Application window minimize/maximize

Decades ago, the MacOS has the ability to Minimize and then Maximize an application window with a keystroke (keyboard shortcut). This option still exist to minimize an application window by pressing ⌘M, but there’s no longer anyway to Maximize the window using a keyboard shortcut, that I’m aware of.

I’m curious if anyone has found a good way to do this (maximize a minimized application window)? I was thinking of attempting to use Keyboard Maestro to write a macro to do so, but I can’t think of how I’d do it, as there’s no menu option for it.

Are there any 3rd party apps that already do this? Any other suggestions?

Cheers

I guess it depends what you mean by “Maximize”. I don’t recall macOS ever having a feature of that name.

If you mean Un-minimize, I don’t see how there could be a keyboard shortcut. Menu commands and their shortcuts apply to the frontmost window, and a minimized window is never frontmost. If the application has more than one window open, how would you specify what window to un-minimize?

For other interpretations of Maximize: macOS has for some years had Enter Full Screen, which is usually in the View menu, where it usually has a shortcut.

There is also the Zoom feature, which dates back to the classic era. In some applications, Zoom maximizes the window to fill most of the screen, but not quite “Full Screen”. In other cases, Zoom optimizes the window size in an application- and window-content-specific way. It might even reduce the window size. For example, a Finder window with just a few items will shrink to contain just those items. Zoom still exists, generally in the Window menu. It sometimes has a shortcut, but I don’t see any consistency about what that shortcut is.

The green traffic-light button enters Full Screen; Option+green button “zooms”.

Moom by Many Tricks will do it, along with a host of keyboard and mouse-based window manipulations. I’ve been a happy user for many years.

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By “maximize”, I mean the opposite of “minimize”. To restore a minimized window. Not looking to zoom or enter Full Screen, but to simply restore a previously minimized window in a given app. :grinning:

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This is a common point of confusion for people moving between MacOS and Windows.

“Zoom” is not Maximize. It is supposed to toggle the window size between an “ideal” size (as computed by the app itself) and a user-defined size (the last time you manually resized it).

As you pointed out, the “ideal” size for a Finder window is the minimum size that can contain all of its content.

Other apps may have other definitions. For instance, a word processor might use the minimum width needed to show the full width of a page (at whatever the current zoom level is set to), and the full height of the screen. A spreadsheet’s size might be the size necessary to hold the print region (which usually defaults to a region from the upper-left corner to the extent of non-empty cells). An HD video editor might be 1920x1280 plus space for editing controls.

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Ah. That’s what Microsoft calls “Restore”.

Unfortunately, the Dock is primarily responsible for this. I did find a sequence, but it may not be as good as just picking up the mouse. Including some screen-shots:

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