Question / Help How to get out of full screen

[Narcogen]

I was stuck in Fullscreen Interface mode for a while as well on my MAC and finally realized that if I move the mouse all the way to the top of the screen, the menu bar will drop down and then I can select VIEW and select FULLSCREEN INTERFACE again and it will take me out of fullscreen mode.

Although on the Mac in the menu it says that F11 is supposed to be for Fullscreen Interface mode in OBS, it does not work... clicking on F11 usually adjusts volume on Mac and holding down function FN+F11 on the Mac does not enter Fullscreen Interface or exit Fullscreen interface mode.

Turn off the default "Show Desktop" shortcut for F11 in System Preferences > MIssion Control

or anything else that might be set to F11 in there and is overriding the OBS shortcut.

 

[Choscura]

Just my two cents, there *SHOULD NEVER BE* a screen hogging function without an ability to exit itself. This 'you must pre-configure a function key witth your F11' nonsense is a non-response and a non solution, and if this program actually works as well as you say it does better should be expected than this from its' makers.

Currently able to see that my system itself hasn't frozen, only because of the program switcher still overriding this s***, on fedora. It's not all mac users and the owners of retarded mice.

 

[Choscura]

Just my two cents, there *SHOULD NEVER BE* a screen hogging function without an ability to exit itself. This 'you must pre-configure a function key witth your F11' nonsense is a non-response and a non solution, and if this program actually works as well as you say it does better should be expected than this from its' makers.

Currently able to see that my system itself hasn't frozen, only because of the program switcher still overriding this s***, on fedora. It's not all mac users and the owners of retarded mice.

So I went back in and tried to recreate this problem. I had been in a settings window, I had checked two chekboxes, one something like 'keep <obs capture> window on top of other windows', and one something like "display captured feed". I hadn't figured out how to feed anything into it yet, so AFAICT I saw nothing but the black empty screen of 'the capture' which force overlayed over everything. very frustrating. I did successfully test it out and have other, seperate, issues (such as 'why the f** is he green'), if I manage to re-do this I'll report more on it

 

[Narcogen]

This forum is staffed by volunteers who are also users of OBS trying to provide workarounds and solutions for user problems. There isn't anybody in this thread saying anything about how well OBS works.

When OBS says that fullscreen is F11 that is true. If you press the key labeled F11 and get a hardware function, that is because your mac is configured to do the functions indicated by the icon on those keys first, and only send an F11 keystroke when a modifier key is pressed. If that's not the desired behavior then the MacOS setting that governs it needs to be changed. It's not within the ability of OBS to change that behavior, but the user can either override the key itself in OBS, or change the behavior so that no modifier key is required.

 

[lancerkind]

Just got stuck in it today. Here is what I did on MacOS: while the pointer is on the multi view screen, open the context menu and select "close." Boom!

 

[Jon Mack]

Help!!! I am stuck with this problem and cannot afford to re-install OBS because my entire set-up runs tonight. None of the suggestions listed here has worked so far. What the heck is wrong with OBS? It should never get a user stuck in full-screen.

 

[Jon Mack]

For the record, I was able to get out of full-screen mode eventually by pressing fn+control+every button until fn+ctl+8 momentarily showed the top menu for a second, put my cursor where the view option popped up and clicked in the moment it showed and got to the submenu that included Exit Full Screen. PLEASE, PLEASE OBS developers fix this! It should not be such a nightmare to suddenly have to go through this agony as you approach a hard deadline of a live-stream!

 

[revLevo]

If you are on a Mac, the SHORTCUT for toggle to and from full screen is: control - command (Apple sign)- F
⌃ - ⌘ - F OR click at top of screen to bring up OBS menu, and "View" option as some one described
the Apple key-shortcut always seems to work. Don't know why OBS designers haven't made this easier within the program itself.

 

[JudyH]

After checking another thread on this, the cursor has to be positioned in the upper left hand corner of the screen, not just the top. When I got into the corner, the menu popped down and I was able to click the green shrink key. A simple press of the esc button like any other application, would be helpful.

