10/25/22
9:00 am

The Comprehensive Guide To Mac Stage Manager

Stage Manager is perhaps the most notable new feature in macOS Ventura. Learn how to use it and all of the tips and tricks. While essentially just another way to multitask, it does have some nice advantages over just using multiple Desktop spaces or windows alone.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MaMost.com. Let's take an in-depth look at using Stage Manager on your Mac. 
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So Stage Manager is probably the most visible new feature in macOS Ventura. It is a whole new way to do multitasking on your Mac. So here's the problem that Stage Manager solves. I've got a whole bunch of windows here open and it's hard to navigate and get to each one. If I use Mission Control, Control up arrow, you can see I've got a total of eleven windows open here. So it would seem to be impossible to really manage these without having to go to multiple spaces or hide a bunch of the apps or minimize a bunch of the windows. But with Stage Manager I can. 
So I'm going to go to the Control Center and click the Stage Manager button to turn on Stage Manager. When I do that you're going to see all of these groups of windows on the left. On the right you're only going to see one single app and its group of windows. These are called App Sets, at lease Apple called them App Sets in one particular document so let's go with that. You can click on one of those to switch to a different App Set. So here is Notes and its just this one window here. It's a regular window but it's grouped as an App Set and I can switch to another one like this Calendar one. You can see how Notes goes into the slot here on the left that was used by Calendar before. I can switch to Photos here and the Photos App window comes to the front and the Calendar one goes down here. I can switch to Pages and I have a bunch of different windows here in Pages. I've got three different windows and they all come here and I can use those. 
So what's actually happening here is all the windows are still there. If I use Mission Control, Control up arrow, I can still see them all. It's just now everything but what is in one App Set is on the left and the one App Set, in this case these three Pages windows or in this case this one Notes window, that is taking up the rest of the screen. There are actually more App Sets than you could see here. It will only present as many as you have space for. So I see four right here. But the windows are still there. This Calendar window is still there it's just really small and off to the side and easy for me to switch to it. 
Now you don't need this left side list at all. As a matter of fact if you move a window over to the left enough it will shoo that away and you can use the entire space here for your windows. You can go with a pointer all the way to the left side of the screen and they will pop-out and then you could select one and jump to that. Or you can just permanently hide them all. If you go into System Settings and then to Desktop & Dock and scroll down you'll see Stage Manager and a button for Customize. You go into that and you could turn off Recent Apps. This is the list of recent App Sets. Now that's gone. So I still have App Sets but I'm just not going to see the list on the left unless I move my pointer over to it. Now note you don't have to use that left list at all to switch to something. You could use the standard techniques like I can use App Switcher. I'll use Command Tab and switch to Notes and this will switch the App Set that I'm looking at. You could also just use the Dock, say, and switch to an app that way. So all the standard ways of switching apps are still there. You could certainly use those. 
So I put this list here in place and it appears that you always have to have a one App Set over here on the right and then the rest are listed here. But if in fact if you click on the Desktop you'll find that they all go to the left. So I have no App Set active right now. As a bonus I get my Desktop back. Notice here I see the icons here on the Desktop just like normal. But if I'm in an App Set they're not there. All of that goes away. So the Desktop becomes just the wallpaper background, not the actual files or icons anymore. You can actually turn this off as well. If you go back into System Settings and back here in the settings there's Desktop Items. Turn that switch On and now the Desktop acts like it did before. You have your files there even when you're using windows. But you loose the functionality of being able to click on the Desktop and have the current App Set go away. There's always going to be an active App Set. 
Now you can regroup the windows here in these App Sets which probably makes a name like Window Sets better than App Sets. Let's say, for instance, I want to have Notes and Calendar both together. I don't want to have to switch to see them. I want to see them next to each other. If I can drag the Calendar out and move it here and now I can arrange these as I like. Now when I go to another App Set like Reminders here notice now Notes and Calendar stay together. You can even see the two app icons and the two windows there. Now if I switch back to it I not only get those back but it remembers the window positions. You can also take them out of this mode by dragging back here. So I put Reminders back. I could have two windows from the same app in different App Sets. So switching back to Safari here I've got several different windows. I'm going to bring one of these to the front. The one I want to move somewhere else. Then I'm going to go to the other App Set that let's say the one that just had Notes in here. Then I'm going to drag the top window from Safari here. So now you can see I've got one App Set with Notes and one Safari window and one App Set that has three Safari windows in it. 
