Cinnamon window-top-border double-click behavior 20.3 vs 21.2

[Jon]

Hi all,

First time poster here, have been using Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon 5.2.7) as my main OS for a couple of years now and am very happy with it. Recently I acquired a new laptop and installed the latest-at-the-time 21.2 (Cinnamon 5.8.4), and I have found that double-clicking the top border of windows no longer vertically-maximizes the window. I've tried searching "double-click top border of window cinnamon" in both duckduckgo and google, as well as poking around the "Windows" and "Window Tiling" settings, to no avail. Would appreciate if anyone knows if this behavior can be re-enabled in the newer version of Mint/Cinnamon. Thank you.

[motoryzen]

Two ways to do the same thing that may resolve the problem for you

1. terminal command ... ( highlight it below, copy, paste it into a terminal, press enter to execute it )

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences action-double-click-titlebar 'toggle-maximize'

2. a. dconf-editor ( not installed by default. sudo apt install dconf-editor -y in terminal to install it ), then navigate as follows

b. org / gnome / desktop/ wm /preferences

c. select action-double-click-titlebar which should be first option ...
d. ensure the " use default value" is enabled and above " Current value " in the " Default" section...it says " toggle-maxmize"

If not..change it to that.

Honestly your situation has me puzzled. I've been using Mint Cinnamon since late 2010 with versions 17-21.2 with no exception and I never had to execute steps 1 or 2 to get this functionality back for any of my pc builds.

[Jon]

Thank you for your reply, motoryzen. Unless I'm reading the gsettings command incorrectly, it looks like that is the command-line way of adjusting the setting circled below in "Windows":

My apologies for being unclear, but the feature I would like restored does not maximize the window to fill the entire screen, but rather fully expands it vertically to the top and bottom of the screen and is activated by double-clicking only the top border of the window after the mouse cursor changes from the pointer to the resize icon. So on a 1080p screen, performing the action would cause the Y coordinates of the window to expand to 0 and 1080 while leaving the X coordinates unchanged.

I saw some people online referring to it as "vertical-maximizing" as opposed to simply "maximizing" which is why I used that potentially confusing term. I don't know what the official name for this behavior is.

The double-clicking anywhere on the title bar with the normal mouse pointer to maximize works perfectly fine, it's just I'd like to go one step further and have the very convenient "vertical-maximizing" back.

[Jon]

To add a little bit more information, this feature was called "SnapSizing" in Windows 7:
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enable-or ... dows.3225/

[spamegg]

I'm on Mint 21.3 Cinnamon and I can see "toggle vertical maximize"

Now I should mention that going from Mint 20.3 to 21, there were some MASSIVE changes in Cinnamon. The code for the window manager Muffin was heavily refactored to stay closer to the upstream Mutter by Gnome.

Many older features were removed, or simplified / merged. For example, there used to be a tiling option that did not resize / push the other window, but instead would go "in front" of it. That was removed, since very few people knew / used it, and it was too similar to the normal tiling feature.

So, do not expect the same features. If your specific favorite feature is gone (or changed), then that's that. Just get used to the new features, they are very similar.

[Jon]

Thank you for your insights, spamegg. It does look like I will have to live without this feature on the newer laptop, as I did try setting the action on title bar double-click to "toggle maximize vertically" and received unexpected results. Programs such as xed and xreader respect the setting and maximize vertically when their title bars are double-clicked, but other programs like Zim and Firefox retain the default behavior of maximizing to fill the entire screen.

I didn't know that the window manager was called Muffin and Mutter so thank you for that also. I'm looking forward to reading more about them in the near future.

[spamegg]

Yeah I can remember it because "Muffin" is a pastry, so it goes with "Cinnamon", "spices" etc.

This kind of "feature removal" is unfortunately common in the free open source world.
So it's best not to get too attached to anything, and remain flexible instead.
There were a few more features removed / simplified, but I cannot even remember them now, since I got used to the new Cinnamon already (flexibility).

But if I think from the developers' perspective, I understand a bit.
They cannot make all decisions by themselves, they depend on software written by others.
And they have massive maintenance burden (and not paid), so they don't want to maintain features that very few people use, or features that are too similar to other ones.

[JosephM]

The feature is still there and seems to work the same in 21.3. If you hover the top of the titlebar where the resize arrow shows and then double click, it maximizes vertically. Some windows, such as those that are client side decorated like Calculator, ignore this functionality. That's just a difference in how those apps work and there are more of them in 21.3.

[motoryzen]

If you hover the top of the titlebar where the resize arrow shows and then double click, it maximizes vertically.

For those programs' windows that DO work with this idea , which I tested nemo and it does, You could adjust the " draggable border width" within " Windows " , Behavior tab up top, then left click drag the slider button on the bottom area towards the right hand side alittle until it is easier to do this BUT..not so " in the way" of trying to work with the window in other ways such as pressing the x to close it if you're the mostly gui manager type of person.