Learn How To Use Stage Manager On Your Mac In 5 Minutes

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's your Quick Start Guide using Stage Manager on your Mac. 

So Stage Manager is a way for you to manage the windows that are on your Mac Desktop. For instance here I've got a ton of windows open on my Desktop. One way to better manage those is to turn on Stage Manager. You can do that directly by going into  System Settings and then in there go to Desktop & Dock. Here you can turn it on with this switch. But a more typical way to turn it on is to Control Center. 

So you go to Control Center here on the top right and you'll find this button for Stage Manager. If you don't see that button use Edit, Controls here at the bottom to add it. So with Stage Manager turned on all of your windows for a single app are shown on the Desktop. The other windows, they are all still there and on that Desktop. But they are moved over to the left side here. You may actually have more windows than this. It's only going to show you the most recently used ones and how many it chose depends on the amount of space you've got according to your screen size. 

To switch to another group here just click the group here on the left sidebar. So I'll click on Finder here and now I'll see these 3 Finder windows. Notice that the 3 Pages windows went to the left to take the place of the Finder windows that were there. If I switch, say, to Notes that one Notes window comes up and the 3 Finder windows go over to the left. When a window is too large and it takes up the space on the left side the Stage Manager groups are still there. If you move your pointer to the left side, like that, they should pop up. 

Now it is important to note that you can use other ways to navigate between apps. You don't need to use the left side icon. You can use, for instance the App Switcher just like without Stage Manager. You can use the App Switcher to switch to a different app, like that. You can see it pulls the App Group from the left. You can also use the Dock to switch. So I can click here to go to the different apps. 

Now note that if you ever just want to see the Desktop you can just click on any Desktop area, like this, and the Desktop is revealed. You won't normally see things like icons that are on the Desktop using Stage Manager unless you click on the Desktop to reveal it and put all the apps into the left side groups. 

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Now if you ever want to group two windows together that are from different apps, first start off with one of the windows that you want to see. Then go to the left side here and drag the top window from any other app group into the main Desktop area. If I then switch to another app group, like to Finder here, you'll notice that this app group here is Notes and Pages. I can bring it back like that. If I want to take this Pages window and put it back with the other one I can drag it back over. If you need a specific window you can always click the icon, like this. It reveals the three windows and you can pick the one that you want. You don't have perfect control when grouping and ungrouping windows. 

There is a lot you can do with dragging but sometimes you can't get quite the groups that you want. So if you're a control freak you're probably not going to like Stage Manager. You do have some settings that go along with Stage Manager that changes how it works. So go into System Settings, Desktop & Dock, and then you'll see a setting here for Show Recent Apps in Stage Manager. If you turn that Off  you won't see the items here on the left unless you move the pointer all the way there. Also, you can change how it behaves by switching Show Windows from an Application from All at Once to One At a Time. Now when you do that and you click an App Group, like this Pages Group here, the first window appears all by itself. The others remain here. But you can continue to click to bring other windows in. This is a fundamental difference.. Some people that don't like Stage Manager normally do like this one window at a time version of it and vice versa. 

Here are some other tips. You can minimize a window by clicking the yellow button. Instead of it going into the Dock it will actually go into the App Groups on the left. Now if you like Mission Control and like Stage Manager, they work well together. So I'll bring up Mission Control and I will add another Desktop here. I'll move some of these windows to the second Desktop. Stage Manager works as I would expect, but I could also switch to the other Desktop space and Stage Manager is working here with these windows as well. It works in a similar way if you have multiple displays . Each screen has its own set of App Groups and works independently.

So there are the basics for using Stage Manager. It's not everybody. But if you never tried it give it a try and see what you think. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.