How to expand windows fully?
When I click the green plus icon in any window, I would like it to expand to the full size of my monitor, instead of having to drag the corner of the screen.
I have seen paid ($10+) tools that do this.
Is there some sort of Terminal hack or free program that would do it?
RightZoom is what you want (scroll down to the bottom of the page or use this MacUpdate link)
This free tool fixes an inconvenient behavior of green Zoom button in Mac OS X. It will always expand windows on a full screen instead of strange resizing.
Another one is BetterTouchTool. You might not think of BetterTouchTool as being a window manager, but it has window snapping (as seen in Windows 7). Take a look:
Cinch also does the same thing, but it costs $7.
In OS X Yosemite, just click the green plus (+) icon while holding Shift (⇧) + Option (⌥) keys.
Or double click on the window's title bar while holding Shift(⇧) key (this won't work if System Preferences > Dock > Double-click a window's title bar to minimize is checked).
UPDATE
Here are proofs for those who voted down my answer before even trying if it works:
- http://www.raymondcamden.com/2015/03/22/osx-yosemite-tip-maximizing-windows
If you Google for this, you’ll see lots of people recommending holding alt-shift before clicking the green button.
- Make the green full screen window icon on Yosemite maximize windows
In order to maximize the window so that it fills the visible window content, use:
⌥ + Click on green icon
In order to maximize the window both in width and height to the current desktop for applications like Google Chrome use:
⌥ + ⇧ + Click on green icon
- How to change the default behaviour of the fullscreen/maximize button?
...by doing:
⌥ + ⇧ + Click on green or outer right icon (plus icon)
I can maximize a window in both width and height to the current screen.
I tried it and it works on my MacBook Pro 13" Retina with Mac OS X Yosemite.
SUMMARY
There is no need to buy or hack something to do the following things:
- Fullscreen mode: click on green icon
- Resize window to it's content: ⌥ + click on green icon
- Maximize window to screen size: ⌥ + ⇧ + click on green icon