These little app icons are good for more than just telling what type of windows are in  there. If I click on one, like I'll click on the Safari one here, I'm going to get to see all of the different Safari windows spread out including the one that's part of another App Set. So I could switch to this one, for instance, and now I'm in that App Set. Now the Dock down here stays there. If you have it visible all the time it will be visible when you're using Stage Manager. If you don't then it will appear when you move the pointer to the bottom like I just had to do. So I can launch new apps and switch to different apps using the Dock just like before. It just works within this new Stage Manager interface. I can use App Switching to move to another app and then it will take me to that App Set. If I go into Launchpad I can use Launchpad to go into an App or to launch a different app like that. You could see now this is in its own App Set as well. You could also Hide apps. So I'm going to hide the Reminders app with Command H or you could use Reminders and hide Reminders and now it's not listed anymore here. But it is hidden just like a normal hidden app. I could go back to it and it will reappear here and then appear here on the left side when I'm switching to another App Set. 
Now in addition to the App Switcher, Command Tab, there's the Windows Switcher which switches between windows in the same app. That's Command and the Back tick key, the key above Tab. Here's an interesting thing. In Stage Manager that now works between windows in the same App Set, not the same app anymore. So here I am in Safari and I have three different windows here and a fourth one in another App Set. If I do Command Back Tick I'm only going between these three windows in the current App Set. If I go here I have an App Set that has a Safari window and a Notes window. If I use Command Back Tick it goes between those two.
Minimize also works differently. Normally if I would minimize this would go into the Dock. But if I'm using Stage Manager, minimize actually puts that window back into the left side. It's part of the same App Set but it only shows one there because the other two are here. I can Minimize this one as well. Notice it goes back in there and I could click to take them back out in the same order they went in. It even remembers this. So I could go and Minimize these two to the left side. I just have this one window. I can switch to Reminders. Switch back to the this App Set and it remembers I only have this one here. These two are minimized. I can bring them back out. 
There's another setting you should know about and that is Show Windows from an App All At Once or One At A Time. So if you switch to one-at-a-time now if I go to look at the Safari windows I click there and it shows one, the one on the top. If I click again it shows the next one and it shuffles through them. Only showing me one at a time. If I go to this App Set though it shows me the two windows from different apps together. So it is only when you have an App Set that has windows from the same app that it does this behavior. Now this works with multiple Desktop spaces in Mission Control. So I'm going to do Control up arrow and I see all these windows I've got here in one Desktop. Let's add another Desktop. Let's drag a few windows to it. So this one and this one and the Photos App there. Maybe Calculator there as well. Now let's go back to Desktop 1. So now I see Stage Manager still working like it did before. I can still switch between these. But if I use Control right arrow from Mission Control I go to my other Desktop space and I see there are four App Sets that is here. There's one Safari window and there's one Pages window, there's Photos and here is Calculator. So these are treated as two different Desktops with different Stage Manager App Sets. Using multiple screens works the same way. So if these were two different screens hooked up to the same Mac each screen would have its own Stage Manager with its own set of App Sets on it. You could actually drag and drop windows between the screens to move them from one to the other. 
Now one thing I know is going to be asked about a lot is, is there a Keyboard Shortcut to turn Stage Manager on and off. There isn't. I think the idea here is to turn it on and leave it on or turn it off and leave it off. Switching back and forth is going to be kind of really confusing. So maybe that's why Apple is kind of holding back from having a keyboard shortcut. But you can make it easier to switch. Instead of going here to Control Center and having to click this button you could drag this button out and put it there in the Menu Bar as its own icon. Now when you click on it you get the Stage Manager switch. So you really don't save any time here except that you do get a handy way to get to Stage Manager's setting. Also there's a trick. If you Option Click it will turn Stage Manager off and on again. 
Now Stage Manager isn't going to be for everyone. It's just another way to do multi-tasking. If you're used to using say multiple Desktops with Mission Control or just having lots of windows and navigating around with the App Switcher and Window Switcher, well then you can keep using those. You certainly don't have to switch to Stage Manager. But if you do want to try it what encourage you to do is try it for a few days. Don't expect in fifteen minutes for it to convert you on how you've done it for years to this new method. It takes some getting used to. But I think for a lot of people it's actually going to end up being a better method especially if you're doing all your work on one smaller screen like a MacBook for instance. Also keep in mind that Stage Manager is for the iPad as well as the Mac. The iPad doesn't have all that stuff. It doesn't have windowed apps. It doesn't have Mission Control. It doesn't have the ability to Hide and Minimize and do all that stuff. So, for the iPad it may be the ideal way to do multitasking. If you have both the Mac and an iPad it may be great to be able to use this same type of multitasking on both. 
So I hope you found all this useful. Thanks for watching.

