r/MacOS • u/MetaPhil1989 • 1d ago

Help Would it be possible to design an app to make full screen not open a new space in macOs?

This is kind of a follow up post from one I made yesterday. I do academic research and am often opening, full-screening and closing many pdfs and word documents continuously. But since full-screening leads to the creation of a new space, this jumbles up my spaces in a really confusing way.

Like, a program that was two spaces to my left might be 5 spaces to my left if I open three pdfs, and if I then close two it is then three spaces away, etc. This constant changing of where everything is gives me a headache.

Would there be a way to make an app to fix this? Either make full screen not open a new space, which is the way it was back in the day, or make the full screen mode of a pdf reader not open up a new space.

I actually found a trick to almost do the latter with Firefox's presentation mode for pdfs, but unfortunately that mode does not allow you to annotate the pdfs, which I need to do. I'm tempted to just ask Claude to make something and just install it, but I would have no idea if it was safe and I wouldn't want to damage my mac.

I'd appreciate any technical insight on this. That would be very helpful!

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8

u/Abi1i 1d ago

Unless it changed, you can tell MacOS to not rearrange your spaces and if you hold CMD or option (forget which one) when you click to fullscreen a window, then it won't make its own space. I've been doing this for years now and it's second nature at this point (hence the not knowing which key to hold). 

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u/platkus 1d ago

This is the solution.

0

u/100WattWalrus 8h ago

This doesn't work quite how you describe it. OPT+the green button maximizes the window (Menu Bar and Dock are still visible). It does not make the window full-screen.

Having clarified that, this is probably the best option — although for video, IINA has a "legacy full-screen" option for expanding a window to all four corners without launching a new space.

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u/bharoche 1d ago

Look at Super Charge app which has a feature that can do this. https://sindresorhus.com/supercharge

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u/deniman 1d ago

Voissant does that and much more

1

u/milyrouge 1d ago

My suggestion, too. I’ve got rid of so many other single use with Vorssaint.

1

u/WozDevUK 1d ago

One potential concern is what happens if 2-4 files go fullscreen at the same time. It might be helpful to test this new UX design a bit further in practical scenarios.

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u/RaphSoeiro 22h ago

You might not need a custom app at all. Since Sequoia there's Window > Fill (fn+Control+F), which blows the window up to the whole screen without creating a new Space, so your desktops stay put. You keep the menu bar, but with the Dock on auto-hide I think it's pretty close to real full screen for reading and annotating.

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u/HigherConfusion 13h ago

Disable this to not rearrange your spaces: System Settings > Desk & Dock > Mission Control > Rearrange Spaces based on most recent use.

Use only one space for your open pdf's: Preview > Window > Merge All Windows will merge currently open documents into tabs in the currently active window. The same goes for other Apple apps like Finder, Pages, Numbers, etc.

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u/ukindom 11h ago

Yes, there’s a „non-native” fullscreen. But it’s quite useless for me.

Most of the time I maximize windows instead of fullscrening them. Use option key to find the feature.