Mac Basics: How To Use Split View

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at using Split View on your Mac.

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So to understand how to use split view on your Mac it's first important to understand how you can use multiple desktops. Multiple desktops are sometimes called Spaces or Mission Control. So here's how you may be using your Mac. You may have multiple windows open. Here I have a Safari window open. I have a Pages window open and I have Notes open. Now it gets a bit crowded. But you can multiple desktops and move some of these windows to other desktops. To access this use Control and then up arrow and this brings up Mission Control. You could see you have one desktop here at the top and if you move your cursor over it you could see what it looks like. On the bottom the selected desktop shows you all the windows and they have been moved apart so you can see them clearly. Now to add another desktop you can just use the Plus button here. Now you can see I have Desktop 1 and Desktop 2. I can declutter this first desktop by simply moving a window to the second desktop like that. Then I can select which desktop to view. When I'm viewing a desktop I can use Control left arrow and right arrow to move between them. 

Now there are three types of desktops that you could have. One is this type where you just have regular windows on a desktop. Another type is a full screen app. So, for instance, if we wanted to take Notes full screen I can go into this desktop and I could just click this green button. I could also hover over it and then use Enter Full Screen or go to View, Enter Full Screen. Anyone of those will take that window full screen. Now when I use Control and up arrow you could see I've got my desktops but I also have a desktop here that's just the name of that app. If I go into that you could see I don't see a Menu Bar there. But if I move my cursor to the top you could see the Menu Bar appears. Also the Dock will appear if I move my cursor down to the bottom. To Exit Full Screen mode all you need to do is click the green button here or hover over it and use Exit Full Screen or use View, Exit Full Screen and this will take that window out and then you could see it's now back where it was on Desktop 2. 

Now in addition to a regular Desktop and a Full Screen app you could also have a third type of desktop which is Split View. So Split View is very similar to the Full Screen view except instead of one app you have exactly two apps. So let's go back to the situation here where we have these three windows open. Instead we want to put two of them together in Split View. So what we want to do is move our cursor over to the green button and then wait for the menu to appear and use Tile Window to Left of Screen or Tile Window to Right of Screen. You can also go to Window and select those items here. So let's select Left of Screen and now we can see that window moves to the left side of the screen. We're asked to choose another window to be the right side of that screen. So in this case let's choose Notes. Now we can see we have the Safari window to the left side of the screen and the Notes app on the right side of the screen. It looks a lot like full screen view because if I move my cursor to the top here the Menu appears and to the bottom the Dock appears. I also have this line in the middle and I can drag that to the right or left. Now how far I can drag it depends on the apps. Some apps require that they be exactly half the screen. Other apps can be smaller or larger. So the two windows are going to have to compromise and the amount that you can drag depends on how the windows work. If you ever drag it over to one side a little bit and want to get it exactly in the middle just double click right there and it will jump to the middle.

Now this mode is excellent for being able to do things like research. For instance I can continue to browse here on the web and use this side to take notes. Now to exit Split View, if you want to exit and leave one app in full screen mode you can simply go to the top here and then use the green button for either one of these to take that half of Split View out of Split View and leave the other app there in full screen mode. You could also go to View and then Exit Full Screen. So if I'm going to do that with Safari selected here you could see that Safari leaves and if I do Control up arrow you could see Notes is now a full screen app. On the other hand if I want to take both of these out of full screen mode at the same time I just use Control up arrow to go into Mission Control and then move my cursor over there and click this button and that takes both of those out of Split View and back to the desktop that they originally came from. 

Now there are a few special things that you can do. One is you can have two windows of the same app in Split View. So, for instance, in Safari here I can create a new window and have these two Safari windows open. I can move my cursor here and move this to the right side of the screen and then choose the other Safari window for the left side of the screen. Now I have two Safari windows. You could still use Tabs in these windows, by the way. So I can select over here and do Command T to open up a new tab. I could also open up a new tab here. I have multiple tabs on each side of Split View. Another special feature is when you use Mail. So if you use the Mail app and you take it into Full Screen mode, so I'm going to click the green button here and go into Full Screen mode, I'm now viewing Mail as a full screen window. However, if I were to go and compose a new message or reply to one, it will actually put that in Split View. So you see your Mail viewing window on the left and your Mail composition window on the right. If I were to compose another message at the same time you could see it actually opens up Tabs here and I've got Tabs on the right for both messages that I'm composing. 

So here was a look at using Split View on your Mac. Go ahead and give it a try. It's great for doing research or focusing on exactly two tasks instead of one or many.