How Do You Manage Multiple Windows of One App in macOS?

[AppleFan.]

Hello everyone,

Something I’ve noticed is that some people including myself struggle with managing multiple windows from the same app in macOS. CommandTab works well for switching between apps, but it doesn’t cycle through windows within a single app. In Windows hovering over an app in the taskbar shows all open windows of that app, macOS doesn’t really offer such a straightforward way.

I wondered how other Mac users deal with this. Do you use Mission Control, switch between windows with shortcuts, or do you have your own workflow for this?

On my desktop Mac, I've set up a hot corner to active App Exposé. When I need to switch to multiple windows of the same app, I just move my cursor to the corner and instantly see them all which works really well. When I am on a Mac laptop, I use the 3 finger swipe down gesture to activate App Exposé.

How do you all handle this? Do you find the macOS way limiting, or is there something I might be missing?

 

[BrianBaughn]

I use ⌘-` (command-grave) to cycle through the windows of the active app.

 

[eyoungren]

Like @BrianBaughn, I also use the same keyboard shortcut. However, the majority of the Macs I own/use have at least two displays. So, if I'm seriously working on more than one document at a time, I will have one window open on one display and the other open on the second display. Multiple monitors allow more than two and I have multiple monitors. But it's rare for me to be working more than two documents at once.

You might also look into Stage Manager.

 

[casperes1996]

Expose from trackpad or cmd+down arrow. Or the shortcut mentioned above which I have mapped to ctrl+F14

Very easy

 

[chown33]

Two other things I use:
1. "Window" menu in app's menubar.
2. Right-click (two-finger touch) on app's Dock icon pops up a menu.

 

[Michael0816]

App Expose works perfectly for me. Definitely prefer it over the windows task bar switching.

 

[benwiggy]

Four-finger swipe down, to show the current app's windows.

Four-finger swipe up to show all the windows of all apps.

Otherwise, Command `

 

[Just_Kevin]

This was something that I struggled with when I switched to Mac. I right click on the icon in the dock and pick the one I’m after that way.