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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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:
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”.
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.
