31 Mission Control Tips

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using Mission Control on your Mac. 

Mission Control is a useful multi-tasking tool that allows you to pretend that you have more than one display and you can switch between them. To get into Mission Control you can use one of four methods. 

Control Up Arrow takes you into Mission Control. But you can also use the F3 key on most Mac Keyboards. It does the same thing. If you check in System Settings and then go down to Keyboard and then Keyboard Shortcuts, go to Mission Control and then you'll see here the Mission Control Shortcut, Control Up Arrow. Note that if the F3 shortcut isn't working for you that may be because that under Function Keys, here, you've got this turned On, which means the F3 key will work as an F3 key, not as a special feature key. In that case you need to use the Globe or fn key and F3 to see Mission Control.

There are other ways to get into Mission Control as well. For instance, if you use a trackpad go to More Gestures and you'll see here a gesture for Mission Control. Swipe up with four fingers, although I usually have it set to three fingers. On the Mouse under More Gestures you'll find Mission Control, double--tap with two fingers and you can switch that On or Off. 

You can also set a Hot Corner to do this. Go to Desktop & Dock and all the way down to the bottom you'll see the Mission Control section and a Hot Corners button there. You can set one of the four corners to take you to Mission Control. All you need to do is move your pointer there. So I'm going to set the top right to Mission Control and I can move my Pointer there and it enters Mission Control. I can go back to the top right to exit as well. If I want to make it so it is a little harder to trigger I can hold down a modifier key or group of modifier keys, like Command and Option right here, and then select it and you can see it shows Command Option. Now just going to the top right won't do it but holding Command Option and going to the top right will. 

You can also get to Mission Control by taking the window and pushing it to the top of the screen. This is particularly useful if you want to move a window to another desktop or create a full-screen window for this. Note that full-screen spaces as well as split-view spaces will coexist here with the Desktop spaces. It is useful to think of Mission Control as showing you those three things, Desktops, Full-Screen, and Split-View. Although in this video I'm just going to deal with the first kind, Desktop Spaces. 

Now there are two ways to create a new Desktop Space. You can use the Plus button here at the top right. Click there and you see that creates another Desktop Space. You can also drag a window and instead of putting it here which will create a full-screen space you can drag it to the Plus button which will actually create a Desktop and put that window on that Desktop. Now to remove one of these windows you notice I can click on the little X button right here to remove it. I can also hold the Option Key down and it shows you all of the little x buttons. Very useful if you have a lot of Desktops and you want to quickly delete all of them. So, if you remove it notice that the Notes window that is on Desktop 2 will move back to Desktop 1. Note that you can create up to 16 different Desktop spaces. 

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Now to move a window to another Desktop space you can do that in a number of ways as well. So, for instance, if I want to move the Notes window to Desktop 3 I can use Mission Control here and simply drag the Notes window to Desktop 3. 

Now you can also do it while you're not in Mission Control. One way is to drag to the top to trigger Mission Control. Then release it in the space you want. So I'm going to take this Safari window here. I'm going to drag it to the top and push past the top. Now I can drop this window on the space that I want. You can also just switch spaces with the Keyboard shortcut while you're dragging a window. So I can drag this calculator window around and I can use Control and Right Arrow to go to the next space. Then I can drop it right here. Another way to move a window to a different space is to drag it and push it pass the right or left side, like this. But note this only works if you have a single display. If you have multiple displays this functionality is disabled. 

Now when you're in Mission Control there are several ways to exit. One is to simply use one of the same methods to go into Mission Control as to exit it. So, for instance, I can use Control Up Arrow when I'm in Mission Control and it Exits it. You can also just click somewhere on the Desktop here that is not a window and it will Exit. You can also click on a window and not only will it exit but it will bring that window to the front. So I'll click on this TextEdit window and it brings it to the front, which makes Mission Control a really useful way to switch windows. You can see all of the windows and switch to the one you want. 

