Mac Gesture To Switch Between Apps
If you use your Mac for more than browsing the occasional website or checking email, chances are you're working with multiple windows at a time — you might have seven Safari windows open with multiple tabs, a couple instances of your text editor of choice, a Messages window, Photoshop running in the background … I could go on. The point is all those windows start to get in the way, keeping you from completing the work you set out to do when you sat down at your Mac. With a few keyboard shortcuts, some trackpad and mouse gestures, and apps for managing your windows, you can take control of your workspace on macOS.
Keyboard shortcuts
Dec 08, 2015 You can close the system preferences and try it out. Now you have a situation where you can hold down the CMD/Apple key and click tab to switch between programs, and you can also switch between active windows within a program just by clicking.
There are several shortcuts that can help you navigate macOS without ever having to lift your fingers from the keyboard.
- Command (⌘) + H: This hides the windows of the frontmost app.
- Command (⌘) + Option (⌥) + H: This hides the windows of all apps except for the frontmost app.
- Command (⌘) + M: This minimizes the frontmost window.
- Command (⌘) + Option (⌥) + M: This minimizes all the windows of the frontmost app.
- Command (⌘) + N: This opens a new window (or document, depending on the app).
- Command (⌘) + W: This closes the frontmost window.
- Command (⌘) + Option (⌥) + W: This closes all the windows of the frontmost app.
- Command (⌘) + Tab: This switches to the next open and most recently app.
- Shift (⇧) + Command (⌘) + Tilde: This switches to the next most recently used window of the frontmost app.
- Option (⌥) + Command (⌘) + D: This toggles on and off Dock Hiding. If you need a little more room on screen, consider hiding your Dock.
- Control (⌃) + Down Arrow: This shows all the windows of the frontmost application.
- Control (⌃) + F4: This moves the keyboard focus to the active window. Pressing it again moves keyboard focus to the next window.
- Control (⌃) + F5: This moves the keyboard focus to the floating window.
- Command (⌘) + `: This moves keyboard focus to the next window.
Trackpad and mouse gestures
You can use your Mac's trackpad or a Magic Mouse to activate certain shortcuts for windows management.
Trackpad gestures
- Quickly show your desktop by spreading your thumb and three fingers apart on the trackpad.
- Swipe up with three or four fingers to open Mission Control.
- Swipe down with three or four fingers to open App Exposé.
- Swipe left or right with three or four fingers to switch between desktop and app Spaces.
Mouse gestures
- Double tap with two fingers to launch Mission Control.
- Swipe left or right with two fingers to switch between desktop and app Spaces.
Using Mission Control
Mission Control is one of the best ways to manage your windows on macOS. It's built in at the system level and available with the tap of a key, the swipe of your trackpad, or the tap of your mouse. It gives you an overview of all your open windows, full-screen apps, and Spaces — making it quick and convenient to switch between them.
How do you activate Mission Control? Let me count the ways:
- Swipe up with three or four fingers on your trackpad.
- Double-tap on the top of your Magic Mouse with two fingers.
- If you kept it in your Dock, you can click the Mission Control icon.
- Tap the Mission Control key on your keyboard (looks like three rectangles of varying sizes).
- Use the keyboard shortcut Control (⌃) + Up Arrow.
- Click and drag a window to the top of the screen.
Working with Spaces
Mission Control allows you to create Spaces. Spaces are essentially different iterations of your desktop that can all display different apps, windows, and Split Views. If you find your current desktop is getting a little crowded but you don't want to close the apps and windows you've got open, you can create a brand new Space to work with. Some people will even create Spaces for different tasks — you might have your Space for writing, your Space for browsing the web, and your Space for editing photos.
How to add a Space
- Launch Mission Control.
Click the Add Space icon (looks like a plus sign) to add a Space.
How to move a window to a Space
- Launch Mission Control.
Drag a window of your choice to a desktop Space in the Spaces bar.
How to switch between Spaces
- Swipe left or right with three or four fingers on your trackpad.
- Swipe left or right with two fingers on your Magic Mouse.
- Use the keyboard shortcut Control (⌃) + Left Arrow to move to a space to the left.
- Use the keyboard shortcut Control (⌃) + Right Arrow to move to a space to the right.
- Launch Mission Control and click on a Space in the Spaces Bar.
How to organize Spaces*
- Launch Mission Control.
Click and drag a Space left or right in the Spaces bar.
Mac Gesture To Switch Between Apps Free
How to remove Spaces
- Launch Mission Control.
