Control your workspace

Apple has you covered when you’re having to juggle many apps and windows

The Mac popularized working with a bunch of windows. The snag is that these days Macs are powerful enough to run dozens of apps — each with many windows — at once. Fortunately, Mission Control lets you make sense of them all. You can quickly get at windows, make multiple desktops (referred to as spaces), and work full–screen during times when you really need to focus on something.

1 Open Mission Control

Tap the Mission Control key (F3), press Cmd+Up arrow key, swipe three fingers up on your trackpad, or double–tap two fingers on a Magic Mouse to see open windows and workspace names; then move the pointer to the top to see previews of spaces’ contents.

2 Use a Hot Corner

To open Mission Control with thumbnail previews visible from the start, use a hot corner. In System Prefs’ Mission Control pane, click Hot Corners and set one of the top two corners to Mission Control. Now move the pointer there and notice the top row is expanded already.

3 Acc ess one app’s windows

To see windows only from the foreground app, hold Ctrl and press the Mission Control key. Across the bottom are its minimized windows and recently opened files. Hold Cmd and press Mission Control’s key to quickly view the desktop.

4 Create a new workspace

Spaces work like multiple displays in one. Click + at the right– hand side of Mission Control’s top bar to create one. To move windows to it, drag and drop them onto its thumbnail. To remove a space, put the pointer over it and click the X icon.

5 TAKE AN APP FULL–SCREEN

Assuming an app supports full– screen mode, you can make one of its windows take over the display. In Mission Control, drag the window on to an empty area in the top bar. Similarly, drag a full–screen app off the bar to return it to a window.

6 WORK WITH SPLIT VIEW

Split View enables you to work with two apps at once in full–screen mode. To set this up, drag a window onto a full–screen app already in the top bar. You’ll see a +. The new app can be dropped at the left or right within the thumbnail.

7 USE MULTIPLE DISPLAYS

With multiple displays, Mission Control works as described already, though each display has its own workspaces and windows. So, you can have a full–screen app on each one. You can drag windows or even whole spaces between them.

8 NAVIGATE BY KEYBOARD

Dipping into Mission Control to move between spaces is inefficient. Rather, press Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right, or swipe two fingers horizontally on a Magic Mouse, or four on a trackpad. (You can set the latter’s number in System Prefs’ Trackpad pane.)