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Create a New Desktop Space in Mac OS X with Mission Control

Dec 29, 2015 - 6 Comments
Mission Control Spaces on Mac

Mission Control is the powerful window management feature in Mac OS X that allows for sorting through windows, full screen apps, split-view, and utilizing virtual desktops called Spaces. The latter Spaces feature is what we’ll focus on here, which is the ability to create a new additional blank desktop space to work within, either for … Read More

Move Dashboard To Another Space Location in Mission Control for OS X

Nov 27, 2013 - 1 Comment
Move Dashboard within Spaces in OS X

Dashboard is the largely under loved and unappreciated feature of Mac OS X that gives you quick access to a variety of widgets, providing things like weather info, quick unit conversion, a dictionary, world clocks, and whatever else you have setup in there. The newer versions of OS X have turned Dashboard into a dedicated … Read More

Move Windows Between Desktops in Mac OS X With a Click & Keyboard Shortcut

May 27, 2012 - 8 Comments
Enable fast Desktop Switching keyboard shortcuts

With Desktop switching keyboard shortcuts set, you can instantly move windows between different desktops without going through Mission Control of Mac OS X at all. The only requirement is to configure the control keys for switching desktops on the Mac, and you must have multiple desktops or else you won’t have anything to switch the … Read More

Jump to the Most Recently Used Desktop Space with a Hidden Gesture in OS X

Dec 15, 2011 - 8 Comments
Spaces in OS X Lion

If you use the multi-desktop Spaces feature of Mission Control often, you’ll probably like a hidden gesture in Mac OS X that lets you immediately jump back to the most recently used Space with just a four-fingered tap on the trackpad (or Magic Mouse). Here’s how to enable the gesture with a defaults write command.

Stop Spaces from Rearranging Themselves in Mac OS X

Nov 12, 2011 - 32 Comments
Stop Spaces from Rearranging Themselves in OS X

New versions of Mac OS X have an interesting and sometimes unusual change to Mission Control’s behavior, where desktops/spaces will automatically rearrange themselves based on how recently they’ve been used or accessed. If you’ve set your spaces (virtual desktops) to be in a specific order, this is fairly annoying, but it’s also easy to stop … Read More

Quickly Create a New Desktop for an App from Mission Control in Mac OS X

Nov 8, 2011 - 1 Comment
Create a new Desktop from an App via Mission Control

Using Mission Control on the Mac, you can quickly create a new Desktop Space just by grabbing an app from the Mission Control window, and then dragging the window into the corner, then letting it go on the “+” plus icon. This will instantly generate a new desktop space, or a virtual desktop, with that … Read More

Close Desktop Spaces in Mission Control for Mac OS X Quickly

Oct 27, 2011 - 15 Comments
Close Desktop Spaces in Mission Control

Spaces are the the Virtual Desktop feature in OS X, and it’s part of the Mission Control window management system on the Mac. If you’ve opened a few desktop spaces that you no longer need access to, you can close them. Perhaps the fastest way and most efficient means of closing a desktop space in … Read More

Use Different Desktop Background Pictures for Spaces in Mac OS X

Oct 26, 2011 - 5 Comments
Set Different Wallpapers for Desktop Spaces in OS X Lion

The Mission Control “Spaces” feature in OS X is essentially a virtual desktop environment. A nice way to differentiate each individual desktop Space is to go about assigning different wallpapers to different desktop spaces. Setting unique wallpaper backgrounds per desktop is easy in Mac OS X now, here’s the quickest way to do this:

Switch Between Desktop Spaces Faster in Mac OS X with Control Keys

Sep 6, 2011 - 30 Comments
Switch between Desktops faster in Mac OS X Lion

Switching between active Desktops/Spaces in OS X with the three fingered sideways swipe is very quick, but an even faster method is by using the Control keys. The first option is to use the Control + Arrow keys, which is enabled by default. As you might expect, Control + Left Arrow switches to the desktop … Read More

Change Dashboards Lego Background Wallpaper in Mac OS X Lion

Jul 27, 2011 - 88 Comments
Change Dashboards background wallpaper image in Mac OS X Lion

Mac OS X Lion brought a few changes to the Dashboard, one being that it’s contained within it’s own Space by default, and the other noticeable UI difference is the new Lego lookalike background wallpaper that looks a little, well, Lego-like. That background image is easy to change, so pick an image you’d rather see … Read More

Disable the Spaces Animation in Mac OS X

Mar 9, 2011 - 9 Comments

Anytime you flip between Spaces in Mac OS X there’s a fancy animation, this is nice and all but it makes switching Spaces slower than it needs to be. You can disable the animation which speeds up Spaces transition a bit. Disable Spaces Animation Launch Terminal and type: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES Then … Read More

Change the Delay When Dragging Windows Within Spaces on Mac

Feb 10, 2010 - 8 Comments

Spaces is a really nice feature of Mac OS X that lets you place different windows and applications within their own workspace. Dragging a window to a new Space is just a matter of holding onto the window and pulling it towards the end of the screen. You may have noticed that there’s a delay … Read More

Virtual Desktops in Mac OS X

Feb 1, 2010 - 10 Comments

A colleague of mine is a recent Mac switcher and he was complaining to me that virtual desktops are not included in Mac OS X, the irony is that they are, they just have the name Spaces (coming from a heavy Linux background, I guess the naming convention just threw him off). Virtual Desktops are … Read More

Sweep All Windows Into Another Spaces Screen on Mac

Nov 1, 2009 - 2 Comments

Need to migrate all of a Spaces set of windows to another Spaces screen in Mac OS X? Using a simple keystroke you can do just that. To sweep all of your open apps and windows into a group via Spaces, here’s what you need to do and a quick overview of how this great … Read More

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