Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you a whole bunch of tips for using
multiple Desktops, Spaces, and Mission Control on your Mac.
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So one of the most useful features in macOS is the ability to have multiple Spaces
or Desktops or Full Screen Apps on your Mac. It makes it feel like you have multiple screens when
you only have one. Let's activate Mission Control using Control and Up Arrow, the keyboard shortcut.
Here you could see I've got two Desktops and three Full Screen Apps. These are all called Spaces.
So I have five Spaces. A space can contain a Desktop with multiple windows in it or a Full
Screen App. A space can also contain two apps. That's called Split View. Now the basics of using
Mission Control are to use that keyboard shortcut to see these spaces here at the top. You can use
the Plus button here on the right to create new Desktops. Then you could drag and drop windows
from one Desktop to the other. If you want to turn a regular window into a Full Screen App you can
click the Green button here and then it's a Full Screen App. Now you can see I've got four Full
Screen Apps. You can get rid of the Full Screen App like that and it jumps back to its Desktop.
But there are ton of other ways to do this. There are so many gestures, keyboard shortcuts,
and combinations that you can use. So here are some tips and tricks. First, to activate Mission
Control you can use that Control Up Arrow keyboard shortcut. But you can also get to it a variety of
other ways. If you go into System Preferences and then look under Trackpad if you're using a
trackpad or a Mouse if you're using a mouse there are some gestures here. For Trackpad,
under More Gestures, you can see here that I could go into Mission Control with Swipe Up with Four
Fingers. You can also make that three fingers. So four fingers swipes up on the trackpad and
it takes me into Mission Control. Now if you go into the Mission Control settings this is where
you can change the keyboard shortcut if you like. But you can also go to Hot Corners and set a hot
corner for Mission Control. So, for instance, I can make the upper left hand corner go to Mission
Control. Now I can just move my pointer up there to go to Mission Control. In addition to that you
can also add a Modifier Key. So instead of just Mission Control I can hold Command down and you
could see its Command Mission Control. So now going to the top left corner won't do anything.
But if I hold the Command Key down and go to the top left corner it will go to Mission Control.
Now over here there are a couple of other settings I want to point out.
One is Group Windows By Application. So let's say I have multiple windows open for an app.
For instance here I've got a Finder window. Let me open up two more Finder windows here.
Now if I have Group Windows By Application turned off and I go into Mission Control see how those
three Finder windows are separate from each other. But if I turn it On and I go into Mission
Control see how it groups them altogether. I can still select which one I want to jump to
and it will bring that one to the front. But they take up less space in Mission Control.
Also if you have multiple screens attached to your Mac then you can choose whether to have
displays have separate spaces. So if I had my pointer here in this display I could activate
Mission Control and it would just be for this screen. The other screen will remain as it was.
If I turn this off then going into Mission Control takes both screens into Mission Control and they
are kind of linked together. Try each one of those settings to fully understand how it works.
Also, I like to have Automatically Rearrange Spaces Based on Most Recent Use turned
Off. If turned On then the order that these are in will change all the time.
I like to have a mental map in my head where things are. When you're using Mission Control
you can do a lot with Drag and Drop. For instance, if you want to arrange these spaces you can move
them around like that, just drag and drop anyone of them to change the order. But
you could also Drag and Drop the windows below. So here I am in Desktop 1 and it has Reminders
and Notes. I can drag Reminders to Desktop 2 and move it there. I can switch to this
next Desktop. Now if I click here it's going to go to it. But if I use the keyboard shortcut,
Control Left and Control Right Arrow, it will do it but keeping Mission Control at the top. So I
could go here and drag this to this space instead. Now you can also use these for Full Screen Apps.
So if I want to make Reminders a full screen app instead of dragging it to Desktop 2 I can drag
it over here and create a full screen version of it anywhere I want. So instead of having to click
the Green button here to enter Full Screen or do View, Enter Full Screen, I could simply remember
the way to get into Mission Control and then drag this up and create a full screen window that way.
You can also use the same thing for creating Split View. So I can drag it here and you could
see how it will put Reminders either to the left or right side of Safari, or the right or
left side of Photos.The same thing for Mail. I can easily create Split View that way. In fact I could
create Reminders and Notes Split View by dragging this one here creating a new space. Dragging the
next one there and now this is Split View. You can also combine Full Screen Apps into Split View
by dragging and then placing it here. So you see I can combine Safari and Mail
like that. It's not working here on Photos because there's simply not enough space
to share a Split View with Safari and Photos. Remember Split View depends on the app. The app
has to support it and there has to be enough space to have that window in a Split View.
Now you can actually Drag without going into Mission Control. This only works if you have
one screen. It doesn't seem to work if you've got multiple screens. If I take Reminders here,
and remember I've got this second Desktop right to right of Desktop 1, if I take this window and drag
it over to the edge and wait it will shift over to the other Desktop and I could drop it there. I can
take it back to that first Desktop by dragging to the left and waiting. You could also drag Up
to the top. Move your mouse all the way to the top and then try to push beyond it. Then it goes into
Mission Control and I could add it to this Desktop here. You have to go to the top and then kind of
push a second time to get that to work. Now this also works for Files. Let me go over to
the Mail App right here and let's say I'm composing a message and I want to attach
a file to this. I could go back to the Desktop here that has a file on it. If I grab the file
and drag over to the right it's going to go to the next space and then the next space and the
next space until I'm here. Then I could drop it into this document, in this case an email message.
