Hot corners on a Mac: putting a gesture in each corner of the screen

The pointer already visits the corners of the screen dozens of times a day, usually on the way to somewhere else. Hot corners turn that traffic into commands: park the pointer in a corner and something happens, with no click and no keyboard. Apple's own examples are starting the screen saver from the top left and locking the screen from the top right.

The feature is nearly twenty years old, which is why advice about it is so inconsistent. The settings moved, the list of available actions changed, and one of the four corners now arrives with something already assigned to it. The parts worth knowing are where it lives today, how to stop it firing by accident, and which of the corners is safe to use for something irreversible.

Where the setting is now, and where it used to be

On current macOS releases, hot corners live inside the Desktop and Dock settings rather than in a pane of their own. Open System Settings, click Desktop and Dock in the sidebar, scrolling down if it is not visible, then click Hot Corners. A pop-up menu appears for each corner. Choose an action for the corners that should do something, leave the others empty, and click Done.

Anyone following older instructions will be looking in the wrong place. On macOS Monterey and earlier, the same button was reached through System Preferences, either from Desktop and Screen Saver by way of the Screen Saver tab, or from the Mission Control pane. The list of actions offered was slightly different, and the sheet was dismissed with OK rather than Done. The feature did not change much; the map around it did.

One detail in the current settings is easy to miss and explains a surprise for many people. By default, the bottom-right corner is already assigned to Quick Note. Apple documents that as a tip rather than a warning, but it accounts for the note window that appears when a pointer is parked at the bottom right while reading something. Setting that corner to nothing, from the same pop-up menu, is the fix.

The modifier key that makes hot corners survivable

The single most useful thing in Apple's documentation for this feature is one sentence, and it is easy to read past. While the pop-up menus are open, holding Command, Shift, Option or Control, or a combination of them, changes what gets assigned: the action is then bound to that modifier plus the corner rather than to the corner alone.

That converts the feature from something that fires whenever the pointer wanders into something that fires only on request. A corner assigned to lock the screen is a liability without a modifier and perfectly safe with one. The same is true of anything that interrupts what is on screen.

The mechanics are worth spelling out because the interface gives no hint. Open Hot Corners, hold the modifier before clicking the pop-up menu for the corner, and keep holding it while choosing the action. The menu shows the modifier symbols alongside the chosen action once it is set. Afterwards, moving the pointer into that corner does nothing until the modifier is held down.

Apple uses the same trick in the shortcuts section just above Hot Corners, where holding Control, Option, Shift or Command while viewing those pop-up menus reveals additional keyboard shortcuts for Mission Control. It is the same convention in both places, and it is not discoverable by clicking around.

Choosing which corner does what

Not all four corners carry the same risk, because the pointer does not visit them equally.

The top-left corner is the busiest on a Mac: it holds the Apple menu, the app menu and the window controls of every window. Anything assigned there will be triggered accidentally, so it suits either nothing at all or an action that is harmless and instantly reversible.

The top-right corner holds Control Center and the menu bar extras, so it gets regular traffic too, though less of it. Apple's own example puts locking the screen there, which works well for someone who leaves the desk often, and works badly without a modifier for someone who reaches for the clock or the Wi-Fi menu all day.

The bottom-left corner is the quietest on most layouts, because there is nothing there to click unless the Dock is on the left. That makes it the best home for the one action worth triggering without a modifier.

The bottom-right corner arrives with Quick Note attached and sits next to the Trash when the Dock is at the bottom. It is also where many apps place their resize handle, which is another source of accidental visits.

Corner	Typical pointer traffic	Suits	Needs a modifier
Top left	Constant, from menus and window buttons	Nothing, or an action that is instantly undone	Always
Top right	Frequent, from the clock and Control Center	Locking the screen, putting the display to sleep	Always
Bottom left	Low, unless the Dock is there	Mission Control, Notification Center	Optional
Bottom right	Moderate, and already used by Quick Note	A second view action, or nothing	Recommended

The actions themselves, and the names that changed

The pop-up menus offer a short list, and Apple's examples across versions show how the names have moved. The current page names Notification Center, Apps and Lock Screen as examples. The Monterey page, for the same feature, named Notification Center, Launchpad and Lock Screen. That difference is the Launchpad rename rather than a new capability, and it explains why older screenshots do not match what is on screen.

