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It looks to me like the behavior with Application Frame off is consistent with how macOS full screen works in every other standard Mac application. The reason it looks “wrong” to some is that up until now, Photoshop was not complying with macOS, and now that it is, it’s catching people off guard. I do think there is something Adobe could improve about this (many Mac apps have an Enter/Exit Full Screen command discoverable on the menu), but the overall behavior is now consistent with macOS.
The rules below are how it works for a floating document window in macOS in general, which now Photoshop is, after all these years, finally consistent with:
If you click the green button, the window goes full screen.
If you only want to maximize the window, option-click the green button.
But the Photoshop implementation is not complete. The lack of a macOS Enter/Exit Full Screen command makes it harder to get out of full screen mode. (Photoshop still has its Screen Mode commands on the View menu, but those are for the Photoshop traditional full screen mode, and are not connected to macOS or Windows full screen mode. Similarly, the green button function is macOS and not connected to the View > Screen Mode commands in Photoshop.)
When Photoshop is in window mode, even if the native full screen is turned off in preferences, the window's behavior defaults to native full screen.
By @Yamonov
This is consistent with other Mac apps that have no other full screen mode. For consistency with macOS, the default for a window is native full screen mode. Yes, you can argue that it should follow the setting, but my point is that once you realize it’s following macOS rules, then it becomes clear how to use it.
This is how I work, without the application frame, and it is definetely a bug as it leaves my document permanently stuck in full screen mode no matter how many times I press F, Tab, or change the View settings. It didn't start happening until version 25.4.
By @Larry29731486lwom
What is happening is that you are trying to use Photoshop shortcuts (F, Tab…) to control full screen mode when macOS full screen mode is in effect, and that is not going to work. The F/Shift+F shortcuts apply only to the View > Screen Mode commands, which are Photoshop/Illustrator only. The Tab key hides panels in Adobe apps, not macOS.
Yes, it is reasonable to submit a feature request to Adobe to make floating document windows follow the Photoshop full screen setting. But until they do that, the answer is, as long as you understand how macOS full screen mode works, use the same standard techniques you’d use in other Mac apps to manage whether a floating Photoshop document window is full screen or maximized.
If a window is using macOS full screen mode, then the macOS standard way to get out of it is to hold the pointer at the top edge of the screen to reveal the menu bar, and when that drops down, click the green button to exit full screen mode. The problem with this in Photoshop is that the top menu bar can be hidden if the panels are displayed. (This is a symptom of the two windowing systems clashing.) I found that if I simply hit Tab to hide the Photoshop panels, then the menu bar can be visible when it drops, the green button can be clicked, and the Photoshop window exits macOS full screen mode. Then I press Tab to get the panels back.
By the way, the same thing happened with Adobe Lightroom Classic. Like Photoshop and Illustrator, Lightroom Classic originally built its own full screen mode before macOS introduced its full screen mode. A few years ago Lightroom Classic also started supporting macOS full screen mode, but did not remove its own traditional full screen mode. Today, both full screen systems exist in that app too, leading to some confusion about how to get in and out of full screen mode. As in Photoshop, the answer in Lightroom Classic is to understand whether you’re using OS or application-specific full screen system, and stick to the commands and buttons for just one of them. Because mixing the two systems just doesn’t work.
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