On a trackpad you can also use the opposite gesture, either four or three fingers up to enter Mission Control and either four or three fingers down to exit it. This also works with the Control Arrow shortcut. Control Up Arrow goes in. Control Up Arrow will exit but also Control Down Arrow will exit as well. As I mentioned before the mouse gesture, as well, double-tap with two fingers on the surface of the mouse and the same will exit it. Another simple way to do it is to use the good old Escape key. When you're in Mission Control or in a lot of different things the Escape Key will let you exit. 

There's also one more way. Let's say you go into Mission Control expecting to find a window here, like maybe your Mail window. Then you realize, oh I must not be using Mail and I can see here in the Dock, Mail is not open. I don't have to exit Mission Control. I can simply click on Mail here in the Dock. It will both exit Mission Control and Launch the  app. 

Now if you want to change which space you're using you can go into Mission Control any of the ways you want and simply click on the other Desktop to jump to it. But you can also go from space to space directly. One way is to use the Keyboard Shortcut, Control and left and right arrows. So I can use these to move between the spaces. Note that this has to be enabled in System Settings and then Keyboard and then Keyboard Shortcuts and then if you go to Mission Control there's a whole section there for Mission Control. You can see Move Left a space and Move Right a space have to be enabled and you can change them. There are also ways to set specific keyboard shortcuts or specific spaces. So I can enable these and now I can do Control 1, 2, and 3 to go quickly between those specific spaces. Note that if you add even more Desktops, like Desktop 4, you won't immediately see a keyboard shortcut entry for it. You have to Quit System Settings and relaunch System Settings for it to appear.

You can also use More Gestures for this. The trackpad gesture to move from space to space is right here. It's called Swipe Between Full-Screen Application. I don't know why Apple calls it this because it really works with all the different Mission Control spaces. It should be swipe between spaces and you can set this to 3 or 4 fingers, left or right to easily go between spaces. On the mouse you've got similar gestures. You've Swipe Between Full-Screen Applications, it really means spaces. You can turn it On and swipe left or right with two fingers. 

But there's another way to do it. If I simply switch to the App I want it will automatically switch spaces. So I'm going to use Command and Tab and continue to hold down the Tab Key and I can move to any of the apps that I want and then release the Command Key on Notes. You can see it switches to the third Desktop because that is where Notes is. Now there is a setting for this as well. Desktop & Dock, go down to Mission Control and you can see When Switching to an Application, Switch to a Space with Open Windows for the Application. Now you can also do this when switching Windows. So I'm going to go to Desktop 1 here and I've got 3 windows here for the Finder. Let's go and take this one, and I'm going to use the Keyboard shortcut to go to the 3rd space, and I'm going to put the Document window here. Note that if I use the window menu and I switch to the Applications window for the Finder it jumps to Desktop 1 where that is located. If I go now to Document it goes to Desktop 3 where that is located. This works when using the Window Menu and it also works when switching windows using the Dock. Click and hold and you'll find your windows here in the Dock and I can switch to one and it will also switch spaces. But it won't work if you use Command and Back tic. That will switch between windows only in the current space. 

Now here's some tips for using Mission Control Interface. When you're in Mission Control you can actually rearrange these Desktops. So if I want to move this Desktop 3 with the Notes window a little earlier I can and it rearranges them. These aren't names for the Desktop but just numbers. They tell you which positions these are in. So these are nameless Desktops here. I know I often have people ask about naming these but they just simply don't have names. Also when looking at these windows here if a preview it too small for you, you can always press the space bar while you are hovering over it with the pointer. Pressing the spacebar will enlarge the window so you can see what's there. Pressing the spacebar again will take it back to its normal size. 

Now you may notice that if you click on one of these Desktops here it takes you to the Desktop. So you go into Mission Control and you click and it takes you to the Desktop. What if you just want to switch Desktops? Well, you can go into Mission Control and use Control and Right Arrow and Left Arrow in here and notice you'll stay in Mission Control as you do that. But you could also Option Click on one of these. If I Option Click on Desktop 3 it goes to Desktop 3 but I'm still in Mission Control. I'll do it for Desktop 1 here. I'm still in Mission Control. But if I don't hold the Option Key down and click it Exits Mission Control onto that Desktop space. 

