Mastering Multitasking Tools and Techniques on Your Mac

Mac users have a wide variety of multitasking options such as windows, Stage Manager, multiple desktops and tabs. Learn about each one and how they can work together.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the different multitasking tools and techniques on your Mac. 
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Let's talk about multitasking. Specifically how to view multiple apps and windows at the same time or quickly switch between them. So let's start off with the simplest tool that has been around the longest. That is simply using multiple windows on your Desktop. So here you can see I have a variety of windows from different apps. I've got a couple of Pages documents open, a Safari browser window, the Notes App, a couple of Finder windows. I can quickly switch between these by simply clicking on the window that I want. So if I want to focus on this Finder window I can click it and it comes to the front and now I'm using that window. If I want to go to this Pages document I can click that and bring that to the front. I can also move these around as I like. I can click and drag on the Toolbar at the top. I can also click and drag the sides or corners to resize the windows. I can place them next to each other. There's even some snapping going on so it will allow you to nicely align the edges of these windows. You can arrange them to be on top of each other so they overlap and you can see what's there or you can arrange them to be next to each other. It's up to you. You can arrange these anyway you want. 
Now in addition to clicking to switch to different windows and bring them to the front you can also use other tools as well. For instance you can use the App Switcher. Command Tab, continue to hold Command down, get to the app that you want and then release the Command key. That will bring that window to the front. Notice if I do it with an app that has more than one window open, like Pages has these two, so I do Command and then Tab over to Pages. I release and both of those windows come to the front. But you can also use any other technique you would normally use to get to an app. So let's say I've got Notes here and Safari up front and I've got these Pages windows behind. Well, if I were to switch to Pages by using the Dock down here and click you could see they both come to the front. But if I were to use sa Launchpad and then go to Pages notice how only the top window comes to the front. The other one remains behind. This is also true if you use Spotlight. I use Spotlight to switch to the app and you could see it just brings the top window to the front. 
Now if you want to bring a specific window to the front you can do that using the Dock. If you go down here to the Dock and click and hold on an icon or you can Control Click to bring it up quicker, you'll see the open windows. There's two of them right here. I can pick a specific one and it will bring that one to the front and leave the other one where it is. Another way to switch between windows is when you're in an App, like I'm in Pages now, if I go to window I can see all of the currently open windows in Pages and switch to one using this menu. Another tool you've got here is the ability to Hide an App. So let's say I'm using Pages here. If I go to Pages, Hide Pages, Command H, I can easily hide all of the windows for that app. The app is still running. If I use the App Switcher, Command Tab, you can see it is still there. Selecting it in the App Switcher will Unhide it and bring all of its windows to the front. 
Another technique you've got is the ability to Minimize a window. Now if you just want to Hide one window the way to do that is to minimize. You've got the Yellow button here or you can use Window, Minimize. Command M. That will take that one window and put it into the Dock. So you should see it here on the right and I can click there to Unminimize it. But a Setting that you've got, if you go into System Settings, Desktop & Dock, you can select Minimize Windows into Application Icon. When we have that turned on then you don't get them added to the Dock. You basically click and it goes into the App Icon which is pretty much the equivalent to hiding just that window. So now to bring it back up I can click here and I can go and select that window and it will bring it back. 
Now in addition to the App Switcher you also have the Window Switcher which is Command and then the key above Tab on U.S. keyboards. It's the Backtick key which also has the Tilde on it. If you do Command and that key it simply switches between open Windows for that app. So here I can switch between the two Pages windows. If I switch to one of the Finder windows here I can now switch between the two Finder windows. 
