Make the macOS window zoom button fit to contents instead of covering the screen

[mysterycoconut]

When holding Option over the window's buttons (the traffic light colored ones, Close/Minimize/Full Screen), you can use the green button as Zoom instead of Full Screen (you can also select this from Window > Zoom menu). Problem is there is not much of a difference: yes Zoom doesn't create a new space for the window like Full Screen does, but it also does increase the window size to always cover the whole screen. Instead it should grow the window just enough to fit its contents (make scrollbars disappear, if possible), but no bigger, at the current image's zoom level.

[Old Bruce]

The reality is that what you want is controlled by Apple. The Window Zoom is for the Window, not the contents of that window.

Blender does what you want and I find it annoying. Like so many user interface choices in Blender they all seem "odd only for the sake being of odd".

[mysterycoconut]

Hey Bruce, I have been a Mac developer for 30 years, so believe me when I tell you this is doable with Apple's APIs (I think currently it is just a matter of implementing an NSWindowDelegate method).

This is also the standard Mac behavior for windows; true that it's not being pushed by Apple as much as it used to, but it is still nice. The behavior I am describing should not change the zoom (100% or whatever) of the contents of the window, but the window size itself; I am not sure that was clear in my previous post.

[Old Bruce]

Okay, we have been misunderstanding one another, well me misunderstanding your post.

Something like this:

So if you are at the bottom one and resize the zoom in that window (to 80%), resulting in a smaller Artboard, then a click on the zoom button (traffic lights) will result in the top window size? And if you then enlarge the artboard (to 200% say) then the click on the zoom button will result in a larger window showing the entire artboard. Been years since I saw that behaviour. I cannot say for sure what software used it but there was a key combo used to do so.

[mysterycoconut]

Right, exactly that behavior. But looking at your screenshot I see now why this is a bigger issue for me… I use Separated Mode, and covering the whole screen when you only need a fraction should not be the default, especially since the main use of Separated Mode is so you can fit multiple windows (from possibly multiple applications) in multiple monitors.