The little box (in the upper right, in between the “X” for closing out Chrome, and the “-” sign for putting the current screen on the bottom bar) no longer works. I must have accidentally hit some disabling button. Does anyone have any idea what I did, and how to undo it? The “X” and the “-” work just fine.
I assume we’re talking a PC and Windows. It’s nice to specify that up front.
That box actually has two different shapes. One is a plain box and the other is like a box with a shadow box behind it offset up & left slightly. That’s meant to represent multiple windows stacked atop one another.
The plain box means “Maximize”, which is what the tooltip will show if you hover your mouse on it. “Maximize” expands the program’s window to fill the physical screen.
The double box is “Restore Down”, which shrinks the window from Maximized state to whichever size it was before you maximized it last.
If you inadvertently drag the window edges to fill the screen, then Maximize and Restore Down are the same, or nearly the same, size and the control appears to do nothing when clicked.
The fix of course is to grab the edges of the window, make it smaller than the screen, and a miracle will occur.
If this is not your situation I’m out of ideas. I assume you’ve closed (not minimized; rather shut down completely) all browser windows at least once already trying to fix this.
Yes, PC and Windows.
I can make the double-box appear, but can’t grab any edge.
Haven’t shut the whole system down and rebooted yet. You think that might help? I’ll try it (after checking thoroughly to see that I’m not working on anything in the zillion windows I have open now.)
A few weeks ago I had to start a thread about the ability to restore a closed window by right clicking on the + after the string of tabs stopped working. Turns out they had (secretly) added a new emblem to the START of that line and that reopen command had been moved to a menu under that. Then a week or so after that I realized that ‘new’ icon on the left had vanished…but now the right click on the + worked again. I guess they had a million complaints and vanished that new improvement.
I wish they’d stop tinkering with Chrome. Or at least tell you what changes the new improved version they plan to install will make and offer you a chance to refuse the auto update.
Try one of the corners & move it diagonally in; especially if it’s close to a corner of your screen. Also, put your mouse over the top bar, click on the mouse & move it down; that should move the whole window down & give you more real estate to resize it.
That worked. Thanks.
@Spiderman nailed it.
What can happen, and especially if you have more than one monitor is the window can actually be sized slightly bigger than the size of the screen. So “Restore Down” actually grows it just enough that you can’t grab the window’s edges since they’re off the edge of the screen where the mouse won’t reach.
As he said, the fix is to grab the title bar and drag it down, left, or right until you can see an edge or corner of the window. Then drag that inwards to shrink the window. Repeat dragging and resizing as necessary until until you can see all 4 corners. Then you can Maximise or Restore Down and get the expected behaviors.
FYI, this problem is not limited to browsers; any Windows app can get into this state. And restarting either the app or the whole PC will NOT help.
I’ve been a fan of his ever since Amazing Fantasy #15, and now am more so.
I guess I didn’t hit any weird buttons–it just happens from time to time that the screen is bigger than the monitor, huh?
Not exactly. There are keystroke combos you can accidentally hit to stretch the window beyond the edge of the screen. If you have multiple monitors you can manage to size the window to fill the big one then transfer the window to the small one by keystroke too.
Of course it’s a mystery to you while that’s happening. you just look up and may or may not notice anything is different. Until you try to Restore Down later.