Now Mission Control is a tool I'm going to be talking about a lot from now on. One of the things you can do with Mission Control, that doesn't involve multiple desktops and spaces, is you can trigger it to show you all of the windows in the current app. So the Default keyboard shortcut is Control and then Down Arrow. You can see since I was in Pages since Pages was the app that was running then I get both Pages windows here. It would show me all of them. If I had ten it would show me all ten. I also see Recent Documents here that are not currently opened. I can select one and it quickly brings that to the front. So if I wanted to bring this to the front, say maybe I couldn't see it very well and I didn't know where it was, I could do Control Down Arrow, find it, click and it will come to the front. I could also do Control and Up Arrow. That would show me all of the visible windows on the current desktop. So now I see both Pages windows here but I also see the Finder windows, I see the Safari window, and the Notes window. So I can pick whichever one I want to come to the front. So a quick Control Up Arrow shows you everything. Click to bring the one you want to the front. 
Now those two keyboard shortcuts are in System Settings under Keyboard and then do Keyboard Shortcuts, Mission Control. There's Control Up Arrow and Control Down Arrow Mission Control Application windows. So if those aren't working for you make sure you have them set to this and both checked. This is true for other keyboard shortcuts here in Mission Control as well that we'll look at in a minute.
One more thing with Windows I want to show you. If you ever want a window to take up exactly half of the screen you could do it here in macOS by going to Window and see where it says Tile. Hold the Option Key down and that changes to Move. So I can move this Pages document to the left side. Then I can select this Pages document. Hold the Option Key down and move this one to the right side. Now they take up exactly half of the screen. Of course if you want more options on how to Tile windows there are tons of third party apps that will get you that. 
Now let's go on to look at Stage Manager, which is a new multitasking technique added in macOS Ventura. I have a whole video on this so I won't go into too much detail here. But we will turn it On by going into Control Center and turning On Stage Manager. Now you can see I've got my Pages windows here, that's what I had up front before, but now I can click to switch to my two Finder windows, click to switch to Notes, click to switch to Safari and with any of these I can still reposition the windows. These are still independent windows just like they are on a normal desktop. The only difference is that some of these, these four windows now are hidden and I can reveal them by clicking here which automatically hides whatever windows i had before. So now I can feel free to maybe have this window take-up more space knowing that when I switch to Pages it will go away and then Pages will show these two windows. You can group windows together in different ways. For instance I can click and drag the top window off of the Finder here and drag it to be part of this App Set here. So now you can see I've got three windows, two Pages windows and a Finder window, here. I can put them back in place like that. I can click on the side here to go to anyone. But I can also use all the other techniques. Like, for instance, I can Command Tab for the App Switcher. Go to Pages and that works. If I want to Minimize a window I can do that and you can see how it minimizes right there back into Stage Manager instead of into the Dock.  If I'm using an app and I Hide it, with Command H, you can see now it is hidden just like you would expect it to be. I can use the App Switcher to get it back. 
So you can see Stage Manager doesn't change the fundamental nature of these windows. They are still windows. You can still have them overlap. You can click on one to bring it to the front. Click on another to bring that to the front. They are just now grouped together in Sets and you see one set at a time. An interesting technique you've got is if you go into System Settings and then you go to Desktop & Dock, go down to Stage Manager and Customize. Then you can turn on Show Windows in Application One-At-A-Time. When you do that when you have an App Set that has more than one window in it, click it, only one of those windows comes up. The other one is still there on the left and you can kind of switch between them. Kind of a single window mode. So now you can kind of expand these if you want and easily switch between the two of them. So Stage Manager builds on top of the standard window multitasking. So you can still use just about every tool that you could use before. For instance, I could go to Window and switch to another window here. I can do the same thing here in the Dock switching to another window. Even if I'm in another App Set here I can still go here, switch to a window in this App Set, it brings that to the front. When I'm in an App Set I can use the Window Switcher, Command and the Backtick key to switch between the windows. If I take a window and group it together with this one, so I've got a Finder window and two Pages windows, I can now use Command and Backtick to go between all three of those windows even though they are from different apps. 
