to Pages. You can also use Control Left and Control Right. But the intention wasn't actually to create a full screen app. It was simply to make the window as large as possible. So lets exit full screen mode here. I'll do that by moving my cursor up here to the top and clicking the green button again.
Now the second thing people do is to use Window, Zoom. You can see there is Window, Minimize which will put the window in the Dock. There's Zoom which many people think of well that's Mac's way of doing maximize. But if I choose Zoom this is what I get. It didn't maximize at all. What did it do? Well, it actually did maximize the window but only to the point of what was needed for the window. So let's go and Zoom again which will reverse that. You can see here the document has a little extra space here on the left and the right side. The Sidebars are at full size. So when I zoom it basically changed the size of the window to be the maximum size that was needed here. The document here in Pages is at the full size. Everything fits in. You're not missing anything. 
Now what's confusing here is the in other apps if you do the same thing, Window, Zoom it does actually fill the screen. In this case, in the Maps app, you have this big flexible space here. So it will enlarge the window as much as it can to fit on the screen. So I can use Zoom to go back and forth between those modes. Another way to get to Zoom is to double click on the Title bar, obviously avoiding any buttons. Also, if you hold the Option key down when putting your cursor over the green button, you will see this changes to Zoom. You can select that or you could just click the green button with the Option key held down and it will Zoom there the same.
Here's another example. Using Safari is I double click on the Title Bar you can see it doesn't zoom to the maximum size. It just enlarged the window to the maximum size needed to comfortably view webpages. The problem with Zoom is in cases like this. All of those options; double clicking the Title Bar, Option clicking the green button, they will all just expand the window but only as much as needed. It won't truly take the window to fill the entire screen. 
So the third method is a consistent way to always make the window fill the entire screen. Now let me show you the hard way to do it. The hard way to do it is to actually drag either the sides of the window and have it fill everything or to use the corners of the window. So I can use the corners of this window here. Drag the top left corner up to the top left. Drag the bottom right corner down to the bottom right. Now I get what I want. But that's a lot of actions to get that. Is there a quick way to do it? It turns out there is.
See if you hold the Option key down and you drag anything it will drag that side and the opposite side. So for instance if I drag the right side of the window here you could see it just drags the right side of the window. But if I hold the Option key down and drag the right side you can see the left side moves with it. The same thing if I were to drag the bottom. But if I hold the Option key down the bottom and top move together. This works with corners too. So if I drag the bottom left corner you could see it just drags that. But if I hold the Option key down it drags the bottom left and top right corners. The opposite corners are dragged at the same time. 
Now, also note that instead of dragging if you double click any side or corner it will snap all the way to the edge. So I can double click the left side there and you can see how it snaps to the left side. I can double click the top and it snaps to the top. If I double click say the upper left corner it snaps to the upper left. So if I combine those two things, hold the Option key down and double click on any corner, what will happen is that corner will snap to the corner of the screen and the opposite corner will also snap to the corner of the screen. 
So, let me Option double click the top left corner and you can see now it fills the screen. That will work with any corner because any corner plus the opposite corner taken all the way to the edge of the screen will fill the screen. So if you want to expand the window to fill the entire screen but leave the Menu Bar there, leave other windows hidden underneath it, then all you need to do is Option double click any corner of any window and it will fill the screen with that window.
So to review, the first way to maximize a window is to take it full screen. Click the green button and now it's a full screen desktop. If you want to Zoom, which will enlarge the window but only as much as it needs, either choose Window, Zoom or hold the Option key and click the green button, or double click the Title bar. If you want the window to fill out the screen regardless of the contents of the window, Option double click any of the four corners.

Comments: 5 Responses to “3 Different Ways To Maximize a Window On a Mac”

Karl

9 months ago

Great video Gary, I also learn something new watching your videos.

Nigel Turner

Thanks for this.

I’ve always wondered why MacOS doesn’t have a maximise (as opposed to full screen) button.

I downloaded an App called Magnet to help me do this, but the Option>DoubleClick method is more convenient.

Crashcup

Thanks Gary. Useful tip, as always. As a Mac user going back to System 7 days who got used to clicking the green button to “maximize” the window, I have cursed Apple almost daily since they changed its behavior to “Enter Full Screen.” I NEVER use full screen mode—it just gets in the way when I want to be able to access a menu or the Dock. Does anyone really find it useful enough to justify making it the default action of such a fundamental and prominent OS control (the green button)? /rant

Gary Rosenzweig

Crashcup: Actually, yes. Many people use apps in full screen mode all the time, some almost exclusively and can’t understand why others use them in windows. Myself, I rarely use full screen apps on my desktop Mac Pro with 3 monitors, but I use full screen mode for Safari and Mail on my MacBook Pro every day.

Freddie Pineiro

Thanks Gary that was a useful tip. I use an app called BetterSnapTool, just grab the window and drag to the top of the screen and it fills the screen. It also lets you do half and quarter screen and you can select specific window sizes for different applications. I also have 3 monitors and it works perfectly.

3 Different Ways To Maximize a Window On a Mac

Comments: 5 Responses to “3 Different Ways To Maximize a Window On a Mac”

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