Again, Mission Control allows users to see all desktops at once, but only in a tiny row of icons at the top of the screen. In this mode, users can quickly identify which desktop has a certain application window and then move applications between desktops seamlessly. TotalSpaces users have five additional options, including our favorite: “Cube.”Īnother useful feature is the “overview” mode, which displays all desktops at once while keeping full-screen apps separated. Apple traditionally used a “slide” animation in Spaces, which persists today in Mountain Lion’s Mission Control. To further customize the experience, users can change the visual effect used during the transition between virtual desktops. TotalSpaces offers advanced configuration options. Users can configure up to 16 virtual desktops in grids of various configurations, select custom shortcuts and hotkeys for navigating the desktops, and, most importantly, assign applications to specific desktops. Our favorite is TotalSpaces from BinaryAge.Ĭompatible with the most recent versions of OS X, TotalSpaces installs into a user’s menu bar and provides all the functionality, and more, that was once offered by Spaces. MOOM TOTALSPACES SOFTWAREThankfully, third-party software companies have again stepped in to fill in the gaps that Apple left with the move to Mission Control. MOOM TOTALSPACES WINDOWSMany builds of Linux and third-party software on both OS X and Windows introduced the concept long before Cupertino. To pin an application using just Mission Control, create a virtual desktop, move the application to that desktop, then right-click on the app’s dock icon, select “Options > Assign To > This Desktop.” You can also assign it to “All Desktops” which will keep the app open and visible as you move between desktops.Īpple was not the first company to create a virtual desktop feature. Note: Reader Tim reminded us in the comments that Mountain Lion’s Mission Control does indeed support “pinning” applications to specific desktops, although the process is less convenient than the unified menu found in Spaces and TotalSpaces. Mail and Twitter apps, for example, could be set to always open on a particular desktop, which a user could think of as their “Communications Space.” Mission Control allows users to move applications between desktops, but applications do not remember which space they were last located on when reopening the app. Spaces also allowed users to “pin” certain applications to specific desktops. Spaces allowed for both horizontal and vertical desktop layouts via grids, enabling faster navigation between them. Mission Control allows for the creation of virtual desktops, but they can only be created in a horizontal sequence, moving from left to right. Unfortunately, many users quickly discovered that Mission Control lacks much of the usefulness of the now defunct Spaces. Mission Control aimed to present more information to the user about which applications and windows were open, and it added better support for navigation via multitouch trackpad gestures. In 2011, Apple introduced OS X 10.7 Lion and merged Spaces, along with Apple’s window management feature Exposé, into a new feature called Mission Control. In effect, Spaces gave users with a single screen, such as those using a MacBook or iMac, the ability to take advantage of some of the benefit enjoyed by those using multiple displays. Users could assign applications specific to each task to one of these “spaces” and then easily switch between them with a keyboard shortcut or mouse-click. It allowed users to have multiple virtual desktops that could each contain unique sets of application windows. Spaces (above), introduced in 2007 as part of OS X 10.5 Leopard, was Apple’s own virtual desktop implementation. One of the best features of previous versions of OS X that has now been greatly diminished was Spaces. Unfortunately, much functionality was also taken away or modified as Apple continued to fine-tune its desired OS X experience. MOOM TOTALSPACES FOR MACRecent versions of OS X, starting with Lion and continuing with Mountain Lion, have introduced some great new features for Mac users.
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