Over-ride minimum window width limits in Sonoma?

[Spectrum]

Hello - I recently updated from Catalina to Sonoma (now on a 15 inch MacBook Air).
Laptop is great, but I immediately notice this UI problem where I cannot make Preview windows narrower than half the screen width—even wider if the page thumbnails are open. This makes it impossible to view two documents side-by side, which is something I'm used to doing.

To some extent the same issue is present with Safari, where the minimum width is about 2/5th of screen width. As a long-time Mac user, I'm used to having multiple windows open that I can arrange however I need, so this is proving rather frustrating.

I'm using 1440x932, which is the correct 2x scaling for the retina screen.

Q: Is this a new thing in Sonoma (it is running 14.6)? And a bug?
Or something that has been persistent for a while?
Are the any Terminal commands that can over-ride this minimum width specifier?

 

[MacGizmo]

It has something to do with your particular setup, as every Mac I have access to (5 at the moment) can easily scale a window down to the width of an iPhone (see screenshot below). Where to start troubleshooting is beyond me, other than to say try using a larger resolution and see if the problem persists.

 

[Spectrum]

What resolution are you running, and what is your screen size?
If I use a higher resolution, obviously the windows all become smaller (as do there minimums), but not in terms of rendered pixels used.
This is the narrowest I can make Safari:

 

[Spectrum]

With Preview App, this is the narrowest I can make a window with the thumbnails showing - this takes up about 3/5 of the screen width:

Removing buttons from the toolbar of Preview makes no difference, it still won't scale down any narrower. I am perplexed!

 

[Spectrum]

OK...so this is disappointing. I just tried out Preview on a machine running Montery and the same restriction on window size is present. On that computer it is even more silly: For a vertical photo to be displayed in its entirety, the window has to open wider than the photo, with sill grey bars either side because the OS prevents the window going narrower.

My questions:
1) Who the heck at Apple thought this was a good idea?
2) How the heck has everyone been living with this since the update from Catalina?
(Note to self: This is why I never upgrade, sigh...).

 

[colinsky]

OK...so this is disappointing. I just tried out Preview on a machine running Montery and the same restriction on window size is present. On that computer it is even more silly: For a vertical photo to be displayed in its entirety, the window has to open wider than the photo, with sill grey bars either side because the OS prevents the window going narrower.

My questions:
1) Who the heck at Apple thought this was a good idea?
2) How the heck has everyone been living with this since the update from Catalina?
(Note to self: This is why I never upgrade, sigh...).

Does the problem persist if you create a new user account?

 

[Spectrum]

Does the problem persist if you create a new user account?

Yes - two different machines (and macOS versions) with two different accounts. From some googling it seems to be a new "feature" of the Preview app that started back with Big Sur and the unified window title bar 🤷‍♂️