23 Tips For Using Desktop Spaces On Your Mac

With Mission Control you can have multiple Desktops, Full Screen windows and Split View. Beyond the basics, there are a lot of different ways you can control these spaces, drag windows into different configurations and even move content between them.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you a whole bunch of tips for using multiple Desktops, Spaces, and Mission Control on your Mac.
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So one of the most useful features in macOS is the ability to have multiple Spaces or Desktops or Full Screen Apps on your Mac. It makes it feel like you have multiple screens when you only have one. Let's activate Mission Control using Control and Up Arrow, the keyboard shortcut. Here you could see I've got two Desktops and three Full Screen Apps. These are all called Spaces. So I have five Spaces. A space can contain a Desktop with multiple windows in it or a Full Screen App. A space can also contain two apps. That's called Split View. Now the basics of using Mission Control are to use that keyboard shortcut to see these spaces here at the top. You can use the Plus button here on the right to create new Desktops. Then you could drag and drop windows from one Desktop to the other. If you want to turn a regular window into a Full Screen App you can click the Green button here and then it's a Full Screen App. Now you can see I've got four Full Screen Apps. You can get rid of the Full Screen App like that and it jumps back to its Desktop. 
But there are ton of other ways to do this. There are so many gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and combinations that you can use. So here are some tips and tricks. First, to activate Mission Control you can use that Control Up Arrow keyboard shortcut. But you can also get to it a variety of other ways. If you go into System Preferences and then look under Trackpad if you're using a trackpad or a Mouse if you're using a mouse there are some gestures here. For Trackpad, under More Gestures, you can see here that I could go into Mission Control with Swipe Up with Four Fingers. You can also make that three fingers. So four fingers swipes up on the trackpad and it takes me into Mission Control. Now if you go into the Mission Control settings this is where you can change the keyboard shortcut if you like. But you can also go to Hot Corners and set a hot corner for Mission Control. So, for instance, I can make the upper left hand corner go to Mission Control. Now I can just move my pointer up there to go to Mission Control. In addition to that you can also add a Modifier Key. So instead of just Mission Control I can hold Command down and you could see its Command Mission Control. So now going to the top left corner won't do anything. But if I hold the Command Key down and go to the top left corner it will go to Mission Control. 
Now over here there are a couple of other settings I want to point out. One is Group Windows By Application. So let's say I have multiple windows open for an app. For instance here I've got a Finder window. Let me open up two more Finder windows here. Now if I have Group Windows By Application turned off and I go into Mission Control see how those three Finder windows are separate from each other. But if I turn it On and I go into Mission Control see how it groups them altogether. I can still select which one I want to jump to and it will bring that one to the front. But they take up less space in Mission Control. Also if you have multiple screens attached to your Mac then you can choose whether to have displays have separate spaces. So if I had my pointer here in this display I could activate Mission Control and it would just be for this screen. The other screen will remain as it was. If I turn this off then going into Mission Control takes both screens into Mission Control and they are kind of linked together. Try each one of those settings to fully understand how it works. 
Also, I like to have Automatically Rearrange Spaces Based on Most Recent Use turned Off. If turned On then the order that these are in will change all the time. I like to have a mental map in my head where things are. When you're using Mission Control you can do a lot with Drag and Drop. For instance, if you want to arrange these spaces you can move them around like that, just drag and drop anyone of them to change the order. But you could also Drag and Drop the windows below. So here I am in Desktop 1 and it has Reminders and Notes. I can drag Reminders to Desktop 2 and move it there. I can switch to this next Desktop. Now if I click here it's going to go to it. But if I use the keyboard shortcut, Control Left and Control Right Arrow, it will do it but keeping Mission Control at the top. So I could go here and drag this to this space instead. Now you can also use these for Full Screen Apps. So if I want to make Reminders a full screen app instead of dragging it to Desktop 2 I can drag it over here and create a full screen version of it anywhere I want. So instead of having to click the Green button here to enter Full Screen or do View, Enter Full Screen, I could simply remember the way to get into Mission Control and then drag this up and create a full screen window that way. 
You can also use the same thing for creating Split View. So I can drag it here and you could see how it will put Reminders either to the left or right side of Safari, or the right or left side of Photos.The same thing for Mail. I can easily create Split View that way. In fact I could create Reminders and Notes Split View by dragging this one here creating a new space. Dragging the next one there and now this is Split View. You can also combine Full Screen Apps into Split View by dragging and then placing it here. So you see I can combine Safari and Mail like that.  It's not working here on Photos because there's simply not enough space to share a Split View with Safari and Photos.
Remember Split View depends on the app. The app has to support it and there has to be enough space to have that window in a Split View.
Now you can actually Drag without going into Mission Control. This only works if you have one screen. It doesn't seem to work if you've got multiple screens. If I take Reminders here, and remember I've got this second Desktop right to right of Desktop 1, if I take this window and drag it over to the edge and wait it will shift over to the other Desktop and I could drop it there. I can take it back to that first Desktop by dragging to the left and waiting. You could also drag Up to the top. Move your mouse all the way to the top and then try to push beyond it. Then it goes into Mission Control and I could add it to this Desktop here. You have to go to the top and then kind of push a second time to get that to work. Now this also works for Files. Let me go over to the Mail App right here and let's say I'm composing a message and I want to attach a file to this. I could go back to the Desktop here that has a file on it. If I grab the file and drag over to the right it's going to go to the next space and then the next space and the next space until I'm here. Then I could drop it into this document, in this case an email message. 
