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).