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apple+tab

I

ibidiem

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 27, 2005
70
0
Portland, OR
I just stumbled on this today, you know, in haste to jot something down or whatever, my fingers stumble, and every program running suddenly appeared in this free-floating dock right in the center of my screen. Now I'm totally hooked on this function!

Anybody know if this is native to Tiger.5 or the result of who knows what third party software I've got installed?

Try it:

cmd+tab or apple+tab

(holding down the apple and hitting tab again causes the selector to move to another program, bringing that program to the front. hitting apple+tab later also seems to bring up the last selected program)
 
Native, and has been for a looooonggggg time. It's a nice feature.

What's cool is that while you're on one, you can press Q to quit it, H to hide it, etc....the other CMD+letter combos...because you're already holding down command!

Windows has a similar ALT+Tab feature.
 
I remember the day I first figured that out on Windows. Man, that was exciting. Probably at least doubled my productivity.
 
JonD25 said:
I remember the day I first figured that out on Windows. Man, that was exciting. Probably at least doubled my productivity.
Click to expand...

Nice. I seriously didn't know about it in Windows until I used my PC one day and forgot I wasn't using a Mac. I hit the CMD TAB shortcut out of instinct and it worked...I sure was surprised, lol.
 
...Really? I swear this has been around forever. I discovered it using Windows at school and was like HOLY SMOKES!! I was like the mouse is going to be come obsolete in a few years. I was just young and dumb then:p
 
Another nice feature...

While Cmd+Tab will cycle through open applications, Cmd+` will cycle through open windows in the currently open application.
 
Yep, this was definitely around as the application switcher in at least system9. If you press Shift+Apple+Tab it goes anticlockwise, too.

Also, if you activate Expose, Tab or Shift+Tab cycles through each open application.
 
Yes, great little feature! Even though it has been around for a while on both platforms, it's still worth mentioning every now and then for those that don't know about it. :)

I used to use it all the time, but ever since Expose came around I rarely use it anymore. With my handy Mighty Mouse I just give a little "squeeze" and all my active windows come to me. I can't flip through active apps that way, but generally I find that I don't need to. ;)
 
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