Hot Corners For Mac
If you’re new to Mac OS X and are more familiar with Microsoft Windows, you might be wondering, “How do I minimize all my open windows so I can see the desktop?” In Windows, all you have to do is press the Windows key + M. With Mac OS X, the analogous keyboard combo is Command + M, but that minimizes the current application’s window only. You could press that keyboard combo repeatedly, but that’s a pain and it still may not work anyway, since not all applications obey the command. A built-in feature of OS X called Hot Corners resolves this issue.
As you’ll see, it also does some other cool things. With Hot Corners, you briefly place your cursor in a corner of the screen to invoke a certain key action, such as showing the desktop. Hot Corners only takes a minute to set up. You can define actions for all four corners of your screen to perform tasks such as displaying your Screen Saver, Launchpad or Mission Control. This way you can quickly open applications that aren’t on the dock or view all open apps for quick navigation.
Here’s how to set up Hot Corners. Open System Preferences from the dock, as pictured below, or go to the Apple drop-down menu (the Apple icon in the upper left-hand corner) and select System Preferences.
Select either Desktop & Screen Saver or Mission Control. In Desktop & Screen Saver, go to the Screen Saver tab and click the Hot Corners button at the bottom right.
Or, in Mission Control, click the Hot Corners button at the bottom left. Now you can select an action for each corner of your screen. You can also choose the same action for more than one corner, if you want. Here are the Hot Corner options:. Start Screen Save. Disable Screen Saver.
Mission Control. Application Windows (Displays all the open windows for the app currently in use). Desktop (Minimizes all windows and displays the desktop). Dashboard (Displays dashboard widgets). Notification Center.
Hot Corners For Mac Free
Launchpad. Put Display to Sleep 5.
To minimize all open windows and reveal the desktop, select Desktop. Duplicate contacts killing productivity? See how Scrubly can help in a. If you want no action to be associated with a Hot Corner, just leave the selection set to the default (“no action”) option.
Mac Hot Corners Stops Working
Now you can see your desktop again with just a quick flick of the cursor. We all have our own habits with the mouse or trackpad, so it might take some practice to get used to this and figure out which actions associated with which corners work best for you.
If one corner seems to be a poor choice, choose another where you might not accidentally leave your cursor as often.
Use modifier keys to keep Hot Corners from activating unexpectedly. To work around this little annoyance, add modifier keys to your Hot Corner actions. You can use use the Command, Option, Control, or Shift keys alone or in any combination. Just hold down the modifier keys you want as you select an action from the Hot Corner pop-up menus.I chose Command-Shift, which means that my Hot Corners are active only when I hold down those modifier keys and move my mouse pointer to the appropriate corner. If I donit hold down the modifier keys, nothing happens when my mouse is in a hot corner, which means my Screen Saver kicks in only when I really want it to.