How do you hide all applications?

Lock your screen. or hit F11.

 

Some ways:
- Hold down option and command and click on the Finder icon in the Dock (or any application) that you don't mind anyone else seeing.
- Or you can acheive the same by standing in Finder and choose Finder menu -> Hide others (cmd-option-H).
- Or you can just hide your IM and Mail by command-tabbing to those apps and, without letting the command button up, hit H then tab again to another application you want to hide until those apps you want to hide are all gone.
- etc.

 

To build upon this, is there anyway to hide all all running apps. Kinda like clicking every program and selecting Hide, not using Expose, where the apps are just wiped from the screen, then returned to their previous state? If so, that would be very, very helpful...

 

If security is what you're going for, locking your screen (with the screen saver) is probably the best way to do this. You can set up a hot corner to activate the screen saver. You can also add an icon to your menu bar that lets you lock the screen (just activates the screen saver). The menu bar option is in Preferences in Keychain Access. You check the box that says "Show status in menu bar" in the General tab of preferences. You'll also want to set the security preferences (in System Preferences) so that a password is required to exit the screensaver.

If you just want to hide all applications without locking the screen, you can hold command and option while clicking on the desktop. Of course F11, which activates the Exposé show desktop command is also an option. They're slightly different in that Exposé is temporary--you can quickly restore the screen back to the way it was. The command-option click desktop thing really hides all applications, so you have to unhide them manually.

 

Does clicking on the desktop and then pressing cmd-opt-h not accomplish this?

When I've got my laptop in a work environment...I lock the screen via Sys Prefs ("Require password to wake this computer..." in the Security pref pane)...as mentioned by others.

 

Yes, that does work. Thanks a ton...

 

Look at the Dashboard & Exposé preference.pane: There you can set any corner to Start Screen Saver.

 

I believe cmd-opt-h hides (hide...not minimize) all applications except the active one. So if you hit it while Finder is the active app, everything will hide except Finder (so if you've got finder windows open, this won't hide those...). Make sense?

 

The windows come back few seconds after you hit F11, at least for me

Indeed, you can lock your screen setting hot corners or activating the menubar item from the keychain.app , that's if you accidentally goes to the corner, often.

 

You just have to go to the corner.