Hold down the Option (⌥) key and click the Close icon (looks like an X) next to the Space you want to close.
Windows within the Space you're closing won't be closed; they'll be moved to another open Space.
Working with Split View
Sometimes you want a more focused workspace. Split View in macOS lets you fill your screen with two apps, placed side by side. Here are some things you'll need to know if you're going to be working in Split View:
- You tell macOS which window you want to work in by clicking anywhere in that window.
- Need to see the menu bar? Just move your cursor to the top of the screen.
- Want the windows swapped? Just click and drag one of the windows to the other side of the screen.
- Want one window smaller than the other? Click and drag the vertical line between the two windows to adjust their width.
How to enter Split View
- Hold down the full-screen button (looks like a green circle with two arrows pointing away from each other) in the upper left corner of an app window.
- Drag the window to the left or right side of the screen.
- Release the button, snapping the window into Split View.
- Click on another window to bring it into Split View.
Mac Gestures On Windows 10
You can also bring an app into Split View using Mission Control. Simply launch Mission Control and drag a window onto the full-screen app Space.
Note: Some apps don't support Split View on macOS. You'll find a zoom button (looks like a green plus sign) in place of the full-screen button.
Exiting Split View
While in Split View, click the full-screen button on one of the windows.
Apps for window management
Sometimes the built-in offerings just aren't powerful enough for your needs. In that case, there are some third-party apps that can help you keep your windows exactly where you want them. Here are four of the most-popular, well-rated offerings from the Mac App Store!
Magnet
Magnet is a lightweight windows management tool that helps you snap your windows into predefined spaces. By dragging a window to the edge of your screen, Magnet will resize the window to half of your screen; drag a window to the corner of your screen and Magnet will resize the window into a quarter of your screen. Along with drag functionality, Magnet supports keyboard shortcuts.
Here are the features Magnet supports:
- Drag and snap functionality: halves, thirds, quarters, two-thirds, and full-screen
- Keyboard shortcut triggers
- Menu bar app
Supports up to six external displays
Magnet - $0.99 - Download now
Moom
Moom is a powerful tool for moving, snapping, and zooming your windows. You can use keyboard shortcuts and hotspots to snap your windows into predefined spaces. Moom also lets you create and save window layouts so you needn't recreate your perfect desktop setup every time you head back to your Mac.
Here are the features Moom supports:
- Presets: The Moom button features five preset window locations. Hover over the green window button and quickly move and resize your window to one of the presets.
- Grids: You can use a grid to draw your desired size and location for a window.
- Custom controls: You can create and define custom controls that will resize, move, and snap windows across multiple displays and reorganize your window setup.
- Window layouts: You can create and save window layouts to easily recreate your ideal window setup.
Keyboard controls: Skip the clicking and dragging; use the keyboard controls to trigger your Moom tools.
Moom - $9.99 - Download now
Divvy
Divvy is a windows management tool that approaches things a little differently. Instead of focusing on edge-snapping and predefined sizes, Divvy uses a grid system that lets you quickly 'divvy up' your screen real estate for the apps and windows you've got open.
You click on a window and then click and drag in the Divvy interface (a grid that represents your screen) to tell the app where to place your window. It's a quick, time-saving tool that focuses on quickly and easily organizing your windows across the available area of your screen.
Here are the features Divvy supports:
- The quick Divvy grid system for organizing apps and windows
- The grid's size is customizable — you can get super granular controls by going all the way up to a 20 x 20 grid size.
- Supports multiple monitors
Supports keyboard shortcuts
Divvy - $13.99 - Download now
BetterSnapTool
BetterSnapTool is all about that edge-snapping. Drag your windows to one of the four corners or the top, left, and right sides of the screen to quickly resize and position your windows accordingly. BetterSnapTool lets you take edge-snapping a little further — it features custom snap areas that you can create anywhere on your display in order to create your own sizing presets.
Here are the features BetterSnapTool supports:
- Custom triggers for right clicking on the macOS window buttons
- Modifier key support for custom actions
- Trigger window resizing when you double click the titlebar
- Application-specific snapping sizes
Support for multiple monitors
BetterSnapTool - $3.99 - Download now
How do you manage your windows on macOS?
Do you use any specific apps, tools, or keyboard shortcuts to manage your windows on macOS? Learn anything new from this piece? Gimme a shout in the comments with your thoughts, ideas, and questions!
