Help! My Max window has disappeared!

d_h_benson's icon

I have no idea why. When I press cmd-M or menu select "Window"->"Max Window", my patch loses focus, but no max window appears.

I've tried restarting Max many times.

Any idea how I can get the Max window back?

11OLSEN's icon

maybe the window is out of sight (i don't know if that is possible on a mac, too)
max definetaly saves the window position of the max window on windows and that is also possible at a position outside of the viewable range. then there are tricks to nav a window with the keyboard. maybe it's possible to set window defaults in max preferences? sorry, i don't know..

jvkr's icon

There used to be the trick to keep the alt key down (I believe) while choosing the Max window from the window menu, which should make it appear in the main screen. It would be offscreen when it was on a secondary screen that had been disconnected. I realize I haven't been needing that trick in a long time, so probably in later versions of max the disappearing act has been solved.

11OLSEN's icon

there's a line ""maxwindow_rect" : [ 1953.0, 100.0, 581.0, 480.0 ]," in your maxpreferences.maxpref file which defines the default rect.

d_h_benson's icon

Thanks 11olsen. I solved the problem by editing my maxpreferences.maxpref file ( on mac: ~/Library/Preferences/Max 5 Preferences Folder/maxpreferences.maxpref)

For some reason the last two numbers in the maxwindow_rect property were both zeros (e.g. [x, y, 0, 0]). I guess Max was trying to display the window at a size of so small that it was invisible? Anyway, I edited these to reasonable values and now I've got the window back.

dhjdhjdhj's icon

I wonder what "some reason" actually was. There is no magic involved so something caused those values to go to 0