MacOS – The minimize icon is gray

iconmacoswindow-manager

It happens sometimes that the yellow circle in the top left of the windows, for minimizing, becomes gray for some windows. In particular it is gray for Finder, Safari, Calendar, iTerm2, Xchat Azure, Chrome, VirtualBox, and is still yellow for other windows, for example Mail, KeePassX, NoteBook, FreeMind, DjView, Lyx.

Obviously, when it is gray it is disabled.
The situation comes back to normal apparently without any reason.

The OS is Mountain Lion 10.8.5, and this is a screenshot

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Best Answer

Well now I have to take a stab at this with the information and comments you have provided. I am going to guess that the OS is damaged, probably the WindowServer is screwed up (http://www.macinside.info/process.php?name=WindowServer).

This can be resolved with a reinstall of the OS. You should have any data loss but of course make sure you have an active backup of all files just to be on the safe side.

To test though you could turn off the OS function of restoring previous sessions and then restart the computer holding down the shift key. With the shift key held until you see the spinning gear. This starts your system in Safe mode where only Apple daemons are allowed to run. WindowServer is a part of the OS and if it is indeed damaged then the issue will appear (after some time maybe) in a Safe OS.

Related Solutions

Why is the minimize window function disabled sometimes

There was an old QuickTime bug that caused the minimise button to become disabled on some windows.

But also be aware the app can disable the minimise button itself.

MacOS – Minimize other windows of an application

This doesn't work with Preview or other aplications that don't support AppleScript.

tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
    try
        set miniaturized of windows where visible is true and index is not 1 and miniaturizable is true to true
    end try
    try -- at least Finder
        set collapsed of windows where visible is true and index is not 1 and closeable is true to true
    end try
end tell

I don't know how to get the focused window or hidden windows with System Events. The focused window isn't window 1 or AXMain or AXFocused. Setting AXMinimized to true didn't work with Tweetbot either.

tell application "System Events" to tell (process 1 where frontmost is true)
    windows where value of attribute "AXMinimized" is false
    --repeat with w in result
    --try
    --set value of attribute "AXMinimized" of w to true
    --end try
    --end repeat
end tell

There are many ways to assign shortcuts to scripts, but shortcuts for Automator services don't work reliably in 10.7 or 10.8.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Why is the minimize window function disabled sometimes

MacOS – Minimize other windows of an application

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