(reminds me of the Windows 8 disaster) the zoom button really ought to behave consistently across applications. I’ve got no idea why Apple chose to go this route with the green button, full-screen is something that’s *sometimes* nice but if I wanted a tablet, I’d be using a tablet. The way to get to this is under actions do “Mouse Click Actions” > More Mouse Buttons and Modifiers. (Windows handles Maximize far better than Apple by the way. This will fill your screen with the Chrome window the way maximize works on Windows. Do the steps above under the OTHER tab in Global *then* make and additional Chrome rule so that clicking the green button does an Option+Shift Left-click. There’s an additional step to “fix” Google Chrome’s strange zoom behavior. If you know of a solution that doesn’t involve using a third party app, do let us know in the comments. I’ve dug around and scoured for defaults write commands to change the green button behavior back to the old default in prior versions of OS X, but have yet to find anything other than this aforementioned approach offered in StackExchange forums that uses BetterTouchTool. This is a little confusing and BetterTouchTool has a sort of weird interface until you get used to it, so if the above walkthrough isn’t clear then watch the complete process in the brief video tutorial below: Here are the BetterTouchTool setup steps detailed in an image, click this to view larger:

Quit BetterTouchTool, the changes will stay in effect as long as you have BetterTouchTool configured this way, and as long as BetterTouchTool has access to control the computer through Security > Privacy > Accessibility.Flip back to the OS X Finder (or another open app) and click the green button, it should now simply maximize the window rather than send it into Full Screen Mode.

In the “Predefined Action” menu, choose “Zoom Window Below Cursor”.

In the “Trigger” pulldown menu, choose “Leftclick Green Window Button”.

Near the bottom, click on “Configure New Trigger”.

Select “Global” from the left side options.

Back in BetterTouchTool, click on the “Other” tab in the upper right of the app.

Open BetterTouchTool and grant access to “Accessibility” when requested (this will open System Preferences).

Here’s how to get the old green button action back by default, this means you just have to click the green button in a window to maximize it rather than having to option+click or double-click the titlebars: To change the green button maximize behavior you will need to use BetterTouchTool, a free application for OS X that performs many other functions and neat tricks with the Mac trackpad and mouse, but for the purposes here we’re just using it to adjust window maximizing universally throughout OS X Yosemite.

Better touch tool mac