How to Manage Multiple Spaces on MacOS
It’s all too easy for your Mac’s desktop to become cluttered with open apps and scattered windows—and there’s a built-in solution that will give you more space to work on, beyond investing in an extra monitor . This feature is called “multiple spaces” (or virtual desktops, in old computer parlance), which is the equivalent of multiple desktops in Windows.
The idea is that you get a series of virtual copies of your main desktop, which you can then use to organize different applications. For example, you might have different desktops for different areas of work, or one desktop for work (Google Docs and Slack) and one for relaxation (Netflix and Instagram).
It’s up to you how you use them – part of the appeal is their flexibility – but you should certainly be aware of multiple spaces and their potential.
Setting up your first space
To start working with multiple spaces, you’ll need to launch Mission Control, the macOS interface for displaying all open app windows. You can press the dedicated Mission Control button (with the three boxes above F3), press Ctrl+Up Arrow , or swipe up with three fingers on the trackpad.
Once you’re in Mission Control, you’ll see all your desktops at the top, although at first there will only be one heading, “Desktop.” Click the + (plus) button in the top right corner to create a new desktop space that will be added to the thumbnails at the top. Click on any desktop thumbnail to go to that location.
You’ll notice that each desktop has the same dock and the same icons, although each desktop may have different programs. For applications that allow multiple instances (such as a web browser or Finder), you can run different instances on different desktops. For example, you can put social networking websites on one desktop and work sites like Slack and Google Docs on another.
Other applications, such as Photoshop, can only be launched once and on one desktop. If you try to launch similar applications a second time, you will be returned to the desktop where they are currently running. You can move apps between spaces by dragging them to the edges of the screen or dragging them into Mission Control.
If you want, you can specify which desktop a specific application should open on by default: open a program, Ctrl+click its icon in the Dock, then choose one of the listed options. You can also specify the specific screen the app will open on if you have multiple displays on your Mac.
Managing multiple spaces
Head to Mission Control when you want to jump between spaces. In addition to navigating with Mission Control, you can also hold down the Ctrl key and press the left or right arrow to move left and right between your spaces. Swiping three fingers left or right on the trackpad performs the same function.
You can’t rename desktops to make them easier to identify, but you can set each to a different background, which helps when cycling between different thumbnails. You can set the background to any desktop in the usual way: right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select Change Wallpaper from the menu.
To close the desktop, right-click its thumbnail in Mission Control, then click the X that appears next to it. Any open applications on the desktop will not be closed, so you won’t lose any work – instead, they will be transferred to the main desktop, where you can find them again.
There are various options for creating multiple spaces, which you can find under Mission Control under Desktop and Dock in System Preferences in the Apple menu. Toggle switches control whether macOS rearranges your spaces based on how you use them, whether to use separate spaces for separate displays (if you have more than one connected), and whether to group windows for the same app in the same space.
We also recently introduced the Spaceman utility , which adds useful additional functionality to multiple spaces in macOS: this means you can see right in the menu bar which desktop space you’re currently in, and even label them with different names. The program is open source and free to use.