It changes. Right now the finder and Safari are showing the problem, but Obsidian isn't, Omnifocus isn't. But often they do too.
It varies among apps and "number of runs" but never fixes itself once it starts. This finder window, for example, from the video, is 100% reproducible. I've done it over and over. It never goes Max Screen on the first try.
Long shot, but something I've googled and tried to fix a dozen times is my WindowServer process and how much CPU and ram it consumes. I think it has to do with Night Shift and True Tone. And Night Shift requires Wifi to be on...
My pretty-brand-new computer gets really slow, a lot, and it's often WindowServer going crazy. Like right now, I have safari open and activity monitor open and nothing else. WindowServer is winding up and down from 10-40% cpu. And steady 800Mb of ram consumed.
I've tried connecting the monitor via HDMI and Displayport, tried multiple dongles, multiple monitors. My 2015 Macbook Air running Mojave felt 10x snappier.
This sounds VERY weird. My wife has the same computer (I'm on it right now actually 
), 2020 MacBook Air, 16GB RAM. CPU usage is NEVER that high for me with only those apps open.
I know this might sound crazy...but have you tried reinstalling the OS?
Like start from scratch as a new user and move files over? I haven't done a completely clean OS install like that in a decade.. Because I got burned bad when I did. So many permissions broke, keychain, icloud. It was a disaster. So when its time for a new computer or OS, I begrudgingly use migration assistant.
It's buggy for sure...
Accountsd or Trustd. I had to quit letting my iphone and ipad connect automatically with mac. I have KM automatically quit Mail.app every hour or so, I daren't leave it running in the background!
I have this fun bug, Spotlight / MDS makes hundreds of thousands of blank directories, so Time Machine requires 100% cpu. I have to run that manually.
Omnifocus hangs and needs a force restart daily (their tech support couldn't figure it out). Devonthink doesn't sync automatically... Earlier this year Photos decided to delete its entire library...
I just want to take plaintext notes, check email, and browse the web! 
(with a little icloud sync now and then)
Hey James,
Ouch...
If you haven't already – please take time to complain loudly to Apple – not enough people do...
-Chris
No, not a completely clean install. Just reinstalling the OS. It’s really easy, takes an hour or two at most (depending mainly on what kind of drive, the SSD on the MacBook is so fast it would probably take less than an hour), requires virtually no input from you and preserves all your apps, files and settings. Because all of those issues are definitely not normal.
Thanks. When Photos literally erased its entire library (and then somehow propagated that bug through 2 backups), I was on the phone with apple for 2 hours. To their credit, and maybe because I did a good job preserving the scene of the crime, they passed me all the way up to the Photos developers. In the end "sounds like it was corrupt... see ya!" 
@cdthomer I have installed Catalina more than once in that manner on this machine, hoping to fix some of these bugs. I run EtreCheck and Onyx regularly. I've used an Apple/Mac since the 80s but these past ~5 years or so, chasing bugs has become a part time job. But hey my iPad works great!
Haha. Thanks for allowing me to vent, ya'll.
Any reason you’re still running Catalina and not Big Sur or Monterey?
I HATED Catalina, mainly because of the random audio disconnect issues but for other reasons too.
I have audio-via-airplay problems too, I use a KM shortcut to reset audio output source ~ 5x/day.
I haven't heard rave reviews about Big Sur or Monterey. I'd go back to Mojave if I thought I could without breaking more stuff. I just don't have faith in the newer stuff. Even APFS makes me nervous, and (I could be mistaken) doesn't Time Machine start abandoning HFS+ after Catalina?
I did order an M1 Mac Mini and put Monterey on it for a day or two. That was the day my Photos library self destructed. Probably not related, but with so much going on under the hood, who knows. I sent it back.
I didn’t hear rave reviews about Big Sur either but it has been incredibly stable for me with the exception of iCloud Drive (which has been a problem for years apparently and I have finally completely abandoned). Monterey was a disaster on my iMac so I rolled it back to Big Sur for the time being.
EDIT: Not enough brain power to distinguish between Catalina and Monterey apparently... thanks @ccstone 
Forward you mean? 
