Arrange apps in Split View
Discover El Capitan’s way to boost your productivity when using two apps
Display two apps in a way that improves your productivity with El Capitan’s new feature
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
IT WILL TAKE
5 minutes
YOU’ll NEED
OS X 10.11 Window management in OS X has improved over the years, but no matter how carefully you tried to arrange apps, it can still feel difficult to get things where you want them. Sure, Mission Control can be invoked as a quick way to see everything that you’ve got open at once and to switch apps with ease, and many apps can be switched to full‑screen mode these days to reduce distraction by utilising the whole of your display. Overall, though, OS X still seems to require you to spend an inordinate amount of time resizing and repositioning windows to set up your working environment.
That’s why Apple has come up with the new Split View option in El Capitan. It’s ideal when you need to focus on just two apps at once. In fact, it’s so good that it could revolutionise how you use apps, especially on small screens like those on the MacBook and MacBook Air, where every pixel counts.
Similar to full-screen mode, Split View puts two apps side-by-side and fills the entire screen as if they’re both running full-screen (in fact, whatever apps you want to use in Split View need to support that mode). This provides more space to the content you’re working on.
You aren‘t stuck with the split that OS X determines for you. Between your two apps is a black bar that you can drag left or right to change the amount of space that’s allocated to each one.
In short, Split View is a really nice way of working. Mastering it is all about knowing where and what to click, so here we reveal its secrets to you. Get ready to change the way you use your Mac forever!