Let Exposé Rock Your World

Do you sometimes get frustrated by all the windows you’ve left open on your Mac and just want a quick way to jump from one to another?  What about when you’ve littered your whole screen with open windows and want to quickly find something on your Desktop?

Well, Apple’s Exposé feature was created just for cutting through the clutter to find the window you want or switch applications effortlessly. Essentially, it lets you quickly view small versions of all your windows open in a current application or in all applications, or just instantly hide all of your open windows to get a clear view of your desktop with just a keystroke or mouse gesture. And it’s free and part of your Mac OS right now.

It’s a bit hard to explain, so the best way to understand it is to see this video on Apple’s website.

Features
Hide all open windows to show the desktop: Press the F11 key to hide all of your open windows and get a clear view of your desktop. After taking care of whatever desktop business you have, press the F11 key again to have all of your windows return to their original locations.

 
Show all windows open in an application: Press the F10 key to show all of the windows you have open in the current application. The “current” application is the one that’s located in the foreground, and its name will be listed on the left side of the menu bar.

 
You can make a new window active by simply clicking on it. To toggle through other open application’s windows, just press the tab key and they will be brought “forward.” Again, you can click on any window you see in the foreground to make it active, or just press the F10 key again to exit Exposé.

 
Show all windows in all open applications: Press the F9 key to show all of the windows open in all open applications. As you mouse over each window, a note about its content will appear inside it. Click on a window to bring it to the foreground.

 
What’s the Point?
Now that we know these great tricks, what can we do with them? Well, other than impress your PC-owning friends, there are some very helpful uses for Exposé.

Let’s say you are trying to drag a file from one application to another or from the desktop to a particular application. Exposé allows you to quickly move between applications or to the desktop.

Click on a file that you would like to move. Begin dragging the file, then press the appropriate key (F9, F10, etc.) for the Exposé function that you need. Drag and drop the file into the appropriate window.

Customizing Exposé
Like most Mac features, you are able to customize certain aspects of Exposé in the System Preferences.

Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu in your Menu Bar. Select “Dashboard & Exposé” from the “Personal” section of the System Preferences.

Here you will be able to change which keys (or combinations of keys) will activate which Exposé functions. You can also set “Active Screen Corners,” or areas of the screen which trigger Exposé, Dashboard, or screen saver functions. Unless you really get used to it, the Active Screen Corners can be quite annoying if you unsuspectingly move your mouse into one of them.

 
This is also where you can disable any or all of the Exposé functions. To disable a function, just change the setting for that corner or keyboard shortcut to “-”.

Special Situations
If you have a laptop (PowerBook, MacBook, etc.), there are sometimes other default uses for the function keys (such as F9 and F10). To trigger Exposé with these keys, you may need to press the “fn” key (located in the lower-left corner of your keyboard) in combination with one of the function keys.

If you have a multiple button mouse, such as Apple’s Mighty Mouse, you can set a button on the mouse to activate an Exposé feature.

Tips and Tricks
Here’s a little known trick you can use to impress your friends:  Hold down the Shift key while pressing one of the Exposé keys (F9, F10, F11, etc.) to see the effect in slow motion.

If you have applications open, but have elected to hide the application (by choosing “Hide …” from that application’s menu, then its windows will not appear when using the Show All Windows command (F9).

Scott Rouse is a freelance photographer and digital professional located in Missoula, Montana. His photography, which focuses on wildlife and adventure sports, can be viewed at scottrousephotography.com. Information on his digital work can be found at scottrousedigital.com and includes consulting and web design. His first computer was an Apple IIe that his family bought in the early 80s.

Are you ready to let Exposé rock your world? I hope you tried it while reading this article. Pretty cool, huh? Share your opinions and questions in the Comments section below!

DIG DEEPER

Expose Overview on Apple.com 

Video Demonstration of Exposé on Apple.com 

Exposé (Mac OS X) on Wikipedia -

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