Click an app's dock icon to minimize its windows. macOS doesn't ship with this behaviour by default — Click2Minimize is a ~570-LOC Swift menu-bar utility that adds it. Accessory app, no window, no telemetry. Lives in the menu bar, runs an event tap, talks to the dock via Accessibility + AppleScript. Free to use personally — not for commercial reuse (see LICENSE).

---

/// WHAT IT DOES

When you click the dock icon of an already-focused app, macOS does nothing — the click just re-activates an app that's already active. Click2Minimize swaps that no-op for the obvious behaviour: minimize the app's windows. Click again to bring them back. Like the Windows taskbar, but on macOS.

• Click a focused app's dock icon → windows minimize.
• Click an unfocused app's icon → default macOS behaviour (focus, raise).
• Click Launchpad / Trash / Downloads → default behaviour (these have no windows to minimize).
• App is fullscreen → pass-through (no minimize, you didn't mean it).

---

/// HOW IT WORKS

 ┌─────────────────────┐
│ NSWorkspace notifs │
│ (launch · activate │
│ · space change) │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│ debounced 300ms
▼
┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────┐
│ CGEvent tap │───▶│ hit-test mouse │───▶│ AppleScript query Dock │
│ (left mousedown)│ │ vs dock rects │ │ → rects + app names │
└─────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ AXUIElement → set kAXMinimized = true │
│ on every visible window of the app │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Event tap runs at cghidEventTap / tailAppendEventTap, captures left mouse-down only.
• Dock rects are cached and refreshed on a trailing-edge 300ms debounce — bursts of didLaunch / didActivate / activeSpaceDidChange collapse into a single AppleScript call.
• Window minimization goes through AXUIElementSetAttributeValue(kAXMinimizedAttribute) — the proper accessibility API, not key-event simulation.
• Fullscreen detection reads AXFullScreen on the frontmost app's windows (rewritten in 1.5 — the old check was inspecting Click2Minimize's own windows).

---

/// HIGHLIGHTS

No window	LSUIElement-style accessory app; lives only in the menu bar
No telemetry	Zero network calls except the GitHub releases check on launch
No background daemon	Just one process, registers a CGEvent tap via Accessibility
Modern Swift logging	os.Logger with subsystem + privacy modifiers; no print() spam in Release
Opt-in launch-at-login	SwiftUI toggle wires SMAppService.mainApp register/unregister; was unconditional before 1.5
Fallback dock scan	If AXUIElement can't read the dock list, an AppleScript fallback recovers app names from System Events
Universal binary	xcodebuild -configuration Release produces arm64 + x86_64; ad-hoc signed DMG
Source-available	PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — read it, learn from it, run it personally, don't ship it

---

/// 2.1 — WHAT CHANGED FROM 2.0

• Fixed: isActiveAppFullscreen() was inspecting Click2Minimize's own NSWindows — always returned false. Rewritten to read AXFullScreen on the frontmost app via Accessibility.
• Fixed: dock-item ignore-list was "Launchpad||Trash||Downloads".contains(name) — substring match, would catch "TrashCan" or any app with "Trash" in the name. Replaced with proper Set membership.
• Fixed: dock-update debounce was firing every event and only suppressing later ones inside the 0.5s window — it never actually coalesced bursts. Rewritten with DispatchWorkItem trailing-edge debounce at 300ms.
• Improved: all print() calls migrated to os.Logger with privacy modifiers. Release builds no longer write to stdout.
• Improved: launch-at-login is now an opt-in toggle in Settings instead of unconditional. Existing installs that were auto-registered stay registered until toggled off.
• Improved: settings sheet redesigned — launch-at-login row, cleaner spacing, footnote anchored.
• Improved: deprecated NSWorkspace.launchApplication(_:) swapped for openApplication(at:configuration:completionHandler:).
• Bumped: marketing version → 2.1 to align the in-app version with the GitHub release tag (was 1.4 in-plist while the latest release was already tagged v2.0).

---

/// INSTALL

1. Grab the latest .dmg from Releases.
2. Open it, drag Click2Minimize.app into /Applications.
3. Launch it. You'll be prompted for Accessibility permission — open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, toggle Click2Minimize on.
4. If you use Catalyst / Electron apps and want the fallback to work cleanly, also grant Automation (asked on first need).

The DMG is ad-hoc signed, so the first launch will need a right-click → Open to get past Gatekeeper.

---

/// BUILD FROM SOURCE

git clone https://github.com/hatimhtm/Click2Minimize.git
cd Click2Minimize
# Release build into ./build
xcodebuild -scheme Click2Minimize -configuration Release -derivedDataPath build
# Or build the full DMG in ./dist
./build_dmg.sh

Requires Xcode 15+. Targets macOS 13.0+.

---

/// LICENSE

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. In plain English:

• Allowed: reading, learning, personal use, hobby use, non-profit / educational / research use, forking to improve, distributing your fork under the same license.
• Not allowed: shipping it inside a paid product, selling support for it, embedding it in commercial software, any commercial use.

If you want a commercial license, open an issue or book a call.

---

/// OPEN FOR NEW WORK /// CONTRACT & FREELANCE /// REMOTE WORLDWIDE ///