Now Stage Manager is new. Spaces, also known as Multiple Desktops, is something that has been around for a long while. So the tool that you are going to use for multiple desktops or spaces is Mission Control. So I'm going to do Control and Up Arrow to go into Mission Control. I see all the windows here. I notice at the top is says Desktop 1. If I move my pointer over it it shows Desktop 1 there but I can click the Plus button at the top right and now I've got Desktop 2. So now I can move windows to Desktop 2 by simply dragging them. So now I've got these two Desktops. I can click on one of them to go to it and now I can see I've got this Safari window and this Pages window here. If I go back into Mission Control and then choose Desktop 1 I've got the rest of my windows here. The default keyboard shortcut to go between these is Control and then the Right or Left Arrows. So I can Control Right Arrow to go over to this one. Control Left Arrow to go back here. I can add a third Desktop, fourth Desktop, etc.
So I should note too that there are some great trackpad gestures for controlling some of this. If you go into System Settings and then go to Trackpad and then go to More Gestures you'll see you can swipe between Full Screen Applications or Spaces with 3 or 4 fingers. You can activate Mission Control with a Swipe Up of 3 or 4 fingers as well.  You can also turn on App Expose and have that go in one direction or the other. So if you'd rather use Trackpad gestures instead of the keyboard shortcuts you can. 
I can still use a lot of the same tools I had before. So here I am with Pages as the front most window there. If I go to Window and switch to the other window it's going to take me to the Desktop with that window on it. The same thing if I use the Dock here. If I click and hold and then activate this window you can see it takes me to the Desktop with that window on it. If I do Control Down Arrow from Mission Control for this mode here I can switch to the window that is on the other Desktop. Now you can also use Stage Manager with multiple Desktops. So here I've got two Desktops. If I go into this one and I turn on Stage Manager you'll see I've got two App Sets over here. I'm using this one and I can switch between them like that. If I go to the other Desktop you can see I'm also using Stage Manager there. I'm currently using this one Pages window here and I can switch that with the Safari window. So when you're using Stage Manager you've got it on for all Desktop windows. However you can just simply have one App Set on a Desktop. I'll drag this Safari window here. Now since I only have one App Set there's no Stage Manager here on the left. So this Desktop behaves like a Desktop without Stage Manager and this Desktop behaves like one that is using it even though technically both are using Stage Manager. 
Now another part of this is Full Screen Windows. So you've got a window like this. Let's say I want to take that Full Screen. I can click the Green button here or hover over it and then choose Enter Full Screen. I can also go to View and then there is Enter Full Screen usually the fn or Globe Key and F. When I do that this window will expand to be Full Screen. So if I look at Mission Control now you'll see I've got two Desktops and one called Pages. This is not a Desktop. This is that window all by itself without a Desktop. So I go to that one and you could see how it takes up everything. By default the Menu Bar is not there unless you move your pointer to the top. The same with the Dock at the bottom. Move your pointer there to get there though you can go into System Settings and then Desktop & Dock and then you'll see Menu Bar and you could set it to automatically hide and show the Menu Bar Never. Then you would see the Menu Bar all the time. 
Now Full Screen you could still use the window Menu here to jump to the other window and back again. You could do the same thing in the Dock. Jump to another window and then jump to a Full Screen window. You can Exit Full Screen Mode by clicking on the Green button again or wait and then use Exit Full Screen or go to View and you'll see that Exit Full Screen now uses that same keyboard shortcut and then that window returnsto the Desktop where it was before. If I look at Mission Control it is just not there anymore. So one way to multitask is to use Full Screen for everything. Now I've got all of these windows Full Screen and I can do Control Right Arrow and Left Arrow to switch between them. Control Up Arrow will bring me into Mission Control and I can select one. This mode is actually really useful. A lot of people like to work exclusively using just Full Screen windows like this. You can always rearrange things as well. 
So let's go and bring these two Pages windows together. Bring the Safari window here all the way to the left and bring the Notes window next to it. So now I've got these two Finder windows next to each other. 
