Multitasking on a Mac with the tools that ship with macOS

Most advice about Mac multitasking is a list of features with a keystroke next to each one. That is not much use, because the features answer different questions and the list never says which question is which. Someone whose real problem is that a chat window keeps stealing attention gets told about Split View. Someone who needs two documents visible at once gets told about Mission Control. Both leave with the wrong tool.

macOS ships four distinct capabilities here, and the useful version of this topic is to name the problem each one solves. Keeping separate jobs apart. Reaching a specific thing quickly. Seeing two things at the same time. Getting everything else out of the way. Nearly every complaint about juggling work on a Mac is one of those four wearing a disguise.

Keeping separate jobs apart: spaces

A space is a second desktop. Windows in one space are invisible from another, which is the point: a space is how a Mac holds two jobs at once without either of them cluttering the other.

Spaces are created in Mission Control. Press Control and the Up Arrow, or swipe up with three or four fingers on a trackpad, and the Spaces bar appears along the top of the screen. Add a space there. A Mac can hold up to 16, though anyone who needs more than four or five has usually found a different problem.

Moving between spaces is the part worth learning by muscle memory. Control-Left Arrow and Control-Right Arrow step sideways. On a trackpad, three or four fingers do the same. A window can be dragged to the edge of the screen and, after a moment, it moves to the next space; from inside Mission Control it can be dragged upward onto whichever space should hold it.

The feature that turns spaces from a curiosity into a system is assignment. Control-click an app's icon in the Dock, choose Options, then pick something under Assign To. All Desktops puts the app in every space, which suits a music player or a notes window. This Desktop pins it to one, which suits the app that belongs to one job and should never appear in the middle of another. None lets it open wherever the work is.

There is one behaviour to know about before it causes a surprise. By default, switching to an app moves the Mac to a space that already has windows open for it, so a new document can open in a space the work is not currently in. That is a switch in System Settings, under Desktop and Dock, in the Mission Control section, worded as switching to a space with open windows for the application.

Assigning a wallpaper per space is a small trick with an outsized effect. A glance at the background tells the eye which job is in front before a single window has been read.

Reaching a specific thing quickly

The second problem is not arrangement. It is retrieval. Something is open, somewhere, and it needs to be in front now.

Command-Tab switches to the most recently used app. Holding Command while pressing Tab, then using the Left and Right arrow keys, walks the whole row of open apps; releasing Command lands on one. Pressing Esc or the Period key while the row is open cancels without switching, which is the escape hatch nobody mentions.

Command-Grave Accent switches between windows of the app already in front. That is the key above Tab on most layouts. For anyone who keeps several documents open in one app, this is the shortcut that saves the most time in a day, and it is the one most commonly missing from people's hands.

Mission Control lays every open window and every space out in one layer. Control and the Up Arrow gets there. It is the right tool when the target is known by sight rather than by name.

Spotlight is the underrated one. Command and the Space bar opens it, and typing a few letters of an app's name and pressing Return is frequently faster than hunting for a window that is already open, because it needs no idea of where that window currently is.

A rule of thumb that holds up: name it and use Spotlight, see it and use Mission Control, alternate between two things and use Command-Tab.

Seeing two things at the same time

This is the problem people mean when they say multitasking, and macOS has two answers that behave differently.

Window tiling snaps a window to a half or a quarter of the desktop. The menu bar and the Dock stay visible, other windows stay where they are, and no space is created. Fn-Control-Left Arrow and Fn-Control-Right Arrow do the halves. Fn-Control-Shift-Left Arrow arranges the active window and the one behind it as a pair in one keystroke. Fn-Control-F fills the desktop with the active window, Fn-Control-C centres it, and Fn-Control-R returns it to the size it was before it was tiled. Dragging a window to a screen edge does the same thing with the pointer, and holding Option while dragging makes that snap deliberate rather than accidental.

Split View is the older feature. Hold the pointer over the green button, choose Full Screen, then Left of Screen or Right of Screen, then click the second app. The pair moves into a new desktop space of its own with the menu bar and Dock hidden. Inside it, the separator bar can be dragged to give one side more width, and double-clicking that bar restores the original split.

