Reunion window doesn't appear when clicking on Dock icon

[Dave Wells]

When Reunion is open and my family file is being used, I sometimes use the yellow button to move it to the dock. But when I click on the Reunion dock icon, the file doesn't expand to show on the screen, and I have to go to either the Window menu to select the already open file, or click and hold in the Reunion dock icon to get a list of files and select the open one; before it will restore the window.

[Bob White]

The yellow button is simply a graphics version of the Command - H key combo used to hide. Have you restarted your Mac recently? Have you quit then re-opened Finder? Try both things if you haven't as either will usually cure odd performance as you describe.

[bmohr]

When Reunion is open and my family file is being used, I sometimes use the yellow button to move it to the dock. But when I click on the Reunion dock icon, the file doesn't expand to show on the screen, and I have to go to either the Window menu to select the already open file, or click and hold in the Reunion dock icon to get a list of files and select the open one; before it will restore the window.

Ah window minimization... quite the ball of confusion! The behavior of window minimization can have two different behaviors on macOS depending on the setting of a system preference called "Minimize windows into application icon." It appears you are running Sequoia, where this setting is in the Desktop & Dock control panel. In other version of macOS, it may be in the Dock & Menu Bar, or Dock control panel.

The default setting for "Minimize windows into application icon" is off. In this case, when you minimize a window to the dock, you will have two Reunion icons in the dock: one for the application and one for the minimized window (and any additional minimized windows will add additional icons). If you only have one window open in Reunion, clicking either icon will do the same thing: bring Reunion to the foreground and un-minimize that single window. But if you have more than one window open in Reunion (perhaps another family file or a secondary window such as the help, logs, or list windows), then clicking on the application dock icon will only bring the un-minimized windows to the foreground. You need to click on the dock icon of the minimized window itself to get it to pop back into view. (or use one of the menus you mention).

If "Minimize windows into application icon" is on, you will only ever have a single icon in the dock for Reunion (the application icon). In this case clicking on the app icon will behave exactly as before: it will bring the app to the foreground along with any open windows. Only if there are no other open windows will it un-minimize your minimized window. And without the second dock icon for the minimized window, there's no direct way to force the issue.

To further confuse things, let's say you have no open windows and several minimized ones. In this case, clicking on the app icon will pick one of those minimized windows and un-minimize it, but you have no control over which one. In my testing across multiple apps, it appears to prefer the window you opened first.

The yellow button is simply a graphics version of the Command - H key combo used to hide.

The yellow minimize button does not hide the app as Command-H does, it minimizes that single window to the dock. Hide acts on the entire application, hiding all of its open windows. In most apps, the shortcut for minimize (equivalent to the yellow button) is Command-M (in Reunion, Command-M opens the Mark panel).

[Bob White]

Interesting, Brad. I'm going to guess that way back when that the default was "on" and that I have never set it to "off" since between myself and many dozens of fellow Mac users that I have helped with all kinds of of problems, I have yet to see two icons for the same app in the dock. Wow! Thank you for the info. (The other part of my non-observation is that I very rarely use that yellow button; my fingers are lighting fast for Command-H or W or Q .....decades long habit!)

[bmohr]

Interesting, Brad. I'm going to guess that way back when that the default was "on" and that I have never set it to "off" since between myself and many dozens of fellow Mac users that I have helped with all kinds of of problems, I have yet to see two icons for the same app in the dock. Wow! Thank you for the info. (The other part of my non-observation is that I very rarely use that yellow button; my fingers are lighting fast for Command-H or W or Q .....decades long habit!)

The two icons aren't both app icons. One will be the app icon and the other will be a tiny representation of the minimized window and will appear after the divider near the end of the dock (right on a horizontal dock, bottom on a vertical dock). As far as I know, this has been the default behavior since the Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000. The "Minimize windows into application icon" option didn't appear until Snow Leopard in 2009. Before that, minimized windows always created a new icon in the dock. In the original Mac OS X Aqua intro keynote, Steve Jobs spent an inordinate amount of time repeatedly demoing windows minimizing into the dock using the "genie effect" (including in slow motion). "I could just play with it all day long, actually."

[alan]

Well - I have never known that!! I only have one Reunion icon in my dock and even hitting the amber button will close the app or minimise to the same dock icon.

I found it by going to settings > Dock & Menu Bar, I found the button to minimise window into application icon but it was checked.

I'm like Bob - have never used the amber button and only seldom use the green one.