In addition to Full Screen Mode there's also Split View. So if I were to hover over one of these Green buttons here you could see Tile Windows to the Left or to the Right. If I Tile to the left it will allow me then to choose a window to the right. So I can pick this Pages window here. So now I've got a split view between these two. It acts like Full Screen with the Menu Bar hidden and everything except that have two apps instead of one. I can even drag this middle line here somewhat. It depends on the app and how much space the app needs whether you can adjust it. So now if I go into Mission Control with Control Up Arrow you can see I've Desktop 1 but I have this one, instead of Full Screen saying Finder or Pages, it says Finder and Pages. It has got both of those right here. It's got these two windows. Even though I still have a Pages window open on this Desktop and a Finder window here. So all of the things that I could do before, like window and then switch to that window, will take me there. Or go into the Dock here and switch using the Dock will take me to the right place. When I go over here to Split View I can use the Green buttons right here and then Exit Split View with one of these. Like this. I can click and you can see this goes back to a normal window and then the Pages window, which was left behind, is now a Full Screen App. 
You can also do this in Mission Control by dragging. So I can drag this Pages window over here. It will create a Full Screen version of it. I could drag this Files window to it to the left or to the right to make a Split View. I could also Exit Split View for both of those by clicking here. 
So there is one more major technique from multitasking and that is Tabs. So far we have been dealing with multiple windows for an app. So I have two Pages windows here. But I could have both of these windows combined into one each using a tab. Now we are used to tabs in the browser. So you've got a browser window open here. I could do Command T. Create a new tab and go to a different page. I can do Command T and go to a third page. I've got three tabs open here. I can't see more than one at a time. But it sure is convenient to have all three of these open. Maybe showing some information I need. Switch to one. Switch to another. It is a great multitasking technique even though things aren't visible at the same time. But you could do the same thing using other apps. So, for instance, here in Pages I've got these two windows open. I can go to Window and Merge All Windows and then put those in Tabs. I can break them off by grabbing the Tab and dragging out of the window like that. So having Tabs is a great way to clean things up a bit. Notice here in the Finder I can also have multiple Tabs. There is even a little Plus button here to create a new Finder Tab. Then I've got two Tabs here in the Finder. So it makes it a little nicer to have these two here than have two windows open like that. Most Mac Apps that deal with multiple windows can use Tabs and a lot of third party apps as well. In Safari you even have Advanced Tab functionality. You can go and turn the Sidebar on here and you could see you can have Tab Groups. So I've done videos on Tab Groups before. So not only can you have Tabs but you can Group them together and switch between those groups. You can only do that in Safari though. There are no Tab Groups in other apps. 
Now you can use Tabs in conjunction with all of the other tools I just showed you. So, for instance, if I wanted to switch to the Pages window, but a particular tab in that Pages window, I could click here in the Dock and I can select that. You can see it brings the window to the front and activates that Tab. I can use the Window Menu here as well and it will go to the right Tab. You can use Stage Manager with these tabs as well. So I'll turn Stage Manager back on and you can see this one tabbed Pages window works perfectly fine here in Stage Manager. The same thing with this Finder window here too and the Safari window. So I can combine Tabs with Stage Manager. This, of course, works in multiple Desktops as well so I can create a new Desktop here, bring the Pages window over here, and I've got the Pages window with two Tabs there, I've got the rest of my windows here on this other Desktop. If I were to take this Full Screen notice how I've got Tabs here in Full Screen. If I were to go into Mission Control and say bring Safari over here as Split View notice Split View can also use Tabs. So I've got this Safari window with three Tabs, and this Pages window with two Tabs all working within the multiple Desktops and Spaces using Mission Control. 
So as you can see there is a huge variety of multitasking tools for Mac users. It's hard to remember them all and it's hard to remember how they all interact with each other. But you don't have to. You just have to figure out which ones you like and stick to those. If you like to put everything in Full Screen Apps do that. If you want everything as just different windows on one Desktop just do that. If you like the new Stage Manager you can use that. You can combine two or three of those but usually somebody wouldn't use  all of these at once. You would just stick to the ones you like best. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Mastering Multitasking Tools and Techniques on Your Mac

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