Getting the Most From Hot Corners On Your Mac

Hot Corners allow you to assign functions to the four corners of your Mac's screen. Just move your mouse pointer to one of those corners to activate Mission Control, Notification Center, lock the screen and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary at MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using Hot Corners on your Mac. 
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Hot Corners are kind of like Keyboard Shortcuts except you don't use your keyboard at all. Instead you use your Mouse or Trackpad to move your pointer to one of the four corners of the screen. This can activate a variety of different functions. To configure Hot Corners go to System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock. Then look at the bottom for a button for Hot Corners. When you click the button you get this interface here that shows you the four corners of your screen and you get to choose the shortcut that each corner activates. You may find that Quick Note is already setup at the bottom right corner. So when you move your pointer to the bottom right hand corner you'll see your Quick Note peek out there in the corner and you can click it to access the Quick Notes functionality. 
But if would rather not have that there you can select this menu here and simply go to the Dash at the bottom. This deactivates the Hot Corner. So all four Hot Corners now don't do anything at all. But let's say I wanted to use one, like the top right hand corner. I can select from the List here something for it to do. Like for instance for it to activate Mission Control. So if I turn on Mission Control for this all I need to do now to activate that is move my pointer up to the upper right hand corner. I'm not going to click on anything or do anything else except to actually move the pointer all the up into the corner. You can see that activates Mission Control just as easily as a keyboard shortcut or clicking on a Mission Control icon in the Dock. It's easy to hit the corner because even if you hit the top of the screen first or the side of the screen first and you just continue to go diagonally, you'll eventually put the pointer in the corner. I use the Escape Key here to exit Mission Control. Let's look at some of the other functions.
You can have it go to Application Windows, also known as App Expose. This brings up all of the windows for the current app. So, for instance, say I'm in Pages here and I have three Pages documents open. Now I'll go to the top right hand corner or bring up App Expose I see the three windows nicely separated and can choose one. I also see recent documents here at the bottom. I'll use the Escape Key to exit from that. 
The next item here is Desktop. So this will clear off all of the windows and give you access to the things on your Desktop. So, for instance, if I have all those Pages windows open and System Preferences. Now if I go to the top right you can see everything gets pushed off to the sides. If I have any icons here like Files or Hard Drives I can easily access them. I can click here on the side and exit that mode. 
Next we've got Notification Center which you can usually bring up by using a gesture on your trackpad or you can click on the Clock at the top right hand corner. But now with a Hot Corner I don't need to click on anything. I can move my pointer there and Notification Center comes up. 
Next we've got Launchpad. A quick way to launch apps. You can bring that up with a Hot Corner. We've seen Quick Note already. We also have the ability to start the Screen Saver so whatever Screen Saver I have set will now begin when I move to the top right hand corner. There's also Disable Screen Saver. This works differently. Nothing actually happens when you put your pointer in the corner now. But, Screen Saver won't start. So say you have your Screen Saver set to go on after fifteen minutes. Well, if you put your pointer in the upper right hand corner that won't happen. So it is an easy way to disable the Screen Saver temporarily in a specific situation without having to change your settings. 
Next we have Put The Display to Sleep. So it will put your Mac to sleep when you move your pointer there. The quickest and easiest way to actually make your Mac sleep besides closing the lid if it is a MacBook. 
Then you have a way to go immediately to the Lock Screen. Of course the last one is to have it turned Off. You can use all of these on any of the four Hot Corners. So you can set each one up to do something different or if you decide you just want to have multiple ways to get to the same function you can use the same function in two or more Hot Corners. 
Now you may thing that it is a little too easy to accidentally put your pointer into a corner and activate something. But you can also set a modifier key for a Hot Corner. So if I were to click here to look at this menu and say Hold the Command key down you could see how the Command key symbol appears next to each item. So, if I were to select, say, Launchpad. Now if I put my pointer at the top right hand corner it doesn't activate. But if I hold the Command Key down and move the pointer there then it does activate. Note that if you move the pointer there and then hold Command down it doesn't do anything. The modifier key has to be held down before you move to the corner. Now you can set this up to be any of the modifier keys. So you can use Option, you can use Control, you can use Shift, or you can use a combination. So I could do Shift Command and now Launchpad will only happen if I move to the top right hand corner with Command and Shift both held down. 
Unfortunately, there's no way to setup multiple commands for one Hot Corner, like one thing to happen if the Command Key is held down and another thing to happen if the Shift key is held down. 
Another thing to keep in mind is Hot Corners usually act as a toggle. So, for instance, I have the upper right hand corner set for Mission Control. So if I move my pointer to the upper right hand corner it activates Mission Control. Now I can go and use Mission Control. But, if I'm in Mission Control and I go to the top right hand corner it will turn Off Mission Control. That happens for just about any of these. So, for instance, if I use Launchpad and I go up to the top right hand corner I'm now in Launchpad. Going back up there will get out of Launchpad. Now all of these will happen instantly if you move your pointer to the corner. Except Displace Screen Saver, of course,  doesn't do anything. It just prevents something from happening. Likewise Start Screen Saver can be used to delay locking because if you go to your Lock Screen Options here then you could set the Require Password after Screen Saver begins to a certain time. So you can use a Hot Corner to activate the Screen Saver then have your computer Lock after 5 minutes or better yet 1 minute or 5 seconds. That way moving your pointer up there works as a Lock but with kind of a delay. 
Here's another tip. If you want to change up Hot Corners all the time it can be kind of a pain to go to System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock and then scroll down to the bottom and then click on Hot Corners. Well, you can create a shortcut to do that. In  order to do that you need to use the Open URL Action and use the special URL here. This, when you run the shortcut, will open up System Settings and go right to Hot Corners. So you could add that to the Menu Bar here for quick access or put it in the Services Menu or add a keyboard shortcut. So Hot Corners are easy to setup. If you haven't been using them I encourage you to try them out. They are very easy to change. If you find that you're triggering it by accident too often, add a modifier key to it and see if this little known feature of macOS can help improve your productivity. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Getting the Most From Hot Corners On Your Mac”

