Using Full Screen Mode

Full screen mode allows you to concentrate on a single document or window and maximize your screen space. You can easily enter and leave full screen mode, and also switch between apps in full screen mode and others on your desktop. Apps can even have some windows in full screen mode and others in regular desktop windows.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using apps in full screen mode.
So using apps in full screen mode is a very useful function in Mac OS 10 that you might not be used to using. Let's take a look at how it works. 
In most apps you will see at the upper right hand corner these two arrows. That indicates this app can use full screen mode. Nowadays most apps can. All you need to do to initiate it is to click here and you will see that it jumps to the full screen mode, like that.
You can see there is no menu bar at the top, no dock at the bottom. There is nothing else at all except for the application.
So how do you get out of full screen mode. Well, there are many ways to do it. The most obvious way is to simply go back and use the same button. The way you do that is, notice I just moved my cursor to the upper right hand corner and the menu bar appears. Not just this button here but all of the menu buttons here at the top are visible and they can be used just as before. So you still have the full functionality, you just don't have it visually there all the time.
All you need to do is to take your cursor to the top of the screen and it will appear. To exit full screen mode just tap right here.
You can also use Menus. In most apps the View menu contains the Go To Full Screen and Exit Full Screen menu item there and there is always a keyboard shortcut with it as well. So you can use the keyboard shortcut or the View menu to get in and out of full screen mode. Or you can use the button in the upper right hand corner.
One of the main reasons you may want to use Mission Control is to get away from the clutter of your desktop and concentrate on a single document. So we do that here and it works out really well. We're concentrating here on what we are doing inside of Pages. 
But how do you get back to the other apps without exiting the Full Screen mode because it can be a little tiresome to always exit the full screen mode and then get back into it. 
Well, it is easy because you see all the other apps are still running. There are just all using Mission Control here to be running on a different space. I'm going to use Control and Up arrow to look at Mission Control. It is the same thing as if I would tap on the Mission Control icon down here.
I can see that I have multiple desktops and I can have multiple desktops in Mission Control of course. But I am also creating another space here that is just for Pages so every full screen app that is running creates its own space here. I can switch between these easily right here. I can click on them but it is actually a lot easier if I just use the other Mission Control shortcuts like Control left arrow and right arrow to switch between these spaces.
So you can see it is really easy for me to go between these. Of course, if I were to actually click on Pages in the dock here it knows that Pages is open in this space so it switches to it.
It is really easy to open something in Full Screen and leave it full screen and use spaces to move between your other work and this full screen app.
So what happens if I open up other windows in full screen mode. One cool thing that you can actually do is you can actually do Finder in full screen mode. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to have a full screen Finder here and if I look at Mission Control I can see now I've got my desktop with all the junk on it but I also have a full screen Finder window and I have a full screen Pages window here and I can move between these very easily. I can click here or I can use Control left and right arrows to move between these three spaces that I now have.
What happens if I open up multiple documents? So I can go to Pages here and I'll say New. I'm going to have a second Pages document open. Now what it is going to do here it is actually going to open this up automatically in another full screen because I came from full screen mode there. So it is going to assume I want the second document also in full screen. Now what would happen if I went in here and I close this in full screen. Well I still have the second  document opened up in full screen. It has only taking that first document and moving it over here.
As a matter of fact I can have multiple Pages windows opened on a desktop here and I can also have multiple Pages documents opened as their own full screen. 
So it's really that full screen doesn't treat apps as a single unit but it treats document and document windows. So I can have multiple Safari windows and multiple Finder windows and have some of them on desktops like this and I can have some of them in Full Screen mode and easily move between them.
It is extra handy with the Finder because now you've got in the Finder tabs. So I can do, I'm just going to do Command T to quickly create a tab there, and you can see that I can have multiple tabs here and still use full screen mode and go between different folders and drag and drop things. Tabs with the Finder in full screen mode works really well kind of as a complete file browser and explorer.

Using Full Screen Mode

Comments: 2 Responses to “Using Full Screen Mode”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information