The full-screen mode on many native Mac applications is great. It takes full advantage of most Mac Retina displays, and it gives you the maximum working space. It also diminishes distractions by hiding the Dock and the status bar. If this is a look you like, you can follow the steps below to make sure some applications always open in full-screen mode on your Mac.
- Jun 01, 2020 If you're using macOS Mojave or later, press Shift-Command (⌘)-5 on your keyboard to see onscreen controls for recording the entire screen, recording a selected portion of the screen, or capturing a still imageof your screen. You can also record the screen with QuickTime Player instead. Record the entire screen Click in the onscreen controls.
- Python may be installed on your Mac already: you can test this out by opening Terminal and entering python -version. If it's not, you should make your way to the Python website and click the.
Step 1: Enabling Resume
Open the app and launch into full-screen mode by clicking the green button located at the upper-left corner of the window. When you’re done using the app, don’t close the window – leave the full-screen mode active. You can close some of the tabs or windows, as long as you leave one open.
Macs actually have a featured called “Resume” that allows apps to save their state on close. When reopened, the application will launch itself in the same state. This means reopening any documents you had open and placing windows in the same location as they were on close. This will also capture window settings like full screen mode settings and other options.
Make sure the box next to “Close windows when quitting an app” is unchecked. This will allow Resume to function, permitting the app to reload its previous status.
Step 2: Configuring Apps to Open in Full Screen Mode
Once that’s set, you can set up the apps that you’d like to have open in full screen mode. For example, if you want to have Safari in full screen, you would do the following.
1. Open Safari.
2. Set Safari’s window to full screen by clicking the green button in the upper-left of the window.
3. Quit Safari without closing the window you just set to full screen mode. It’s very important that you don’t close the application window before quitting the app. You can quit an app from the menu bar, by right-clicking on the app’s Dock icon, or by pressing Command+Q.
When you reopen Safari, it should still be in full-screen mode. If you want other applications to also open in full-screen mode, you’ll need to open those applications separately and follow the same steps there.
This setting will only hold for Mac apps that open in Full Screen mode, not simply apps that make their windows larger. For example, Photoshop doesn’t have a full screen mode: instead, it makes the window take up the available monitor space. Safari, on the other hand, has a true Full Screen mode, hiding the menu bar and creating its own Space for the application to occupy. You can tell the difference by looking at the green button’s icon. If it has two arrows, as above, that’s a true Full Screen app. If it has a plus symbol (+), that’s just maximizing the app’s size.
You’ll also want to adjust how to quit applications. If you close windows before quitting an application, then those windows will not be saved. Some users, especially those that migrated from Windows, may have developed the habit of closing application windows before quitting the application. Make sure you stop doing this.
Step 3: Opening Apps at Startup with Login Services
You can also launch applications at login so that they’ll be full screen and ready for you when you open your Mac. Of course, you may also have to navigate out of the windows if your last application opened in full-screen mode. Give it a try and see how it works for you. If it imposes a lengthy startup time on your Mac, you may want to limit the number of apps starting at launch.
1. Open System Preferences.
2. Select the “Users & Groups” pane.
3. Click the “Login Items” tab.
4. Click the “+” button at the bottom of the list of applications.
5. Select the application you wish to have launched at startup.
Step 4: Quitting Correctly
For these changes to actually matter, you’ll want to make sure that you’re shutting down your Mac and closing your applications correctly.
You also have the option to reopen all the applications you have open at the time you shut down your Mac or log out. At the shutdown confirmation window, be sure to check the box that says “Reopen windows when logging back in” before clicking Shut Down or Log Out.
When quitting apps, don’t close the application’s windows before quitting. Leave the windows open, then quit the application via your preferred method. When you reopen the application, it will open with the same window state. This means that full screen mode will be engaged. It will also open the documents that were open previously, allowing you to quickly pick up where you left off.
Also: Setting Up Spaces for Multi-Monitor Users
In addition to the steps above, you’ll also want to optimize your workspace for full screen applications. If you have more than one monitor, that means you’ll need to set up separate Spaces for each monitor. Otherwise, you’ll end up blacking out the other monitor when you set an application to Full Screen, which probably won’t improve your productivity.
1. Open System Preferences.
2. Choose “Mission Control” from the top row.
3. Check the box next to “Displays have separate Spaces.”
This won’t have any affect if you don’t have more than one monitor. But for dual monitor users, it will prevent you from blacking out your second screen when you set an application to full screen mode. Instead, you’ll be able to continue working with other apps on the adjacent monitor or monitors.
Setting Each App
Python Read Screen
The first setting, regarding closing windows when quitting apps, will affect every application on your Mac. However, it won’t automatically make every app open in full-screen mode. You’ll need to set that up individually within each app. Other apps will, however, open in the last state you left them in. If you don’t like this behavior, you can close windows before quitting certain apps. This will allow you to set some applications to open in full screen mode as you desire, rather than applying a global system preference.
