0

Working with a multi-monitor setup (MacBook screen and external monitor) I stumble over this very annoying little problem (that seems to be a bug) quite often.

When there is a window in fullscreen mode on my second monitor (which there often is) I cannot drag a window from my first to my second monitor.

Here's a low quality gif of what I mean:

enter image description here

I have to first four-finger-swipe left (don't know the technical term) to the workspace (or what is it called on MacOS?) that has non-fullscreen windows on it. Very annoying, especially since I can't do that with my regular mouse (as far as I know).

Does anyone know how to make my life easier? Is there a setting that lets MacOS automatically switch to the correct workspace?

It seems amazing that any modern window manager would ever refuse to place a window on another screen when dragging that window there

T. J. Evers
  • 101
  • 3
  • Fullscreen only allows one app at a time… fullscreen. How/why does hiding the dock not let you use the entire screen [except for the menu bar]? You can call Spaces by key command, which you must set up in System Prefs/settings >Keyboard – Tetsujin Nov 16 '23 at 14:12
  • "Fullscreen only allows one app at a time" sure, but I want to drag a window to a monitor, I don't care that there happens to be something in fullscreen there. I'm dragging. I clearly want to move my window. It blocks me from doing that. That's just stupid and can't be intended behaviour. I'd expect it to just move to the correct space and accept my window. – T. J. Evers Nov 16 '23 at 14:28
  • How is it supposed know what the 'correct' Space is? Dragging to the hard right should move Spaces, but I don't know how that behaves if you have Separate Spaces enabled, because then your right screen only has a right edge & left…left. Alternatively, just invoke Mission Control & you can drag to any Space you want. – Tetsujin Nov 16 '23 at 16:17
  • Ah ok, we're talking about something else. If I understand correctly, a "Space" is like one fullscreen app, except a space can be split when dragging a window to it in mission control. In that case: when I drag a window to my second monitor, why does it block the drag, instead of just adding the window to whatever space is on the second monitor? – T. J. Evers Nov 20 '23 at 10:30
  • You'd probably have to ask Apple that. I never use fullscreen, nor split-screen, so these are not workarounds I've ever had to deal with. Fullscreen wrecks what the original Spaces was designed to do, so I've never had any use for it. See https://superuser.com/a/1187552/347380 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/179403/85275 for how I prefer to work. See if it's any use to you. – Tetsujin Nov 20 '23 at 10:36
  • I've added a gif to explain what I mean a bit better – T. J. Evers Nov 20 '23 at 10:45
  • But basically, your answer is "don't use fullscreen apps" then? Pretty good advice, now that I know you can manually create these spaces (new Mac user here). – T. J. Evers Nov 20 '23 at 10:55
  • I'm afraid it is, yes. I really can't stand fullscreen. It's disruptive & breaks my workflow. I flit between Spaces constantly, by number [Ctrl/num is the default but it's not activated by default, see Mission Control prefs]. However, fullscreen Spaces don't have a number, they just get added to the right of the last numbered Space, so you cannot access them directly, you must go to the highest number, then keep moving right until you find it. I consider this behaviour counter-productive. For the sake of always having the menu bar visible, I like my Spaces to all be easily accessible. – Tetsujin Nov 20 '23 at 10:59
  • Isn't the menu always visible when you set "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" to Never? – T. J. Evers Nov 20 '23 at 11:11
  • Ah, probably. That's actually a recent addition, doesn't exist on my old Pro. – Tetsujin Nov 20 '23 at 12:14

2 Answers2

1

As a new Mac user, I just found this workaround for myself:

I kept naturally entering full screen through the green button at the top left corner of the window, because I didn't know how else to maximise the window.

However, you can double click the title bar of a window. This will maximise the window on the monitor, but will still allow you to drag other apps to that monitor.

(This requires you to have Double-click a window's title bar to Zoom selected in your Desktop & Dock settings.)

God I'm so relieved! This has been bugging me for weeks. Spent 5 % of my working day minimising full-screen windows haha.

Cording
  • 11
  • I appreciate the effort, but the workaround "not having a fullscreen window" isn't a great solution to the problem (which occurs when having a fullscreen window). A maximized window is not the same as a fullscreen one. – T. J. Evers Mar 15 '24 at 09:07
0

As Cording noted in his answer, I could just maximise the window on the second monitor instead of having it be fullscreen.

The big problem with that, is when I did that, the maximised window would make room for the dock whenever I moved my mouse to the second monitor. Fullscreen windows don't do that. Therefore, I thought the only way to always keep the second monitor filled would be to make the window fullscreen instead of maximised. But that caused the problem described in my question.

In the end, I found a way to prevent maximised (not fullscreen) windows becoming smaller whenever MacOS decides.

It was to uncheck the option "Displays have separate Spaces" under Desktop & Dock > Mission Control

The downside of this, is that when using the four finger swipe to change spaces, both my laptop screen and second monitor switch spaces simultaneously. But in my world, that's better than having a maximised window randomly un-maximise or being unable to drag windows to another monitor.

@Apple: please update your archaic window manager to have proper, modern support for more than one screen

T. J. Evers
  • 101
  • 3