How to Activate and use Hot Corners

1 System Preferences

As with most system tweaks in macOS, this one requires you to make a visit to System Preferences. Open that app, click Mission Control in the top row and you’ll see a button for Hot Corners.

2 Hot Corners

Click that button. In the panel that opens, the four corners of the desktop are represented as pop-up menus. Click one to see all the actions you can assign to that corner.

3 Your options

There are handy system shortcuts available, such as showing Mission Control, Launchpad, or the current app’s windows. You can also start the screen saver, or put the display to sleep.

4 Activate actions

You only have four corners to play with, of course, so experiment with the line-up of actions to see what serves you best. Pick actions from as many of the menus as you want. Click OK when done.

5 Test them out

Any action you’ve assigned is activated automatically when the pointer reaches the corresponding corner, saving you remembering menu item locations or keyboard shortcuts. Test all of them.

6 Disable a corner

Hot Corners are very useful if you need to use a non-Apple keyboard or mouse. If you want to remove one’s action, though, set its corresponding pop‑up menu back to the — (dash) item.