Deborah R. Fowler
Houdini Interface Tips Minimize Top Bar and other shelf tool tips:
Updated on April 3 2025
If you were ever in need of making your Houdini session on Windows look like a mac here is one way of minimizing the top bar on the shelf (topic came up in class)
I found a forum post (https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/73971/) which works well for me in 20.5 on Windows and Linux (Rocky)
window = hou.ui.mainQtWindow()
hou.ui.setHideAllMinimizedStowbars(not window.isFullScreen())
if window.isFullScreen():
window.showMaximized()
else:
window.showFullScreen()
Where do you use this?
You can open a Windows/Python Source Editor and paste and apply
You can also create it as an additional shelf tool by clicking on the + sign on your shelf tools and then create a new tool so that's it's clickable. You can even edit your tool and make it associated with a hot key.
In your Houdini settings (on windows in C:...Documents/houdini20.5 you will find the code in the toolbar/default.shelf
The hotkey is written to Houdini.keymap2.overrides