Update: Apple added the ability to create a keyboard shortcut to turn on and off Stage Manager. Go to System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts (button), and look under Mission Control.

Comments: 23 Responses to “The Comprehensive Guide To Mac Stage Manager”

Ken Taylor

11 months ago

Thanks for this Gary, it was really helpful to know what I should be seeing. Everything works as you show - apart from Safari. I am using Safari 16.1. With Stage Manager active Safari refuses to move to the side bar. It stays fixed whatever app I use - even in the finder. Can you think of a preference file I might delete (or other action) to put this right? Safari Technology works as expected.

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Ken: Safari works just like any other app. Maybe you are looking at Safari in Full Screen mode? I'm not sure from your description what you are seeing. Maybe try a restart?

Will

11 months ago

Thanks. Great video.

Russ

11 months ago

In Settings > Desktop & Dock, Stage Manager is greyed out, Message says,"Stage Manager requires "Displays have separate Spaces", to be enabled. How do I enable it? Thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Russ: It is just below in the same Desktop & Dock section, under Mission Control.

Eric

11 months ago

I didn't see anything about the user being able to -- or not being able to -- save a stage manager configuration once they went through all the trouble to set it up. Or being able to preserve a stage manager configuration: for example, if an app is grouped with other apps into an app set within stage manager, if one of those apps is quit for whatever reason, stage manager "forgets" you had it grouped with the others. I'm guessing logout or shutdown wipes out all stage manager configurations.

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Eric: There's really no "configuration." It is dynamic. It shows whatever apps are running and windows you have open. Logout and shutdown (why shut down??? why log out for that matter???) won't affect it unless you have your Mac set to quit all apps when you log out. But if you are asking about this, then I assume you don't have that option turned on anyway.

Darren

11 months ago

@Ken Taylor I had this same problem with several apps. Turns out that Stage Manager is very particular about how it interacts with Spaces. Not just in the “Displays have separate spaces” setting, but also in that apps you’ve assigned to appear in All Desktops will not show up in the sidebar no matter what you do. You have to assign them to “None.” Tough to tell whether this is intended behavior or a bug, since Stage Manager is so confusingly implemented.

Darren

11 months ago

@Ken Taylor I had this same problem with several apps. Turns out that Stage Manager is very particular about how it interacts with Spaces. Not just in the “Displays have separate spaces” setting, but also in that apps you’ve assigned to appear in All Spaces will not show up in the sidebar no matter what you do. You have to assign them to “None.”

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Darren: I suppose that it makes sense that you can't use All Spaces with Stage Manager. Haven't played around with it though.