Now you could also use the keyboard shortcuts, or gestures, to do this. So if I click and drag
this file here and I'm holding down the trackpad with just my thumb and I take
four fingers and swipe with the trackpad still while holding my thumb down the entire time
then I could go over and drop it there. Or I could use the keyboard shortcut. So while I'm dragging
this I could do Control Right Arrow a bunch of times until I get to where I want and drop it.
Now let's say I want to look at two Safari pages side-by-side in Split View
but I'm here at a Full Screen Safari. I can actually make this Split View by creating two
tabs. I have one tab here. Let's create a second tab, just Command T, and I'll go to another page.
Let's say I want to see both of those at the same time. You could drag a tab in Safari, like this,
drag it to the top and push past the top a second time.
Now I could put that as a Full Screen space here, drag it onto a Desktop or I can
use the original window here and make it go Split View. So now back in here I created a Split View
that used to be two separate tabs. Now it's two separate browser windows in Split View. When
I want to close one of these I could just simply click the Red button just like you would normally,
close that window, and the other half of the screen becomes the full screen window.
Mail also has some special features when it comes to Full Screen Apps. There are two modes.
One mode is when you go to view a message say by double clicking it it opens up this special
window on top and everything kind of gets in behind it. The same thing happens when
you go to compose a new message. Now whenever you're doing this, say composing a new message,
if you click outside of it the message appears down at the bottom here and you can get it back
by clicking there. As a matter of fact if you compose multiple new messages
then you'll see two tabs here and you can see the two tabs here at the bottom.
But there's another way to do it. If you go to Mail Preferences
and then you go to General look for Prefer Opening Messages in Split View When in Full Screen.
Turn that on. Now when you compose a new message it becomes Split View with one half
of the screen being your regular Mail window and the other being the message composition window.
Now in Full Screen Mode you get the Menu Bar here at the top. But it's gone normally. When you bring
your pointer to the top that's when it will appear. But if you go into System Preferences,
this is new in macOS Monterey, go to Dock & Menu Bar, then Dock & Menu Bar here you can turn Off
Automatically Hide & Show the Menu Bar in Full Screen mode. But you do have to quit the app
and then launch it again for it to take effect. But you see now I get the Menu
Bar all the time. Very handy especially when you like to check the date and time
and other things like say Wi-Fi status and such in the Menu Bar. It's difficult when you can't
see them and you have to stop what you're doing and move the pointer up to the top.
So when you want to go into Split View one way to do it is to hover over the Green button here
in the window, Tile window to the left side of the screen, and then you'll be given other
windows that could be on the other side of the screen. In this case let's pick Notes. Now we're
in Split View. Now previous to Monterey if you wanted to change one of the halves of the Split
View you have to basically exit Split View. But now you can do it without actually going anywhere.
If I move my cursor over the Green button here now I can select Replace Tiled Window. Click that and
now it's going to show me another option. So, in this case, the only other option is Finder. I can
click there. You could see how quickly I swapped out Notes for the Finder. I can do the same
thing over here, for instance. I could replace this half here with Notes. So you could keep
switching halves in the Split View rather than having to exit Split View and recreate it.
Now there's also a special command to go to the Dock and you Control Click on any app. So,
for instance, let's pick the Reminders App. I can Control click that and then I could go to Options
and there's Assign to All Desktops, This Desktop, or None. None is the normal state.
But if you want to assign it specifically to this Desktop you can. Now if you go into Reminders,
Quit Reminders, and say you're at another Desktop when you launch Reminders it will launch it in
the Desktop its assigned to not the one that you're currently at and it will jump to it.
Now you also have the ability to select All Desktops.
This will show the window on all of the Desktop faces. So I'll do that for Calculator here.
That's a handy app to do it for. If I launch Calculator here on Desktop 1 and say I'm doing
a calculation I can go to Desktop 2 and notice the Calculator is still there. So it's in both places.
The same window but on all of the Desktops. Desktop 1 and Desktop 2 in this case.
Here's one last tip I want to show you. You can have different Desktop backgrounds
for different Desktops. So right now I've got these two Desktops here and if they have a lot of
windows on it sometimes it can be confusing as to which one you're on. But you can go to a Desktop,
let's go to the second one here, and if I go to System Preferences and then Desktop & Screensaver,
Desktop, and change the Desktop and switch to this one, see how it changes there.
But if I go back to this Desktop notice how it still the same as it was before.
I have two different Desktop backgrounds. If I look in Missions Control I'll even see that here.
That makes it a little bit easier to tell where you're at if you have a lot of Desktops.
Now here's an Untip. Something you can't do. It gets asked all the time so I thought
I'd address it. You can't name a Desktop. Obviously full screen apps and Split View
apps get named after the app. But, Desktop 1 and Desktop 2, those are just numbers.
You've never been able to name a Desktop. The idea is they are just numbered. They are numbered in
the order they appear. So as I switch them you can see how they change their number.
So there are whole bunch of different tips for using Spaces, or Mission Control on your
Mac. I hope that maybe this gets you to try out Spaces if you haven't been using them. If you
have been using them I hope I showed you some new tricks that you could use. Thanks for watching.