Now if you want a more sophisticated look to Mission Control go to Desktop & Dock and Mission Control and turn on Group Windows By Application. Now when you enter Mission Control notice that Windows will be grouped together. Here are the three TextEdit windows grouped together with the TextEdit icon. You can still Preview a window here that's behind something by using that spacebar technique, like that. 

Now you can assign Windows to Desktops using the Dock. I can go to Reminders here and you can see I'm in Desktop 1. Let's Quit it and if I go over to Desktop 2 and launch Reminders now it is in Desktop 2. Let's say I always want it to be on Desktop 1. So, what I can do here is I can go into the Dock, click and hold on Reminders, and then I can use Assign To. Now Assign To is only going to appear if you've got multiple desktops. If you only have one desktop space it won't be here. I'm going to assign this to this Desktop here. Notice it shows me Display 1, Display 2 because that is what I have here on this Mac. If you only have one display it'll just say This Desktop. So I'm going to assign it to This Desktop. So now even if I'm in another Desktop space and launch Reminders it will always open there on that first Desktop space. It kind of locks it there. Now if you do that with an app where there are windows spread over multiple desktops, like I've got two Finder Windows here but I've got another Finder window all the way over here on Desktop 3. If I were to do that with the Finder then I go to Options here and I say Assign it to this Desktop or Desktop on Display 1 in this case and it's going to bring that other window over here. So now all three windows are here on this Desktop. It brought that third one over.

You can use this as a quick way to grab all the windows and simply then turn it Off as soon as you've turned it On so then you assign to None. Now you can move them anywhere you want. But say if you had 7 Finder windows across three different desktops you can bring them to one Desktop quickly that way. 

The other thing you can do is you can have a window appear across all Desktops. So let's use the Reminders App as an example. i'm going to go into the Dock. I'm going to go to Options and I'm going to Assign To All Desktops. Nothing changes here but if I go over to the next Desktop you can see that in that Desktop Space reminders is there as well and it is here as well. This Reminders window or all the windows for that app will appear on all the Desktops. You can simply go and turn it Off, set it to None, and whatever Desktop you're on at the time, in this case the 3rd Desktop, that's where the window will now exist. 

So a few more tips! If you go into System Settings and back to the Mission Control Settings in Desktop & Dock, there is a setting here for Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use. Usually your Desktop spaces will stay put. But if you have this On then they are going to rearrange automatically putting the ones that are used most frequently to the left. This will be true not just for Desktop spaces but for Full-Screen and Split-View spaces. Some people like to have this on so it automatically rearranges things and puts their most used spaces to the left. Other people have turned this on and then can't figure out why their spaces seem to always move around.

You can Drag & Drop using Mission Control. Like, for instance, let's go here to this Finder window and let's take this File here. Let's say I want to drag it into an app in another space. I can grab it and then I can use the Keyboard Shortcut, Control Right Arrow, and go to the other spaces and drop it somewhere else. So it works in conjunction with Drag & Drop. You can even use Control and Up Arrow to go into Mission Control, then drag to a desktop space like that, give it a second and it will appear, and now you can Drop it into an app. 

Finally there is a setting here for Displays Have Separate spaces. If you have that turned On and you have multiple displays then each one will act with its own set of spaces. You can set it at multiple desktops. Have full-screen apps on those different displays. If you have it turned Off then basically both screens act like one big display. You only have one set of spaces for both and things get a little weird if you try to use full-screen or split-view apps with this off. But it is the only way to get, say, one window to stretch across multiple displays if you need that. 

So keep in mind if Desktop spaces aren't working as you expect check to see if you have this turned Off. Then maybe try turning it On to see if things work more to your liking. Hope you found some of these Mission Control tips useful. Thanks for watching.