Now you could also use the keyboard shortcuts, or gestures, to do this. So if I click and drag this file here and I'm holding down the trackpad with just my thumb and I take four fingers and swipe with the trackpad still while holding my thumb down the entire time then I could go over and drop it there. Or I could use the keyboard shortcut. So while I'm dragging this I could do Control Right Arrow a bunch of times until I get to where I want and drop it. 
Now let's say I want to look at two Safari pages side-by-side in Split View but I'm here at a Full Screen Safari. I can actually make this Split View by creating two tabs. I have one tab here. Let's create a second tab, just Command T, and I'll go to another page. Let's say I want to see both of those at the same time. You could drag a tab in Safari, like this, drag it to the top and push past the top a second time. Now I could put that as a Full Screen space here, drag it onto a Desktop or I can use the original window here and make it go Split View. So now back in here I created a Split View that used to be two separate tabs. Now it's two separate browser windows in Split View. When I want to close one of these I could just simply click the Red button just like you would normally, close that window, and the other half of the screen becomes the full screen window. 
Mail also has some special features when it comes to Full Screen Apps. There are two modes. One mode is when you go to view a message say by double clicking it it opens up this special window on top and everything kind of gets in behind it. The same thing happens when you go to compose a new message. Now whenever you're doing this, say composing a new message, if you click outside of it the message appears down at the bottom here and you can get it back by clicking there. As a matter of fact if you compose multiple new messages then you'll see two tabs here and you can see the two tabs here at the bottom. But there's another way to do it. If you go to Mail Preferences and then you go to General look for Prefer Opening Messages in Split View When in Full Screen. Turn  that on. Now when you compose a new message it becomes Split View with one half of the screen being your regular Mail window and the other being the message composition window.
Now in Full Screen Mode you get the Menu Bar here at the top. But it's gone normally. When you bring your pointer to the top that's when it will appear. But if you go into System Preferences, this is new in macOS Monterey, go to Dock & Menu Bar, then Dock & Menu Bar here you can turn Off Automatically Hide & Show the Menu Bar in Full Screen mode. But you do have to quit the app and then launch it again for it to take effect. But you see now I get the Menu Bar all the time. Very handy especially when you like to check the date and time and other things like say Wi-Fi status and such in the Menu Bar. It's difficult when you can't see them and you have to stop what you're doing and move the pointer up to the top. 
So when you want to go into Split View one way to do it is to hover over the Green button here in the window, Tile window to the left side of the screen, and then you'll be given other windows that could be on the other side of the screen. In this case let's pick Notes. Now we're in Split View. Now previous to Monterey if you wanted to change one of the halves of the Split View you have to basically exit Split View. But now you can do it without actually going anywhere. If I move my cursor over the Green button here now I can select Replace Tiled Window. Click that and now it's going to show me another option. So, in this case, the only other option is Finder. I can click there. You could see how quickly I swapped out Notes for the Finder. I can do the same thing over here, for instance. I could replace this half here with Notes. So you could keep switching halves in the Split View rather than having to exit Split View and recreate it.
Now there's also a special command to go to the Dock and you Control Click on any app. So, for instance, let's pick the Reminders App. I can Control click that and then I could go to Options and there's Assign to All Desktops, This Desktop, or None. None is the normal state. But if you want to assign it specifically to this Desktop you can. Now if you go into Reminders, Quit Reminders, and say you're at another Desktop when you launch Reminders it will launch it in the Desktop its assigned to not the one that you're currently at and it will jump to it.
Now you also have the ability to select All Desktops. This will show the window on all of the Desktop faces. So I'll do that for Calculator here. That's a handy app to do it for. If I launch Calculator here on Desktop 1 and say I'm doing a calculation I can go to Desktop 2 and notice the Calculator is still there. So it's in both places. The same window but on all of the Desktops. Desktop 1 and Desktop 2 in this case. 
Here's one last tip I want to show you. You can have different Desktop backgrounds for different Desktops. So right now I've got these two Desktops here and if they have a lot of windows on it sometimes it can be confusing as to which one you're on. But you can go to a Desktop, let's go to the second one here, and if I go to System Preferences and then Desktop & Screensaver, Desktop, and change the Desktop and switch to this one, see how it changes there. But if I go back to this Desktop notice how it still the same as it was before. I have two different Desktop backgrounds. If I look in Missions Control I'll even see that here. That makes it a little bit easier to tell where you're at if you have a lot of Desktops. 
Now here's an Untip. Something you can't do. It gets asked all the time so I thought I'd address it. You can't name a Desktop. Obviously full screen apps and Split View apps get named after the app. But, Desktop 1 and Desktop 2, those are just numbers. You've never been able to name a Desktop. The idea is they are just numbered. They are numbered in the order they appear. So as I switch them you can see how they change their number. 
So there are whole bunch of different tips for using Spaces, or Mission Control on your Mac. I hope that maybe this gets you to try out Spaces if you haven't been using them. If you have been using them I hope I showed you some new tricks that you could use. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 9 Responses to “23 Tips For Using Desktop Spaces On Your Mac”

