There’s one annoying problems with my Mac laptop. When I’m at work, I connect to external monitor and work on both built-in monitor on my laptop and the external monitor. When I go home I unplug the external monitor, close the lid and let the laptop goes to sleep. Once in a while, when I got back to work, I plug it in again and some of my running programs can’t be minimized anymore. I mean the yellow minimize button is grayed out or disabled. If I close the application and start it again, the minimize button appears again. However, having to close the applications and launched it again is such an inconvenient.
Here’s the screen shot of my minimize buttons when I have the problem.
I kept Googling and finally I found this post in a forum. So strangely enough, the problem is due to a bug in QuickTime. And sure enough, most of the time, I have QuickTime on anyway.
How to get back your minimize button without closing the window and reopening it.
Here’s the step:
- On QuickTime, open a new movie.
- Make the movie full screen. (You can do Apple-f or from the menu, click on View -> Enter Full Screen.
- Exit from full screen movie and close it.
- Now check your other windows. You should get your yellow minimize button back.
Thanks for posting this. This fixed the issue for me, and it has to be the 10th time I faced it without a resolution.
Thanks for this post. It’s a life saver.
I’m still confused on how can one application absolutely kills a Window Server feature. Sounds like really dirty coding to me.
It’s not a bug in Quicktime, but probably a bug in the OS. I get the same issues when I pop out of full screen mode in Citrix. Quicktime fixes the problem, but I doubt it’s the problem.
this bug started in leopard. i’m on snow leopard and this bug is still on.
as pasques says quicktime fixes it but doesn’t provoke it.
from what i’ve noticed it’s related any app that goes in and out of fullscreen (in my case, movist, which uses its own fmpeg engine). when and which apps exactly get the minimize button greyed out? can’t tell.
with the latest 10.6.3, i started getting a new bug where a mouse click sometimes doesn’t click and sometimes does a double click. i don’t believe it’s a problem with my mouse since it works well most of the time.
the pc had mean bugs, but the mac has the most silly ones.
It didn’t work for me.. I followed your directions to the T…and nothing.. sucks!….