A Q:How to switch from full screen game in Mac?

[takemore]

Hi all
I believe it has been discussed before but I wasn't able to find it. Please, don't shoot me just point me to the answer I am looking for.
I am using Mac for awhile and normally never play. So I didn't run into the problem. Recently, I played a full screen game. I couldn't figure out how to check email without quitting and restarting it? Command-Tab and Expose short-cuts don't work. Is it normal behaviour of games on Mac?

Thanks.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Try pausing the game and then hitting Cmd-H. That should hide the app. I'm pretty sure this works with Halo.

Edit: Just tested it and it works with Peggle.

 

[takemore]

I've tried. Cmd-H doesn't work either. The game is bricks of egypt 2. Actually, this game doesn't concern me at all. I am curious about the bigger picture. I don't recall having this problem back in windows world. I could switch away from any application to attend my messenger or send an email without having to quit it.
I am not sure why there is this difference in behaviour between Windows and Mac OS X. Is it because Windows doesn't allow a full screen application to highjack system hot keys while Mac OS X allows?

 

[yippy]

It depends on the game and unfortunately I don't know that specific one. Apple+N or Apple+M does it in a lot of games.

Did you check the game manual/instructions/settings? A lot of times the full screen toggle is listen in the game controls.

 

[takemore]

This is a small simple game. As a matter of fact I looked at the settings and did find full screen option. If I remove the tick the game switches back to window mode.
I just find this less convenient. Mac is always so much more consistent with hot keys than windows is. Like quitting virtually any application is Cmd-Q and stuff like that. But switching over to another application temporarily is so difficult. It's an overlook in my opinion. Or am I missing something?

 

[Nermal]

It frustrates me when games break standard principles like Cmd-H and Cmd-Tab. I've had a similar issue with Fable where I couldn't figure out how to run it in a window. To make matters even worse, Feral (the publisher) ignored my support email (I re-sent it after a couple of weeks just in case it had got lost, but didn't get a reply to that one either).

 

[takemore]

Well.. Thanks for all the replies. They show that I am not overlooking anything obvious here. Though the problem still remains.
Now I will just make sure that in my game Cmd-H will work fine

 

[Bayley]

cmd+shift+tab

 

[falcn]

Well.. Thanks for all the replies. They show that I am not overlooking anything obvious here. Though the problem still remains.
Now I will just make sure that in my game Cmd-H will work fine

The Cmd-Alt-Escape will pull you out of any fullscreen game that blocks Cmd-Tab (and all the usual shortcuts). Most of the games will close or crash though - they block Cmd-Tab for a reason.