Razvan Mihai

3 years ago

Gary: Is there a way to have the desktop number in the menu bar to know which desktop you are on without having to use the extra step of using the mouse or the keyboard?

I often find myself wanting to move an app to the current desktop, and by the time I use Command-Tab to go to that app, I realize I am not sure which desktop I was on.

Gary Rosenzweig

Razvan: There's no way to have a numbers shown like that. Just Control+Up to quickly see.

Steve

Is there any way to view different parts of the same document, e.g., a Pages document, in split screen mode?

Steve: Not easily, no. If you really want to, there are Terminal tricks to have two copies of an app running at the same time, but that can be dangerous. You could also just duplicate the file and open both in two windows. Or, you could Open a second window for the same document in iCloud.com. Or maybe print the document, choose PDF in the print dialog, then Open in Preview and have a view-only version in Preview and your editable version in Pages. It really depends on what you are trying to do.

J.P.

Hi Gary, great video as usual.
Is there a way when you set an app to full screen so that it does not black out other monitors?
Thanks in advance

J.P.: System Preferences, Mission Control, Displays have separate spaces.

At least on my MacBook Pro M1, for that setting to take effect, the Mac has to be restarted.

And it now works, thank you very much.

McTavish

With the large monitors now available at lower prices, it is tempting to replace two monitors with a single large one. With two monitors, however, I can see two separate desktops at the same time, and on either monitor I can scroll to see additional desktops (spaces). Is there any way to simulate this with a single monitor? That is, is it possible to have 2 spaces side by side (full spaces, not split view) on the same monitor?

McTavish: No way that I know of, no.

Comments Closed.

23 Tips For Using Desktop Spaces On Your Mac

Comments: 9 Responses to “23 Tips For Using Desktop Spaces On Your Mac”

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