Apple - Shortcut key for fullscreen mode

The button in the top right of each window is not for minimizing and maximizing the window, but for putting it in and out of fullscreen mode (which is why it covers the menu bar, as you said).

The keyboard shortcut to toggle fullscreen depends on the application.

Most applications that I use on a daily basis (such as Google Chrome, Terminal, Mail, and Safari) use ^+⌘+F (Control+Cmd+F) to toggle fullscreen mode.

Unfortunately, not all developers use this shortcut in their applications. iTerm, for example, uses ⌘+Enter to toggle fullscreen mode. If the application you refer to does not use either of these shortcuts, you should look for the fullscreen option in the View menu or by searching for "fullscreen" in the Help menu.

This is very possible.

I did the following and chose CMD+CTRL+F as shortcut and worked on OSx 10.8 and upwards.

1. Open System Preferences and click on the”Keyboard” icon Select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and choose ‘Application Shortcuts’ from the list on the left

2. Click on the + icon to add a new keyboard shortcut for all applications and type the following exactly:

   Enter Full Screen (This is the label as shown in the menu of the application)

3. Now you need to assign it a keyboard shortcut, I chose Command+Control+F because it's the same as the general default that correctly mentioned

4. Click “Add” and then click on the + icon again, this time typing:

   Exit Full Screen

   Choose the same keyboard shortcut as you chose before which in effect creates a toggle, and click onto “Add” again

5. Lastly click on the + icon again, this time typing:

   Toggle Full Screen

   Again, assign the same key combination of Command+Control+F

   As you rightly said, applications like iTerm use this menu option, rather than Enter/Exit Full screen, but assigning to the same key makes it somewhat universal.

   If you find an application that has full screen and isn't covered by the above shortcuts, add the menu item as above for that Application and again assign to the same short-cut key and all should be good.