Antanas

4 months ago

Hi Gary, great video. I set a hot corner (right down) to desktop. I find sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it simply stays on the screen of the app. Do you have any idea what that could be the case?

Gary Rosenzweig

Antanas: No idea. Have you tried another corner, just to test? Is it always one app in particular that seems to block this?

Hi Gary, yes, I tried different corners. Definitely, when in full screen mode the desktop hot corner doesn't work yes the launch pad hot corner does work. Befuddling!

It could be a system bug as my laptop is old enough to only install monetary and not new Ventura.

Todd

Great video Gary. I have the same issue as Antanas. When set to Notifications, sometimes the hot corner works, and sometimes it doesn't. I've tried different corners for Notifications, and the all do this. Must be a bug. I'm on a 27 inch i7 desktop (2017) running Ventura 13.2.

David Martin

3 months ago

A great video, but unfortunately the option you didn't demonstrate is the one that doesn't work. I've a new Mac Mini and Studio Display with the latest OS version. The Put Display to Sleep option works only about 20% of the time. You move the pointer to the hot corner, the display sleeps momentarily but immediately re-awakes. I've tried all the corners and they all perform in the same way. It takes between 5 and 10 attempts to get the screen to sleep. On my previous 27" iMac it always worked.

A follow up to my previous comment. I've just tried using the Apple Menu and selected Sleep and exactly the same happens. The screen sleeps momentarily but immediately re-awakes. I'm guessing this is the real problem and not the hot corners, although it is strange that the hot corners do eventually work after several attempts.

David: So it sounds like the Hot Corner is working fine, but you have something running on your Mac that is not allowing it to stay asleep. You can use Activity Monitor to figure that out. The Energy tab has a Preventing Sleep column.

Getting the Most From Hot Corners On Your Mac

Comments: 7 Responses to “Getting the Most From Hot Corners On Your Mac”

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