Window minimization stops functioning

Friday, June 20

In most applications there is support for the window minimizing function; however, for some users, neither clicking the yellow button in the window title bar nor pressing the command-M key combination minimizes the foreground window as expected.

This problem has been prevalent for Safari users and appears to be more common in situations where tabbed browsing is being used, but it has also happened for other applications such as Mail, Firefox, and Finder. For some users the minimize button will become grey, but in other situations the button appears normal and just doesn't work.

Tentative investigation indicates this might have something to do with Apple's "Spaces" feature in Leopard. For several users, the problem has occurred when they've run either new windows of the same application in another space, or when they've run certain individual applications in another space (notably VMWare); however, for the most part the occurrence of this problem seems to be random.

Working Fixes

Quit and relaunch the affected application Currently this appears to be a bug in Apple's "Spaces" feature in leopard, and the only fix seems to be to quit and restart the affected program. In some cases the programs must be force-quit, using the force-quit menu (options-command-esc, or from the Apple menu).

Other potential fixes

Disable and re-enable Spaces Go to the Spaces system preferences and disable spaces. Then re-enable spaces and hopefully this will toggle correct spaces behavior.

Remove the dock's preferences file The Dock's preferences file contains spaces-related settings that could affect how applications behave in the spaces environment, including the minimization functions. Removing the com.apple.Dock.plist file from ~/Library/Preference/ may help the situation. (NOTE: Removing this file will reset the Dock, so be sure to have an idea of what applications you currently have in the Dock).

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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