HAHA! Yea.... I meant Monterey... it's been a long day
Sounds like moving windows around with Keyboard Maestro is the absolute least of your problems. To be honest I’m amazed the Macro runs at all with all that other stuff going on 
With all the problems you’ve listed it sounds like you must have reached the end of any road of annoyances. But forgetting about mending any of that for a moment - I have one bit of advice for you:
Make your next project to methodically back up all your Photos and Data and Contact Addresses and emails and Photoshop Templates and Keyboard Maestro Macros and Excel or Numbers Spreadsheets and Passwords etc etc onto external hard disks. And keep thinking of anything else you might need to back up - imagining that your MacBook Air was run over by a truck and you suddenly hadn’t got any Mac at all and had to start from scratch.
And I don’t count Time Machine as a backup in this sense. It’s still a proprietary Mac file that could get corrupted. I mean manually copying files and folders.
And this is a real project that will take more than one day and involve ticking off things on an actual pen and paper list. (In other words - it’s the really fun sort of computer task where you’re doing something fairly simple but it counts as important work 
).
And regarding the Mac Photos Library. As well as making a backup of the Photos Library File I make sure I have copies of the original Photo Files saved outside of the Photos Library itself. Digital Photos and Home Videos are one of the most precious kinds of data, as they are unique moments in time that are impossible to recreate if they are lost. (The simplest way to back them up is to use the Photos "export originals" menu option and save them direct to an external hard drive - make sure to have Photos "use original name" for the export otherwise the exported versions will have long meaningless numbers as their names.)
After you’ve backed up everything - make exact copies of those backup hard drives and give those copies to a friend so there are copies away from your house.
Don’t do any more tinkering until you have at least 1) The complete backup of everything that is unique to you and preferably, 2) a brand new unused Mac to start fresh on.
When you get another new Mac don’t initially change any of its default settings. Sign into iCloud. Let that copy over your addresses and email settings.
Then manually reinstall your third party software and manually copy over your data. (I’ve never used Migration Assistant.) That way you are not copying over the problems that you are experiencing on your current Mac onto your new Mac. Once you are happy the new Mac is working fine and there is no data remaining on your old MacBook Air - you can wipe the MacBook Air and treat it like a new Mac and hopefully leave all the problems you have listed behind. And - best of all - your Keyboard Maestro Macro should happily maximise any window in one instant step 
Moving forward:
I have come to rely on a lot of Cloud based syncing Apps - iCloud Calendars/Contacts, Dropbox, iCloud Photos and as of now they are all working and making my life easier. It sounds like you have been very unlucky - Migration Assistant (although I haven’t ever used it) should work and not cause the problems you are experiencing.
I've had the same issue in the past, multiple times, randomly appeared.
I've had issues with resizing MS Word to half screen with KM. I switched to BetterTouchTool for this purpose, which works more reliably. (It's great to have alternative apps.)
Also, sometimes, as I move the mouse, the window changes its size (without pressing any keys). I have set ⌘⌥⌃+Mouse Move to resize window in BetterTouchTool. But I was not pressing any modifier keys. Maybe this is an issue with BTT and not with KM. It also happens randomly.
Thanks for the write up. I'll follow those steps over time.
I did reinstall catalina from recovery, and lots of other maintenance. The problem persists (and lots of others, but things seem a little better overall).
Regarding the window resizing, I've been documenting more and more quick fixes, hoping they might give some clues.
Thanks
If I cant find a fix, I'll migrate a lot of this to BTT too I guess. It's a shame though, I was hoping to retire BTT, it's been buggy for me. Specifically, when I copy and paste triggers and actions, it silently deletes some of them!
I've also had issues like you describe, where BTT interferes in window movement without me pressing the modifiers.
I have the same issue with BTT so I only use it for a few specific trackpad gesture related things I can’t mimic with KM.
@cdthomer
I posted about it recently on the BTT forum, because I think I found a fix, or at least a clue.
Apparently it's fixed? I don't know, my subscription just expired.
Hey @james8231 I'm having the exact same problem and it's driving me insane.
I have some complex window management macros that set up my desktop by moving 4+ apps sometimes and having to hit the key trigger multiple times is beyond annoying…especially because I sometimes move between these different window states.
Have you had any progress in figuring out what the root problem might be?
I still don't have a clue what the issue is. It still happens on my wife's MacBook which I use sporadically, but it's not present on my iMac which is what I use on a daily basis so I don't worry about it.
I did however make some adjustments to my critical positioning actions to ensure they are positioned appropriately. Basically I placed the manipulate a window actions inside a repeat action, and use a global variable to set that number. This way I can make all of those actions repeat as many times as necessary by just changing the contents of one variable. It's a band-aid, but it's an effective band-aid. See the screenshots for more info.