The choice between them comes down to one question: should the rest of the work stay reachable, or be pushed out of sight? Tiling keeps everything on the desktop. Split View deliberately removes the pair from it. For a task that deserves an hour of undivided attention, the removal is a feature. For a task that needs three other things checked along the way, it is a cage.

There is a third way to put two things together that gets forgotten. Some apps merge their windows into one tabbed window from Window, then Merge All Windows, and any tab can be pulled back out with Move Tab to New Window or by dragging it. For a pile of Finder windows or a stack of documents in one app, merging is tidier than arranging.

Stage Manager, which changes the model rather than the layout

Stage Manager is the only one of these tools that changes what the screen is for. Instead of every window competing for the desktop, the current window sits in the centre and recently used apps line up down the left side.

It is switched on from Control Center in the menu bar, or in System Settings, under Desktop and Dock, in the section for the desktop and Stage Manager. If it refuses to turn on, the option called Displays have separate Spaces, in the Mission Control section of the same pane, needs to be on.

Two of its settings decide whether it feels helpful or restrictive. Show windows from an application can be set to All at Once or One at a Time, which changes whether switching to an app brings all its windows forward or only the most recent. Show recent apps in Stage Manager can be turned off, hiding the strip on the left until the pointer touches that edge, which gives back the width that people usually complain about losing.

The feature worth trying before dismissing it is grouping. Dragging an app from the left strip into the centre adds it to the current group, so several apps can be treated as one working set that comes forward together. That is the closest thing macOS has to saying these four things belong to this job, and it is a genuinely different idea from arranging windows by hand.

Getting everything else out of the way

The fourth problem is subtraction, and it has the smallest learning curve of the four.

Command-H hides the windows of the app in front. Option-Command-H hides every other app and leaves the front one alone, which is the fastest path from a crowded screen to a clear one. Command-M minimises the front window to the Dock, and Option-Command-M minimises all of that app's windows.

Closing and quitting are not the same thing, and the distinction matters when things feel slow. Command-W closes the front window and Option-Command-W closes every window of the app, but the app stays running, shown by the small dot under its icon in the Dock. Command-Q actually quits it. A Mac with a dozen apps open and no windows showing is still a Mac with a dozen apps open.

The problem	The tool	The keys
Two jobs bleeding into each other	Spaces, with apps assigned	Control and Left or Right Arrow
Cannot find a window that is open	Spotlight or Mission Control	Command and Space, Control and Up Arrow
Two things must be visible at once	Tiling, or Split View for focus	Fn-Control-Left or Right Arrow
Too many windows on screen	Hide others, minimise	Option-Command-H, Command-M
Several windows of one app	Merge into tabs, or cycle them	Command and Grave Accent

Where the built-in tools stop

Everything above operates on windows and apps. That was the right unit when a Mac ran six applications. The unit has changed.

Count what is actually being juggled on a working day now. Two mailboxes, a calendar, a chat tool, a project tracker, a design file, a support inbox, a dashboard, an analytics view. Eight things, and macOS sees one window, because all eight live inside a browser. Every tool in this article is unavailable to them. A tab cannot be assigned to a space. A tab cannot be hidden with Option-Command-H. A tab cannot be tiled beside another tab. Command-Tab does not reach it.

Two accounts in the same service make it sharper still. A browser signed in to one work account cannot show the other without a second profile, and profile switching throws away the arrangement that was just built.

The fix is to make each web application a thing the Mac can see. A browser for macOS that gives every service its own workspace and its own cookie container turns those eight tabs into eight units that can each be reached with one keystroke, with several accounts of the same service signed in at once. From there the ordinary tools work again, because the browser is no longer one window holding everything. The list of supported apps shows the shape of what that covers, and the feature list covers the parts that matter for juggling work: per-app isolation, one notification bell for everything, and a side dock for the app that has to stay visible.

What to change first

Pick the problem that actually happens most and take only the tool for it. If work bleeds together, make a second space and assign two apps to it this afternoon. If windows go missing, learn Command and the Grave Accent. If the screen is simply too full, Option-Command-H.

If most of the things being juggled are web applications rather than Mac apps, none of those will move the needle much, and separating them out with SpaceDeck is the change that does.