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Hi everyone,
I recently moved to Mac from Windows. In Windows Ps, right clicking a layer (for example) showed ALL the possibilities in the menu straight away.
In Mac, a shorter menu appears with a little arrow at the bottom, and you must wait for the menu to scroll open to see every option. Is there a way to adjust settings so the whole menu immediately appears by default? It only takes a second each time to see all the options, but it sure is annoying.
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Both Windows and Mac automatically position popup menus on screen. Other than moving the panel that includes that menu, there isn't much you can do.
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Thank you for the quick reply... though I wish it weren't true! It's such a clumsy feature when the menu could just as easily open upwards and reveal everything all at once.
Is there any chance I could find an app that would allow me to adjust this setting? I would pay money for an app not to deal with this.
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Not that I know of. Have you changed the display resolution? Normally, popup menus stay onscreen.
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Thank you very much for following up. The display is set to the default Apple XDR 1600 nits. I don't really know what that means, but I assume it's the highest resolution.
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Thank you very much for following up. The display is set to the default Apple XDR 1600 nits. I don't really know what that means, but I assume it's the highest resolution.
By @Stephen31409368frqc
It looks like resolution is not a factor, because that Photoshop menu also opens that way on my large display with plenty of height for that entire menu. It seems like that’s just how the Mac works, because now I also see it happen in Apple’s own Mac applications.
Because you’re new to the Mac, I’ll mention that display resolution is set in a different section of Displays settings.
What you mentioned, “Apple XDR Display (P3-1600 nits),” is a display Reference Mode Preset. Sounds geeky, and has nothing to do with resolution. It’s a newer type of preset Apple created to handle newer, more capable displays. The Reference Mode Preset stores and applies settings such as:
Color gamut (e.g., P3, sRGB…)
White point (e.g. D65, D50…)
SDR transfer function (e.g., sRGB or 2.2)
Maximum luminance (SDR or HDR)
This isn’t some weird Apple thing. It works like the advanced display preset managers you’d find in the Windows & Mac software for pro color displays by Eizo, BenQ, and NEC.
“Apple XDR Display (P3-1600 nits)” is fine for general use, but if your main output is print, you might prefer to choose the Design & Print or Photography preset, which turn off HDR and lower the maximum luminance closer to that of paper.
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1600 nits is brightness. Resolution would depend on the display and computer. With a high resolution, menus should all stay on screen.
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1600 nits is brightness. Resolution would depend on the display and computer. With a high resolution, menus should all stay on screen.
By @Lumigraphics
This is not a display resolution problem. The problem happens even where there is plenty of vertical height to show the entire menu, but Photoshop insists on not showing the entire menu on open. That causes the user to do an extra step (the workarounds we’re suggesting) to get it to open all the way, when it should just show the entire menu on open.
In the picture below, the left picture is how the menu opens when you click it. The bottom is hidden. The right picture shows that even on this 13" laptop screen, there is no height resolution restriction: There’s enough vertical height to show the entire menu height twice. But for some weird reason Photoshop chooses to hide the bottom of it on first click, and that is the problem.
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I'm well aware, I've used Macs for almost thirty years now 😄
It happens on Windows too, if you don't have enough vertical resolution. In fact its even worse there, as a menu can be cut off and you CAN'T scroll to the end.
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This isn’t a fix, just a workaround...
If your keyboard has an End key, press it. That’s a shortcut for selecting the last menu item, so a side effect is that it reveals the whole menu.
I do the same thing with menus so long they go off both the top and bottom of a small screen, like a font menu: I’ll use the Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys to quick-scroll the menu. I think those work in menus on both macOS and Windows.
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Thank you for the suggestion. On the laptop key pad, the END shortcut is "fn + right arrow". So it does the trick, but with a similar delay as scrolling.
For now, my workaround will be to have some strategy about panel placement. If I place the layers panel near the top AND place a panel underneath it, that gives the menus space to open more fully. It's not ideal, but I'll go with it.
I'll still check back here in the future to see if anyone finds a solution. I did see someone asked a similar question on Reddit once upond a time, and no one had an answer for that person either.
Thanks to all! I appreciate the help.
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Here's a similar thread with some solutions you can try:
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Thank you, Myra. It seems I'm not alone in having this issue. Unfortunately, none of the fixes in that thread worked for me when I tried them.