Chris

11 months ago

'Windows Switcher Works Differently' chapter (7:09):

When I use ⌘+`, the Stage Manager switches (most of the time) between various apps as you point out, but then once I cycle through to all apps in an App Set, I'm unable to continue switching as shown at 7:44. Wondering if anyone else has had this come up. Trying a restart in the meantime to see if this will resolve the issue.

Paul Nielan

11 months ago

Hi Gary and Chris,

Great video. I see the kind-of behavior Chris is talking about. Don't really understand Command-Backtick, but it's not behaving as Gary suggests i.

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Paul: What are your Stage Manager "customize" settings in System Settings, Desktop & Dock? What windows do you have in the App Set you are trying the Command+` with?

Paul Nielan

11 months ago

Hi Gary, I will take more careful notes and then document what you request in this thread. Thanks for your video. I learned quite a bit.

Paul Nielan

11 months ago

Hi Gary. The simplest example is an "appSet" or "windowSet" with two Finder windows. Command-Backtick more than twice goes to limbo/statemate/no change. I have One at a Time set in Stage Manager. I think the Desktop might be considered as a Finder Destination for Command-Backtick and maybe it's getting "stuck" there. But the behaviour isn't continually cyclic as I would expect.

Gary Rosenzweig

11 months ago

Paul: Finder is a special case. Yes, the Desktop is a "window" for it. So you get that in the sequence.

Paul Nielan

11 months ago

Hi Gary: Agree Finder looks like a special case. And Finder is very special, there really is no sequence. You get stuck in limbo with Command-Backtick.

Paul Nielan

11 months ago

Hi Gary: Another experiment. Only app is Safari. No other windows are open. Open 3-4 windows in Safari. They are all in the same "app/window set". Command-Backtick a few times. Eventually it locks up. You are in limbo. Further Command-Backticks do nother.

Peter Fulton Foss

8 months ago

I am convinced that Apple has a special division whose sole function it is to confuse Mac users. They get something perfect, then along comes an "upgrade", and it drives us CRAZY.

Stage Manager is absolutely worthless to me. I use F3 to see open windows. Ditto Free Form. By your own admission, it's not as good as some other apps (I tossed my notes so cannot give you specifics) I've had Macs for 20 years(!), and it gets more and more difficult with each upgrade.

Doug Lee

5 months ago

I really enjoyed watching your video on Stage Manager (for the second time). Is there any way of saving "asset groups" so that you don't have to reconfigure the screen each time you turn the Mac on?

Keep up the great work.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 months ago

Doug: You can't save app sets. But if you need to reboot for some reason, things should return to as they were before. In System Settings, Desktop & Dock, do you maybe have Close Windows When Quitting An Application turned on? Also, when you do a restart or shut down for whatever reason, there is a checkbox for Reopen Windows When Logging Back in. Have that turned on or obviously you are restarting without any app windows open so you wouldn't see anything in Stage Manager. Also, note that restarting or shutting down your Mac usually isn't necessary. See https://macmost.com/a-beginners-guide-to-whether-to-shut-down-or-sleep-your-mac.html

Rob Ritchie

3 months ago

Gary, I have tried Stage Manager previously but gave up. I am giving it another try having reviewed your 2 Ventura videos. I want to drag a file from Desktop into Finder. Impossible! Unless I am doing something wrong. I can achieve this only by switching off Stage Manager. I find on a Mac, the constant swapping of windows is so distracting and I will probably abandon SM again. I have tried on iPad and I think it works there for me. Have you thought about an iPad version of your SM video?

Gary Rosenzweig

3 months ago

Rob: Sounds like Stage Manager is not for you. Dragging a file from your Desktop to a Finder window is just: drag it to the left side and let the Stage Manager App Sets appear. Continue to drag it over the App Set with the Finder window and wait for it to activate. Then complete the drag by moving it into the Finder window.

The Comprehensive Guide To Mac Stage Manager

Comments: 23 Responses to “The Comprehensive Guide To Mac Stage Manager”

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