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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

I think the first reason is a legitimate criteria. Any app that has a window is definitely expected to have a minimise button - it's very strange behaviour if it doesn't, and even games that normally run full screen should have this button when placed in windowed mode.

The second reason certainly sounds infuriating, but it's odd that the reviewer had access to an OS update that you didn't. In general, a crash on the latest OS update is a good reason for rejection because you're going to have to fix it sooner or later anyway. Better to fix it now rather than have to come back to it later.

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Well the worst part was, their own Human Interface Guidelines even say:

“These options are usually visible, but can be hidden as a group, such as......, or individually disabled, such as when a full-screen app can't be minimized. ...... A title bar should be visible, but can be hidden in an immersive app like a game.”

Either way, this wouldn’t be in the top 1000 reasons for someone to request a refund for a game on the store so why is Apple even concerning itself?

Yeah, why provide an API to disable the minimize button if they're going to reject your app for using it

Because you might have an occasional transient window where it's legitimate to disable minimization but you shouldn't do this for main app windows.

Because you might use it in an app that you are not going to distribute via the public application stores. It's also possible that the reviewer made a mistake.

I don't buy this - if you add a feature to software you know it's going to get used - if they needed it for internal stuff they could add it in some private library.

And, if it's something people want so bad that you'd allow it for non-published applications then you clearly need to solve it by enabling or offering some sort of replacement for published applications.

The underlying API is a decade or so older than the current version of the human interface guidelines. It's entirely possible that if they were writing the API today, they'd leave that capability out.

> In general, a crash on the latest OS update is a good reason for rejection because you're going to have to fix it sooner or later anyway. Better to fix it now rather than have to come back to it later.

That's true, but how do you fix a bug you can't reproduce with an unreleased patch you can't acquire, which is probably the same for the general public?

There has to be some flexibility here.

Of course, but this situation should not happen. Reviewers should be using the latest OS update that is available to developers. That has always been my experience, but my experience is mostly on iOS not macOS.

In particular because Apple's stated position is "Developers should always be developing against the latest released version of the platform" (being iOS or macOS).

Throwing a rejection because of a bug that can only be reproduced on an unobtainable minor patch release doesn't seem to fit with that guideline.

Well they should dogfood their own rules and add such a button to Safari. Every time I end up mistakenly tapping Open in New Window (which I NEVER want) instead of New Tab, I have a very frustrating time figuring out how to gesture that new window TF off my screen.

Cmd-M or Cmd-W to close it. Or click that little orange button in the top left corner to minimise it or the red one to close it.

He's referring to the mobile version of Safari, which for some reason labels 'open in new tab' as 'open in background'. If you hit 'open in new window' by mistake you end up with a split screen view that can't be swiped away with a gesture; you have to long-press the tab icon to tell it to merge the tabs in the new window together with the old one.

Safari does have a minimize button. It's the yellow one that sends it down to the dock, and is present on every single window on macOS that I can find. Even the mini-UI palette windows like "Safari User Guide" have a mini version of the same three window controls.

But if you're trying to close a window that you didn't want to open, you probably want the red button not the yellow one.

If what you're trying to do is move a page from its own window to another window, you can drag its tab. But that's not possible if you have "Show tab bar" disabled in the view menu, the tab bar will be hidden for windows with a single tab.

Alternate workaround if you find yourself accidentally opening things in a new window by accident frequently: instead of right clicking and picking from the menu, command-click on the link to open it in a new tab. If you have a 3-button mouse, middle click will do this as well.

How do you reverse the effects of "Cmd+H" without resorting to the mouse or trackpad?

"CMD + Tab" seems to reverse it just fine for me regardless of which app (ie I just tested it in Chrome).

Cmd+Tab and select the program you hid.

Hold cmd and keep hitting tab if you need to cycle through multiple things, but if you've just done it the hidden app should be the first one.

Thabks for the suggestion, but IME cmd+tabbing till the hidden app is selected, then releasing (ie, standard cmd+tab ux) does precisely nothing. Hence the question.

Not sure what to tell you then, since I've never had it not work.

If you tap the command quickly it should happen immediately without even bringing up the app switcher, and if you hold cmd and tab through the app switcher it does the same thing when you let go:

https://streamable.com/pn8rjb

Video recorded on Big Sur beta, but I'm sure this behavior isn't new.

Another thought - if you meant to ask how to restore a window after minimizing it to the dock with cmd-M (rather than hiding the app with cmd-H), there's an even less well known shortcut: Open the command-tab switcher, select the app you want, then hold down option and release command.

Doesn't handle multiple windows gracefully (if the app has another window not minimized it won't do anything, just switch to that window as normal). But if you have an app with a single window and you've minimized it, this will pop it back up.

Alternatively, you can access the whole dock directly with a keyboard shortcut using ctrl-F3 (add Fn if needed depending on your keyboard setup).

"command-tab switcher, select the app you want, then hold down option and release command"

bingo! thanks! :)

Yep that works for macOS. Not iPadOS.

Ah, yes, iPad Safari has the same problem but no option to show the tab bar with a single tab. If you hit the "show tabs" button in the corner you can drag it back from one Safari instance to the other, but it'll open up a new empty tab to replace it. You have to take the other copy of Safari back to full screen (to separate it from the new copy) and then use the app switcher to kill the accidental one.

I don't love this either, it's my biggest complaint about iPad's multitasking system.

The thread you are replying to involves macOS.

I hate “open in new window” on iOS so much, I turned off multiwindowing because every way to close the window felt incredibly awkward.

I still have the “open in new window” item there when I long-press a link. It now does absolutely nothing if I hit it by accident. Which feels inelegant but is a lot better than “oh fuck I just made another goddamn new window when I wanted a new tab”.

You will never make any friends making this kind of comments. Nitpicking is bad enough, calling the OP mistaken without evidence is worse. It's just rude.

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