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

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

Apple consolidated 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”, “Request to keep changes when closing documents”, and “Close windows when exiting an application”. Sequoia has added four amazing new ones:

• Drag the windows to the edges of the screen to tile
• Drag windows to the menu bar to fill the screen
• Hold down the (Option) key while dragging the windows into the tile
• Tiled windows have edges

These tiling options are great 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 drop-down menu with more options for arranging, filling, and resizing. (Also see the third-party Moom app for a wider range of controllable board options; see our review.)

But the culprit among the new options shown above for the unexpected window action is “Drag windows to menu bar to fill screen”. It doesn’t take much sliding to move the window to the top and resize it. Unless this is an option you see regularly, I suggest you turn it off. This leaves the range of other options available and allows you to avoid accidental resizing.

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

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