How do I disable automatic window maximizing?

[mfreeman]

I'm not sure where this came from, but in the last couple days, I noticed that when my mouse pointer touches the top of the screen (whether I am dragging a window or not), the top-most window is automatically maximized. This is frustrating, because I use my panel at the top of the screen, and every time I go to open the Menu, a window is maximized that I don't want maximized. Any ideas where this is coming from? I looked through all my Compiz settings, and can't find anything there. I don't remember ever setting anything to get this feature, it just started happening. I've been playing around with lots of different software (just testing things out), but nothing that I would think would do anything like this. Any ideas? I'm using Linux Mint 10 32-bit. Thanks!

[dawgdoc]

If you are using Compiz, I would say that is the most likely culprit. There are many ways to change the behavior of windows from within it. Explore its settings at >Menu >Preferences >CompizConfig Settings Manager. Another source of changes is the gconf configuration editor. Look at either >Menu >Preferences >Configuration Editor or >Menu >System Tools >Configuration Editor, depending on which edition of Mint you are using.

[dawgdoc]

Since reading and responding to your post, I came across this thread by Oscar799. She said

If everytime you try to move a window it automatically maximises and you'd rather it didn't do that...
Menu>Preferences>CCSM>WindowManagement uncheck "Grid" will stop it

[mfreeman]

Perfect! Thanks!

[cranks]

Thanks from me too!!

[cyberknight314]

Hi! I recently have been running linux mint 11 from the liveCD, (until I get around to running installing windows on a spare drive so that I can try to run the gigabyte motherboad flash utility, b/c my bios is corrupted and won't read the bios update file even from a fat16 flash drive... lol, I don't know... I maybe have to stop looking at anti-occupation, ****, or 9-11 sites) The following may only apply to those running linux mint 11 running compiz.

But yes! I have the exact same problem, and was almost thinking of never installing mint 11, and maybe going back to opensuse but there on the weird Unity shell as well. When you have a 23" monitor and every time you move a window along the top and it wants to maximize the window as soon as it snaps to the top, this is EXTREMELY annoying.

This is what I learned to FIX this small, but extremely irritating inconvenience:

***first, goto Menu>Preferences>CompizConfig Settings Manager>Window Management
or: Menu>Control Center>CompizConfig Settings Manager>WindowManagement (in case your on the favorites view of your main menu)

Then, you can simply disable Grid, as someone mentioned...
***or better fix only the specific problem:
***Click Grid>Edges>Resize Actions>Top Edge - select: NONE

Really most people never use Grid, but it is useful when you look through the menu options and understand what it does:
*Pushing the mouse cursor while dragging a window titlebar past the left screen edge will resize the window to fit the left half of the screen. Likewise if pushing past the right edge of the screen.

You can see on the Grid>Edges>Resize Actions list that the corners can be set up so that when you drag off into a corner while the mouse while is dragging a window titlebar, then it will reorient itself to snap to the corner (at one quarter size), which can be useful for large multitasking screens. for example, set upper left corner>top left corner and respective corners... However, there is a bug that sometimes the titlebar will be above the top of the screen (as with my settings menu, but not with my firefox), then you have to know to hold ALT in order to drag the window body... or if inconsequential, just closing the window by right-clicking on the taskbar and reopening it.

//below just comments and opinion
really, there are too many options, it's a time-sucker. It's a tragedy that the default grid behavior seems buggy. Major time suck.
There is NO reason that a window dragged along the top should want to automatically maximize. This type of bug needs to be fixed before a major release.

When moving a window close to the top, the most logical default behavior is snapping to the top.
Likewise the bottom edge of a dragged window should want to snap to the bottom. Or to the sides. This is good default interface design.

IMHO, The only time a window should resize is when dragging it off the screen, as for those useful resize options mentioned.

Because you can already maximize a window by double-clicking the titlebar or pressing the + or max button, there is no reason to have the new irritating default behavior (maximizing), unless you're on miniature netbook screen, where a window is best maximized 99% of the time.

The only useful default functionality I can think of is similar to the grid behavior that I described concerning the other resize actions, which seem to happen when dragging a mouse cursor off the left or right side of the screen. For the top or bottom, it would be useful if this would keep a window the same width, but simply max its vertical size. This would be useful default behavior. at the moment it maximizes WITHOUT me even dragging it off the screen edge (like with the other edge resize actions); this is clearly inconsistent edge resize action behavior, and my conclusion is that this behavior of the compiz Grid mechanism is buggy, and hopefully they are working on this, as I don't have time to submit a bug report.

The key bindings to ctrl+alt+numpad# are also pretty useful. Just try them.
As I already wasted much more than 15minutes trying to fix the annoying problem, I thought I would waste a few more trying to share my discovery.
Best wishes. Mint is pretty nice. Just wish the default search engine setup wasn't so irritating. It would be nice to have a one-click contribute and revert mint to default firefox behavior.

[acw89]

I know this has been an old post, but I just wanted to thank you for this great "splain". I have be wondering how to turn off all this snapping of windows and this did the trick. Thanks again

[borfo]

Hey, this solution didn't work for me in Linux Mint 12... I don't think Compiz runs in Gnome Shell. The solution for gnome shell (for me at least, after hours of trying to figure this out) is:

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

then:

gconf-editor > / > desktop > gnome > shell > window > disable edge tiling option

...then logout and log back in or restart... Automatic maximizing and tiling of windows should be disabled.

[Vella]

And thanks from me too - this has been bugging me forever. And by the way ( cyberknight314) , when you have small laptop screen and you try to move a window to see whats underneath it, and it just expands and hides EVERYTHING, is annoying as hell