In other words, you can achieve a lot of what you might use Spaces for, without having to switch between spaces or manage which applications show in which spaces. ![]() Enabling single-application mode means that you can quickly and easily build a custom list of visible applications, and that list is dynamic. If you think about this for a minute, you’ll start to see the possibilities. If you later want to hide Safari again, click Mail’s Dock icon (or just Option-click on Mail’s window). Click Mail in the Dock, then use Command-Tab to switch to Safari, and you’ll end up with both Mail and Safari on screen, and nothing else. You can thus combine methods of switching between applications. However, if you switch applications through any other method, including clicking another visible application’s window and the Command-Tab application switcher, Mac OS X’s normal multi-application approach remains in effect, and nothing will be hidden. This means that if you click an application’s icon in the Dock, it immediately hides all the other applications, including the Finder. The most important fact to realize is that single-application mode is tied exclusively to the Dock. ![]() Although it was always intended as a simple option for people who are not computer experts, it turns out to be an interesting option for the power user. That’s right, the original single-application mode in pre-release versions of Mac OS X is still with us. (Go ahead and try it – it’s easily reversed.)ĭefaults write single-app -bool trueįor single-application mode to take effect, you have to relaunch the Dock with this second command. Lurking in the scary bowels of Mac OS X for all these years has been this little command, which brings back single-application mode. When an application needs a second window, such as for keywords or editing in iPhoto, it is generally a palette that disappears when the application is not in the foreground.īut it goes further. Single-application mode is how the iPhone works, of course, and on the Mac, almost all Apple applications – think about Mail, iTunes, and iPhoto – rely on a single window that can easily take over the entire screen. This interface behavior isn’t new in Snow Leopard, of course, but it’s an example of how Apple has never really given up the desire to make users focus on a single application at a time. As a result, people who are starting to use the Dock seriously for the first time are discovering that clicking an icon in the Dock brings all its windows to the foreground. In Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple has made significant improvements to the Dock, including improved Expose integration and minimizing windows invisibly, among much else. Mac OS X’s multi-application mode differed from how previous versions of the Mac OS worked in that it interleaved all open windows without regard to which application they belonged to, a feature that annoyed a lot of long-time Mac users. ![]() ![]() This was intended to be the default behavior, but it was so widely reviled that Apple quickly changed the default to the familiar multi-application mode that shows multiple applications on the screen at the same time. Having returned from an archeological dig into the dark history of Mac OS X, I’ve unearthed a feature that could change the way you interact with your applications, enabling you to focus on one or two more easily than in the past.īack in 1999, when Steve Jobs first showed off the new Finder in Mac OS X, it ran in a single-application mode, where switching from one application to another caused the first application to minimize (this was the original demo of the Genie effect). #1683: New M3 chips in updated MacBook Pros and iMac, record Apple Q4 profits on lower revenues, no more 27-inch iMacs.#1684: OS bug fix releases, Finder tag poll results, Messages identity verification, blocking spambots, which Apple services do you use?.#1685: Hidden secrets of the Fn key, Emergency SOS via satellite free access extended, RCS support in Messages, Rogue Amoeba icon evolution.#1686: Please support TidBITS, OS security updates, Apple services poll results, biking with an iPhone.#1687: Feature-rich OS updates, recovering from a crashing bug in Contacts, Zoom for Apple TV, how much do you use widgets?.
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