The rest of the list covers the same ground it always has: opening Mission Control to show every window and space, showing the desktop, starting the screen saver, preventing the screen saver from starting, and putting the display to sleep. The two screen saver entries are opposites and both have their uses, since the one that prevents the screen saver is what stops a screen going dark during a long read or a presentation.

Two of these deserve a note about consequences. Locking the screen and putting the display to sleep are the two actions that cost something when they fire by mistake, because getting back means typing a password or touching the sensor. Apple documents Control-Command-Q as the keyboard shortcut that locks the screen, and for anyone who already has that in muscle memory, a hot corner for the same thing is a second route to a risk with no new benefit.

Where hot corners collide with window tiling

This is the conflict that current advice tends to miss, and it is specific to recent macOS releases.

Windows can now be tiled by dragging them to the edges of the screen, and Apple's documentation for tiling says a window can be dragged to the left edge, the right edge, any corner, or the menu bar, where dragging to a corner tiles the window into that quarter of the screen. Corners are therefore doing two jobs: a bare pointer in the corner triggers a hot corner, and a pointer dragging a window into the same corner triggers tiling.

In practice the two do not often fight, because one involves a held mouse button and the other does not. The case that does go wrong is a drag that ends in a corner and releases there, immediately followed by the pointer sitting still in the same place. Assigning a modifier to the corner removes the ambiguity entirely.

The adjacent behaviour is worth knowing for the same reason. Apple notes that dragging a window all the way through the top edge of the screen opens Mission Control, and that this can be switched off with the option about dragging windows to the top of the screen in the same Desktop and Dock settings. Anyone who has assigned a top corner to Mission Control and then finds it opening during window drags is looking at that setting rather than at hot corners.

The shortcuts section next door

Directly above the Hot Corners button in the same settings group sits a shortcuts section, and it is the part of this pane most worth a look while the settings window is already open. Apple describes it as the place to view or change the keyboard shortcuts for showing and hiding Mission Control, for the open windows of the current app, and for the desktop. Depending on the mouse or trackpad attached, two columns of pop-up menus appear there, one for keys and one for mouse buttons.

The same modifier trick applies. Holding Control, Option, Shift or Command while those menus are open reveals additional shortcuts that are otherwise hidden, which is how variations such as a shortcut that shows the desktop rather than Mission Control get assigned.

Setting these two features up together is what makes either of them stick. A corner and a key for the same action give two routes to it, one for the hand on the trackpad and one for the hand on the keyboard, and whichever one gets used less can be freed up later.

When a keyboard shortcut is the better tool

Hot corners compete with shortcuts that already exist, and for several of the available actions the keyboard is simply better.

Apple documents Control and the Up Arrow as the way into Mission Control, Command with the Mission Control key, Fn-H or Fn-F11 to show the desktop, and Control-Command-Q to lock the screen. A pointer journey to a corner is slower than any of these when the hand is already on the keyboard.

The case for a corner is the opposite situation: the hand is on the trackpad, both hands are otherwise busy, or the action is one that follows naturally from reading rather than from typing. Notification Center and Mission Control fit that pattern. Locking the screen usually does not, because leaving the desk is a deliberate act with a hand already free.

There is one more scenario where corners earn their place, and it is the one that applies to a machine full of web services rather than native apps. When a dozen windows all belong to the same browser, the window switcher stops being useful, and Mission Control in a corner becomes the fastest way to see what is actually open. The alternative is to stop letting a dozen services share one app: giving each service its own window and icon makes the switcher legible again, and grouping those windows into workspaces does the job Mission Control was being used for, without the pointer trip.

What to change first

Open Hot Corners in Desktop and Dock settings and look at the bottom right, which is likely still set to Quick Note. Assign one action to the quietest corner, hold a modifier while choosing anything that locks the screen or sleeps the display, and leave the top-left corner empty. If the reason Mission Control keeps getting used is that too many services live in one browser window, the more durable fix is a browser that keeps each of them separate, which is what SpaceDeck is for.