Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Tip 270
Supertip: Be a Mission Control Power User
Mission Control is the Mac feature that, among other things, shows small
on page 127
)
. Although seemingly simple, there's a handful of useful tricks
that can make it the center of your Mac universe, as follows.
Using Quick Look Windows
Quick Look also works in Mission Control. In this case, Quick Look expands
windows so it's possible to fully see their contents. Simply hover the mouse
cursor over the window preview you're interested in, and hit
SPACE
. Hitting
SPACE
again will cause the Quick Look preview to shrink.
Moving All Windows at Once
Windows can be moved from one desktop space to another space by dragging
them onto the desktop thumbnails showing each space that is along the top
of the screen. You can move all the windows of a particular app to a new
space by clicking and dragging the program's icon to the alternative space.
The icon appears beneath the window previews.
Navigating Easily Using the Keyboard
I prefer to activate Mission Control by holding
CONTROL
and tapping the Up
cursor key. Keeping
CONTROL
pressed, I can then use the Left/Right cursor keys
to switch between desktop spaces within Mission Control (for what it's worth,
holding
CONTROL
and tapping left and right when Mission Control isn't active
will also switch desktop spaces).
Switching Desktop Spaces
After you've switched to Mission Control, holding
OPTION
when clicking a differ-
ent desktop space thumbnail with the mouse will switch to that space so you
can see its apps, but the space won't be activated.
Turn Off App Grouping
By default windows of each app are grouped together within Mission Control.
You can turn this off so that all windows for any app are semi-randomly
arranged as previews within Mission Control, regardless of which app they
