It has been an irritant that from time to time I would inadvertently tap the green button and get full screen mode. No more however when Macsparky in latest blog drew this to my/our attention:
You may know BetterTouchTool for its ability to hotwire your trackpad, but there are so many other uses. For example, you can reconfigure the Mac’s green window button. Apple sets that button to take the current window to full-screen mode, but I don’t want that. I used BetterTouchTool to make it maximize the current window without full-screen mode. (I also set a right-click on the green button to make it full screen with BetterTouchTool in the odd case I actually want that behavior.)
I use this functionality too but for the red button. There are certain apps I prefer to hide rather than close when the red button is clicked. For example:
I want IINA to keep playing music in the background like VLC or iTunes.
I want EagleFiler (cheapskate’s DEVONthink) and Obsidian to hide rather than close, otherwise they unload my library and have to reload it when I next reopen the window.
I actually went a step farther and created a ⌘W shortcut in Keyboard Maestro to hide IINA if the current file name matches a regex pattern of music extensions, and let the window close normally otherwise (such as when a movie file is playing), and BTT just calls the KM shortcut. Might have been able to achieve the same with BTT alone, but KM is like my duct tape and WD-40 whenever anything on my Mac begs tweaking.
Seen BTT mentioned few times and had a quick look at their website. Would BTT be really useful for mouse usages? My laptop is usually in clamshell mode hooked up with external monitor and external mouse and keyboard.
With a Magic Mouse, I find BTT invaluable with the amount of custom gestures you can automate. I have a whole workflow designed around change tracking in Word that makes the peripheral and the app nothing short of mandatory.
I use it to remap the extra buttons on my mouse. For example, the forward and back buttons now work on macOS, as they don’t without it. Worked on Windows without issues.
I’ve also found that the resize windows functions with BTT to be excellent - I again use it to replicate Windows where I can drag and drop and window to the side or top of the screen to either half or full size the window.