Understanding Windows, Tabs, Full Screen And Split Screen Modes

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at different ways you can use windows in macOS including windows with a single document, windows with multiple documents and tabs, full screen mode and split screen mode.

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So in most cases, in most apps, a window will hold a single open document. So for instance here in Pages I've got a Pages document open in a single window. That's true in a lot of apps. In image editing apps the document would be an image. In Numbers it would be a spreadsheet. In Keynote it will be a presentation. It's always a document where a single file that is opened up in a window. In some cases it's not exactly a document. For instance in Safari it would be a webpage in a single window.

Now there kind of three different stages to a window. The first one is when you have a document in a single window like this. It's the simplest state. If you want to have a second document open in that same app you can do so. In Pages let me open up a new window with a blank document. You can see now I have two windows open. Both are Pages windows. One holds this document and the other holds this new blank document. I can grab the corners or edges of any window and resize it. I can move the windows to be next to each other or just move one on top of the other. I can open three, four, five windows. As many as I need to hold as many different Pages documents as I want. So that's kind of the simplest way to look at it. One window is one document.

So the second state would be to have windows inside of Tabs. So in this case I have two windows and two documents. So I select the window that I want to use as the main window here and I go to Window, Merge All Windows. What I get now are both documents in the same window but under different tabs. So here's that blank document and here's that other document. I can create a new window and that will open up in a separate window not a tab but I can go and use Merge All Windows to move that one in. 

Likewise I could drag a window out. You can see I can remove it from the tabs of that window into this one. So I can combine the idea of having one document in one window and having multiple documents in a window using tabs. I've got a window here with two tabs and I've got a window here with just a single document open in it.

So another way to deal with different windows is to go full screen with a window. It's as easy as clicking this green button here. If I actually move my cursor over it and wait I have several options. You'll see the first one is Enter Full Screen. When I do that that window and document take over the entire space. Even the Menu Bar is gone from the top. But I get the Menu Bar back by moving my cursor up there. Now I can use that green button again to exit full screen. Just click on it and it will go back to being a window.

Now what you're actually doing there is using Mission Control. So I'll go to full screen again and if I do Control up arrow I can see I've got my regular desktop here and I've got a desktop that has full screen pages. I can click here to actually close that full screen desktop and bring that window back to the main desktop I was using before. So there are multiple ways to get out of full screen.

Now a variant on full screen windows is split screen. So the way you could do that is first you need to have a second app going. So let's launch Notes here to be used as this second window. Now in Pages here I'll use the green button and I'll use either Tile Window to Left or Tile Window to Right. If I do Tile Window to Left it's going to show me windows that can now fill the right side of the screen. I can click on one and use it. Now I've got something that's basically a variant of full screen mode but it's split screen. If I use Control up arrow I can see I have a Pages and Notes desktop. I have this divider in the middle and I can drag it to the left or right. Now some apps have a limit on how much space they need. For instance I can't go beyond halfway for Pages but I can go beyond halfway for Notes. So I can make Pages a little bit larger.

To exit this mode I could move the cursor to the top and I have the green button for either one of these apps. So I can go to one of these and I could click on it to exit split screen mode for that one app. If I look now at Mission Control I can see that the other app became, basically, a full screen app. So then I can go into that one and exit that one as well. Now you can exit both at once if you go to the green button here, Tile Left put that on the right, then I use Mission Control. Control up arrow and I can go and click this button here in Mission Control and that will remove both apps in split screen mode. Put them both back on the main desktop there.

Note you can also combine things here. If I were to open a second Pages document I could make that blank here and I can do Window, Merge All Windows. Now I have those both in Tabs. If I take that full screen notice I'm full screen with that window with two tabs in it. So I now have the ability to combine the idea of tabs with full screen mode. In fact I can even do that with split screen. I could go to Tile Window to Left, choose Notes here, and you can see now in Pages I've got two tabs and I've got Notes here on the right.

Now note that all apps support all the different ways of having windows. For instance some apps, like TextEdit don't allow tabs. Other apps like Mail handle windows in a different way. For instance the main window in Mail can't use tabs. But if you were to compose a new message you can find that you can open up multiple composition windows. You can actually combine those into tabs just not with the main Mail window where you view your list of emails. While most, if not all apps, support full screen view some don't support split screen view. On the other hand some apps, like Safari, allow you to use split screen view with two separate windows from the same app. So you can have a split screen between two Safari windows. 

As for which method is best , well there is no answer to that. It depends on how you like to work. Full screen is great for getting rid of distractions. Split screen is great if you want to get rid of distractions but you do need to access two apps like Safari to do research and Pages to do writing based on that research. Having multiple windows open is great when you need to be able to see one document while working on another whereas tabs are great if you need to have many documents open but you only need to see one at a time and you don't want all of the clutter. It all depends on how you like to work.