 

[Garyasparagus]

the problem I have is that I click to fullscreen the window and the top bar to exit minimize and downsize the window disappears into the unknown as they say in frozen
FIX!
the way I fixed it was to hold the windows key and press the right arrow, this will make it so you can have multiple windows on one screen and it brings back the top bar :D

 

[Wayne01]

graz, you are the smartest amongst everyone in this thread
almost broke my head on Monday with this shit

 

[FireCloud42]

I'm having a similar issue on Windows where if I put OBS in full screen and then "exit" full screen I lose my Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons on the top right...

FIX!
the way I fixed it was to hold the windows key and press the right arrow, this will make it so you can have multiple windows on one screen and it brings back the top bar :D

NM, this solved it...but this needs to be something looked into by the dev team imo

 

[Kilcity]

FIX!!
So, I was sitting here trying to figure out WHY I couldn't minimize my flippin obs.

• YOU DON'T HAVE TO UNINSTALL AND START OVER
• YOU DON'T NEED TO CLICK SETTINGS>SYSTEM TRAY> ENABLE+MINIMIZE IN SETTINGS
• YOU DON'T NEED TO HOLD THE WINDOWS + ARROW KEYS (DOESN'T WORK FOR SOME)

I know what works for some doesn't always work for all but sitting here reading a long list of threads with no answers only gets more and more frustrating for most. So before you delete all your hard work (last resort), see if this works for you.
I know the image says to press F11 but
if Pressing F11 DOES NOT WORK...
What I did was Just:
Manually Clicked View > Fullscreen interface (Then the top menu bar appeared) > Minimized
and I was finally happy.
[Can't help you if you have a Mac, I run Windows PC]
I've posted a screenshot below to help you, if this is the same issue, you're all having. My whole top taskbar was gone completely
and COULD NOT minimize to the taskbar below which was highly annoying especially during gameplay/live streaming..
Hope this helps any future problems anyone has.

 

[FireCloud42]

I'm having a similar issue on Windows where if I double click the top it goes into "fullscreen" mode but when I double click or hit F11 it goes half way out of fullscreen (I get my windows task bar back but it the close, maximize, and minamize buttons at the top don't show up and I can't move the window)

 

[Fogsight]

This behavior happens quite randomly for me, not sure how to replicate reliably, but you can lock yourself in full screen just by pressing "Maximize" button on the window sometimes. At that state F11 starts switching from "maximized window full screen" to "complete full screen" but never exits full screen mode and shows window borders.
Only restarting application returns functionality, which you can't do if you are already streaming.
Luckily I have a collection of Auto Hot Key scripts, so as a temporary work around you can force it into windowed mode with this AHK script. This is the only thing that was able to return it to windowed state for me from that bugged state.
Here's the script, just install AHK and put this into .ahk text file and run. (shortcuts set here Ctrl+F11 and Ctrl+F12 to exit full screen)

#SingleInstance force
#Persistent

^F11::
SetFull:
    {
    WinSet, Style, -0xC40000, A
    WinMove, A, , 0, 0, %A_ScreenWidth%, %A_ScreenHeight%
Return
}

^F12::
SetWindow:
    {
    WinSet, Style, +0xC40000, A
Return
}

Edit: Didn't see this was a Mac thread. Getting the same on Windows. There probably is an equivalent of AHK for Mac as well with similar function.

 

[aHappyDroid]

On Windows 11, problem for me as well, I clicked the min/maximize icon and it got stuck in full screen (basically F11) push. I could not get out of it normally. I have multiple monitors and I was able to get around the issue with the 'Windows' Move shortcut (maybe there is one for Mac as well). Once I moved the OBS Window from one monitor to the other, magically the top of the OBS window shows up again and I have my minimize/maximize button.

Move Windows Using The Keyboard Shortcut Method

1. If you want to move a window to a display located to the left of your current display, press Windows + Shift + Left Arrow.
2. If you want to move a window to a display located to the right of your current display, press Windows + Shift + Right Arrow.