You might also like the following macOS tips:
Manage the Apps Using Your Network Connection on macOS
Four Ways to Force Quit Mac Applications
Great Free Backup Apps for macOS
Bob Savage <bobsavage@mac.com>
Python on a Macintosh running Mac OS X is in principle very similar to Python onany other Unix platform, but there are a number of additional features such asthe IDE and the Package Manager that are worth pointing out.
4.1. Getting and Installing MacPython¶
Mac OS X 10.8 comes with Python 2.7 pre-installed by Apple. If you wish, youare invited to install the most recent version of Python 3 from the Pythonwebsite (https://www.python.org). A current “universal binary” build of Python,which runs natively on the Mac’s new Intel and legacy PPC CPU’s, is availablethere.
What you get after installing is a number of things:
- A
Python3.8
folder in yourApplications
folder. In hereyou find IDLE, the development environment that is a standard part of officialPython distributions; and PythonLauncher, which handles double-clicking Pythonscripts from the Finder. - A framework
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
, which includes thePython executable and libraries. The installer adds this location to your shellpath. To uninstall MacPython, you can simply remove these three things. Asymlink to the Python executable is placed in /usr/local/bin/.
The Apple-provided build of Python is installed in
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
and /usr/bin/python
,respectively. You should never modify or delete these, as they areApple-controlled and are used by Apple- or third-party software. Remember thatif you choose to install a newer Python version from python.org, you will havetwo different but functional Python installations on your computer, so it willbe important that your paths and usages are consistent with what you want to do.IDLE includes a help menu that allows you to access Python documentation. If youare completely new to Python you should start reading the tutorial introductionin that document.
If you are familiar with Python on other Unix platforms you should read thesection on running Python scripts from the Unix shell.
4.1.1. How to run a Python script¶
Your best way to get started with Python on Mac OS X is through the IDLEintegrated development environment, see section The IDE and use the Help menuwhen the IDE is running.
If you want to run Python scripts from the Terminal window command line or fromthe Finder you first need an editor to create your script. Mac OS X comes with anumber of standard Unix command line editors, vim andemacs among them. If you want a more Mac-like editor,BBEdit or TextWrangler from Bare Bones Software (seehttp://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html) are good choices, as isTextMate (see https://macromates.com/). Other editors includeGvim (http://macvim-dev.github.io/macvim/) and Aquamacs(http://aquamacs.org/).
To run your script from the Terminal window you must make sure that
/usr/local/bin
is in your shell search path.To run your script from the Finder you have two options:
- Drag it to PythonLauncher
- Select PythonLauncher as the default application to open yourscript (or any .py script) through the finder Info window and double-click it.PythonLauncher has various preferences to control how your script islaunched. Option-dragging allows you to change these for one invocation, or useits Preferences menu to change things globally.
4.1.2. Running scripts with a GUI¶
With older versions of Python, there is one Mac OS X quirk that you need to beaware of: programs that talk to the Aqua window manager (in other words,anything that has a GUI) need to be run in a special way. Use pythonwinstead of python to start such scripts.
With Python 3.8, you can use either python or pythonw.
4.1.3. Configuration¶
Python on OS X honors all standard Unix environment variables such as
PYTHONPATH
, but setting these variables for programs started from theFinder is non-standard as the Finder does not read your .profile
or.cshrc
at startup. You need to create a file~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
. See Apple’s Technical Document QA1067 fordetails.For more information on installation Python packages in MacPython, see sectionInstalling Additional Python Packages.
4.2. The IDE¶
MacPython ships with the standard IDLE development environment. A goodintroduction to using IDLE can be found athttp://www.hashcollision.org/hkn/python/idle_intro/index.html.
4.3. Installing Additional Python Packages¶
There are several methods to install additional Python packages:
- Packages can be installed via the standard Python distutils mode (
pythonsetup.pyinstall
). - Many packages can also be installed via the setuptools extensionor pip wrapper, see https://pip.pypa.io/.
4.4. GUI Programming on the Mac¶
There are several options for building GUI applications on the Mac with Python.
PyObjC is a Python binding to Apple’s Objective-C/Cocoa framework, which isthe foundation of most modern Mac development. Information on PyObjC isavailable from https://pypi.org/project/pyobjc/.
Python Full Screen Gui
The standard Python GUI toolkit is
tkinter
, based on the cross-platformTk toolkit (https://www.tcl.tk). An Aqua-native version of Tk is bundled with OSX by Apple, and the latest version can be downloaded and installed fromhttps://www.activestate.com; it can also be built from source.wxPython is another popular cross-platform GUI toolkit that runs natively onMac OS X. Packages and documentation are available from https://www.wxpython.org.
PyQt is another popular cross-platform GUI toolkit that runs natively on MacOS X. More information can be found athttps://riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro.
Python Install Mac
4.5. Distributing Python Applications on the Mac¶
Python Screen Size
The standard tool for deploying standalone Python applications on the Mac ispy2app. More information on installing and using py2app can be foundat http://undefined.org/python/#py2app.
4.6. Other Resources¶
The MacPython mailing list is an excellent support resource for Python users anddevelopers on the Mac:
Run Python On Mac
Another useful resource is the MacPython wiki: