How to: Cycle all open windows in Exposé

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How to: Cycle all open windows in Exposé

9 December 2010 3,097 views 11 Comments

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With Mac OS X Snow Leopard, there’s almost always two, three or more ways to skin this cat. For example, if you want to cycle through open applications (switch apps), you can use the platform agnostic Command + Tab (⌘ + Tab) method, but that won’t show you open windows and let you select a specific one — Exposé to the rescue!

Apple’s Exposé Basics video shows you how to use this app switching and window management feature of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. However, because it’s short and sweet, the video is also incomplete as it doesn’t cover a couple of nifty ways to cycle through open applications one-at-a-time using the keyboard while seeing their associated windows.

On a standard Apple Aluminum (desktop) or portable keyboard, just tap the “F3″ (Exposé) key to show all of the open apps and windows. [u] Now, tap the tilda or tab keys to move t.

Each tap allows cycles through each of the open apps, including the Finder, one-at-a-time while showing all of the open windows associated with each app.

To open an app or a specific app window, just click on it with the mouse.

Here kitty, kitty

Alternately, when in Exposé, you can preview a specific window full-size by holding the mouse cursor over that window and pressing the Spacebar. You can then cycle through full-size previews of the open windows by pressing the arrow keys.

That said, you can select the window you want to open either by clicking it with the mouse or hitting the Return key.

Gotta nifty Mac OS X Snow Leopard tip or trick? Share it in the comments below…

More keyboard shortcuts:
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• OS X keyboard shortcuts! Get yer shortcuts here!
• Mac OS X ‘KeyCaps’ keyboard shortcut
• LiteSwitch: The best Mac app switcher
• How to: Create a keyboard shortcut

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11 Comments »

Fizz said:

Holding command and tapping ~ is tedious, you can just hit tab after summoning Exposé with F3. It cycles through in the opposite order as command+tilde, but you can shift+tab if you want to go in that direction.

# 9 December 2010 at 5:44 pm

Scott said:

Just to let you know, you don’t need to hold the command key. You just tap the tilde key in Expose and it cycles

Thanks for the tip though!

# 9 December 2010 at 5:47 pm

Fizz said:

You can also select a window by tapping the first letter of the title displayed in Exposé. Spacebar to Quicklook, enter to summon the window to the foreground.

Also: ctrl+F3 gets you Exposé for the current app’s windows (tab switches between apps, as above—this just starts you off with current foreground app) and command-F3 shows the desktop.

# 9 December 2010 at 5:48 pm

ben said:

There is a simpler way press tab to cycle left to right and tilda by itself to cycle right to left

# 9 December 2010 at 5:48 pm

Fizz said:

Scott-aha! So tab and backquote move through your apps in opposite directions, no need to ever use the shift or command keys as modifiers.

# 9 December 2010 at 5:57 pm

Fizz said:

Er, ben. Thanks to you both.

# 9 December 2010 at 5:58 pm

Tom said:

Know this isn’t the best forum for this question, but…

Is there an easy way to pull up my desktop when I have numerous applications open? Many times I will put a file on my desktop temporarily, then want to use it in another ap (email it, open and put in a word or excel doc, etc…) But with several applications open, I have to move all these out of the way to get to my desktop…

Thanks

# 10 December 2010 at 11:37 am