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Your Mac trackpad isn’t just a replacement for the standard mouse. It’s actually much more than that. here’s even a separate panel for you to configure the trackpad on your machine. You can use the trackpad to switch between apps, get more information about a file, open Launchpad to access your apps, among other things.
It’s a good idea to learn these Mac trackpad gestures so you can get the most out of your device with much less effort. Most of these gestures are customizable, so if you don’t like the way they work by default, you can change them.
How To Customize Mac Trackpad Gestures
Customizing the Mac trackpad gestures is fairly easy. There are alternate options provided in there that you can change the current gestures to.
- Click on the Apple logo at the top-left corner of your screen and choose System Preferences.
- Click on Trackpad on the screen that follows to view your trackpad settings.
- You now have three tabs at the top letting you access various trackpad gestures.
- To change a gesture, click on the down arrow icon beneath the gesture and select an option.
What Are The Different Mac Trackpad Gestures?
There are a number of gestures that you can use from the trackpad on your Mac. They’re divided into three categories as shown below.
Point & Click
This category contains the most used and standard gestures such as single-click and right-click actions.
Look up & data detectors
This lets you quickly find the standard details about a file. You can select a file in the Finder and tap with three fingers to view information about it. It’s one of the gestures that can’t be customized and using three-fingers is the only way to perform it.
Secondary click
Those of you coming from Windows PCs would like to call it right-click and that’s exactly what it is. It lets you right-click on an item to bring up the context menu. You can perform right-click by tapping on a file with two fingers.
Tap to click
Tap to click refers to single-click which you do when you want to select a file or a folder. You need to tap on an item just once and it gets selected. Again, this is one of the gestures you can’t customize, but you won’t actually need to do it as it’s already very easy.
Scroll & Zoom Gestures
If you’ve been using arrow keys and magnifying icons to scroll and zoom on your items, you no longer need to do it with these gestures.
Scroll direction: Natural
For as long as you keep this gesture enabled, you’ll have natural scrolling on your Mac. You can’t customize it but you can disable it which changes how you scroll on pages. When it’s disabled, your scroll gets reversed.
Zoom in or out
You’re used to this gesture as it’s used on most smartphones and tablets. You can pinch in with two fingers and it zooms in on the selected object. Similarly, you can pinch out and it zooms your screen out. You can’t customize it but you can enable and disable it if you wish.
Smart zoom
Smart zoom lets you zoom in and out but without requiring you to pinch in. To zoom in on an object, bring your cursor over it and double-tap on the trackpad with two fingers. To zoom out, tap two fingers on your trackpad and it’ll go back to normal.
Rotate
This gesture may not work in all apps but it works perfectly fine in the built-in Preview app. You can open an image or a PDF in Preview and rotate them with two fingers as if you’re rotating a real object. You’ll find your image or PDF rotates in the direction of your fingers.
Other Gestures
These are some of the gestures to help you quickly navigate between various macOS features.
Swipe Between Pages
This is an extremely useful gesture as it lets you quickly go back and forth pages in your browser. You can swipe left using two fingers to go back a page and swipe right with two fingers to go forward a page. You can customize it to use three fingers as well.
Swipe Between Full-Screen Apps
This one’s the most productive gesture you can have on your Mac. By swiping to the left or right with three fingers, you can switch between the full-screen apps open on your Mac. You can use it to quickly go from your browser to your desktop, and so on. You can customize it as well.
Notification Center
The Mac notification center contains important notifications and weather information. The gesture here lets you quickly reveal it by swiping to the left from the right edge of the trackpad with two fingers. Swiping to the right with two fingers will close the Mac notification center.
Mission Control
This gesture lets you open Mission Control by swiping up with three fingers on your trackpad. You can then quickly go from one app to another. It’s a customizable gesture and you can change it to use four fingers if you want.
App Expose
Some apps like Finder can have multiple windows open at the same time. To view them all on a single screen, you can scroll down with three fingers to trigger App Expose. It lets you view all the open windows of an app side by side on your screen. You can customize it to use four fingers.
Launchpad
Launchpad is one of the most used tools on a Mac and this gesture makes it extremely easy to launch it. Just pinch in using your thumb and three fingers and Launchpad will be invoked. The gesture can’t be customized so there’s no other way but to get used to it.
Show Desktop
Sometimes you want to quickly get to your desktop and this gesture helps you do it. Simply use your thumb and three fingers and spread them apart to view your desktop. It’s going to take a bit of learning but you’ll eventually get used to it. You can’t customize this gesture.
Do you use gestures to access some of the macOS features? What’s your favorite one? Let us know in the comments below.