You probably know that you’re able to cycle the windows of the frontmost diligence by agitate Command- ` ( lower - case tilde ) , and that you’re able to bike them in the opposite charge by adding Shift to the commixture . But what if you want to bike between the open window in all applications ? One solution isWitch , which displays a pop - up menu of open windows when you press Option - Tab . ( Dan Frakes cut across Witch in this Mac Gems writeup last class if you ’d wish to find out more about it . One of Witch ’s advantage is that it can also get at minimized windows . )
Another solution is to habituate Exposé , which sort of provides a solution . push F9 to invoke Exposé , then press Tab and Shift - Tab to bike between running programs ’ window . This result , however , does n’t provide direct access to every window in a given program ; or else , it brings them all up as a social unit . So here ’s another built - in solution that will provide access to every non - minimized windowpane that you have open : use Keyboard Navigation .
If you ’re not familiar with it , Keyboard Navigation is a feature of speech of OS cristal that induce most , but not quite all , of the OS X user interface navigable using just the keyboard . you’re able to see the nonremittal options for Keyboard Navigation on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences board :
If you ’ve never used Keyboard Navigation before , you may observe that the first few choice in this section are grayed out . That ’s because you have to enable full keyboard accession , which you could do by crusade Control - F1 . ( take note that if you ’re using a laptop , you may have to press Fn - Control - F1 , depending on how you have your procedure keys sic up . ) Once enable , you’re able to now use the list shortcuts , including Control - F4 ( and Shift - Control - F4 ) to cycle between open windows in all applications .
As you could see from the other shortcuts , you could activate a phone number of other screen areas via the keyboard , too . Press Control - F2 to activate the menu barroom , and you could then typecast menu commands ’ first letter of the alphabet ( or use the arrow keys ) to activate the specific computer menu item you ’re interested in using . command - F3 will activate the Dock , and you could then use the pointer keys and the Enter key fruit to select and touch off specific items within it . ( you may also crusade H to hide and Q to quit the highlighted app ; these same paint also work in the Command - Tab app whipper . )
Keep in mind that you ’re not stuck with the keyboard shortcuts Apple has assigned — just two-fold - detent on the entry in the Shortcut column for the command whose shortcut you ’d wish to change . On my Mac , for instance , I changed Control - F4 to Command - Control- , so it ’s quite similar to the exist Command- shortcut for cycling windows within an diligence . If you ever want to get back to Apple ’s configurations , just click the Restore Defaults button .
So there you have it — not one , not two , but three distinct way to cycle between all open windows on your machine . I in person opt Witch , though I use the other two methods at times as well .
