Behaviour of the red button on the toolbar

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Behaviour of the red button on the toolbar Sat Dec 26, 2020 9:48 pm • by matthewp
It feels to me that Hazel should quit when I click the red button. To me, Hazel is not the kind of app that you open, leave running with multiple documents open while you work on them all day, then quit with the menu command. You open it, make your changes then close it, you may not go back in again for weeks.

I don't know what the official terminology is around this behaviour but there are many utility/control panel style apps (where the UI manages a process that persists in the background regardless whether the UI is open or not) that quit when you click the red button - and this is the category of app I put Hazel into. Carbon Copy Cloner is one, Keyboard Maestro another. TextExpander gives the option which I like. Photos and iMovie also quit on close and probably shouldn't!

I fully acknowledge this is just my opinion and I guess its probably a controversial one particularly with users of the Mac platform for many years vs those of us who came from Windows. I also realise there is no resource issue with it always running, especially as I'm a dock hider. Probably just OCD really, I don't like to see many apps running.
matthewp
 
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What red button?
Mr_Noodle
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Top left of the main window, the red of the 3 colours on the active window.
matthewp
 
Posts: 18
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Oh, the window close button. In general, yes, apps do not close when closing the window. There are exceptions but the guidelines and actual behavior in the field is inconsistent. Nonetheless, if you want to quit apps, you should get in the habit of using the Quit menu item (cmd-q). Relying on closing the window to close the app is not a good idea.
Mr_Noodle
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