How to stop macOS Sequoia from resizing windows to fill your screen

When you have an app’s windows sized just as you want them in macOS, it can be a shock when a slight movement in Sequoia suddenly causes the window to balloon to fill the screen. What changed? Apple added new options in System Settings > Desktop & Dock in the Windows section that can help you manage windows, but there’s one you may want to disable.

Apple beefed up the Windows section between macOS 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia. In 13 Ventura and 14 Sonoma, you had the first three options: “Prefer tabs when opening documents,” “Ask to keep changes when closing documents,” and “Close windows when quitting an application.” Sequoia added a whopping four new ones:

• Drag windows to screen edges to tile
• Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen
• Hold [Option] key while dragging windows to tile
• Tiled windows have margins

These tiling options are superb shortcuts when you need help with simple window organization. You can also hover over the green expand/resize button in the upper-left corner of any window to reveal a dropdown menu with several more options for arranging, filling, and resizing. (Also check out the third-party Moom app for a greater array of controllable tiling options; see our review.)

But the culprit among the new choices shown above for unexpected window action is “Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen.” It doesn’t take much of a slip to move the window to the top and have it resize. Unless that’s an option you can see yourself employing regularly, I suggest disabling it. This leaves the array of other choices available and lets you avoid an accidental resize.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Cynthia.

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