Most of us use a lot of apps at the same time. Mail, Messages, Safari, Calendar, iTunes—the windows can stack up so high that it takes a bit to figure out where the one you need has gone. OS X’s spiffed up Mission Control helps bring order to chaos, making it easier to find the window you want by letting you see them all at the touch of a button. Mission Control also makes it easier to set up tidy, predictable Spaces where certain apps live—kind of like separating your clothes into different drawers instead of dumping them all into one.
El Capitan’s biggest addition to Mission Control, though, is taken straight from iOS 9. Split View fills your display with the two things you’re working on right now, making it easy to compare two documents or keep your research to one side while you write notes on the other ①.
① El Capitan’s Split View focuses in on two apps or windows. Drag and drop images, text, and links between them. Drag the middle divider to make more room for one side.
Open Mission Control
From the keyboard: On an Apple keyboard, press the Mission Control button (F3), or on any keyboard, press Control-Up arrow.
On a multi-touch trackpad: Perform a four-finger upward swipe. Or, spread out with your thumb and three fingers.
From the Dock: To keep Mission Control in the Dock for one-click access, go to Applications and drag Mission Control onto the Dock.
Hover in a hot corner: Revealing Mission Control can be as easy as sliding your pointer to the corner of your screen, if you’ve set up a hot corner.
To do this, go to System Preferences > Mission Control and click the Hot Corners button.
You see four pop-up menus that correspond to the four corners of your Mac’s display. Pick the one you want and then choose Mission Control in the menu ②. Now, just move your pointer to that corner and Mission Control appears.
② Set a hot corner for Mission Control.
All open windows on your Mac (no longer stacked by app) shrink so you can see them side by side ③. Click the one you want to jump to it.
③ Invoke Mission Control to get a bird’s-eye view of all open windows.
Open Single-app Mission Control
To see only the windows from the app you’re currently using, press Control-Down arrow ④.
④ To see only windows from the app you’re in, press Control-Down arrow.
Pick a Window in Mission Control
Click the window you want and the screen displays whatever it was showing before you invoked Mission Control, but with the window you clicked in front.
Close Mission Control
From the keyboard: On an Apple keyboard, press the Mission Control button (F3), or on any keyboard, press Control-Down arrow. You can also press Esc.
On a multi-touch trackpad: Perform a four-finger downward swipe or pinch in with your thumb and three fingers.
Put Everything in Its Space
Mission Control does more than let you pick a window. It also lets you group windows or apps that you commonly use at the same time, using a sub-set of features called Spaces. You can think of spaces as additional desktops.
Let’s take, for example, email. You check it all day. Messages is the same—colleagues regularly send you notes and ask questions that way. So let’s make a space for these two apps and bring communications (some might say distractions) together in one convenient place.
Making a Space
Open Mission Control, and then find your main Mail window. Drag it quickly up to the top of your screen. The slim bar there expands to become the new Spaces Bar ⑤.
⑤ El Capitan’s Spaces Bar shows all current spaces.
When a plus sign appears, drop the Mail window on the Spaces Bar and Mail automatically appears full screen in a new space, next to your desktop ⑥.
⑥ Create a space by dragging a window to the top of your screen and then dropping it in the Spaces Bar when a plus sign appears.
You don’t even have to be in Mission Control for this to work. Just grab a window and drag it quickly to the top of your screen. The Spaces Bar appears.
Now, grab the Messages window and drag and drop it onto the Mail space at the top of your screen. The space’s name changes to Message & Mail.
If you see a circle with a line through it when you try to drag a window into a space, you can’t group those two things together.
Note that you can put an app window in a different space from the rest of the app.
Changing a Space’s Desktop
To make spaces easier to identify, you can give each one a distinct Desktop pattern ⑦. Switch to the space, Control-click the Desktop and choose Change Desktop Background. The Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane opens.
⑦ Give Spaces different Desktop backgrounds so that they’re easier to distinguish.
Choose a solid color or image from the list on the left. For instance, you might like the stock El Capitan background when working in the Finder, but find it distracting when working with images. Give your image-processing app’s space a black or gray background instead. I use a space with a white background for taking screenshots.
Getting to a Space Quickly
Press Control-Left or -Right arrow or swipe from one side of your trackpad to the other using four fingers. This moves you between spaces. OS X allows you to skip through spaces only in the order they appear on the Spaces Bar. You can’t move directly from your first space to your third.
Changing Space Order
You can change your spaces’ order by opening Mission Control and dragging them on the Spaces Bar. To make them stay that way, in System Preferences > Mission Control, deselect Automatically Rearrange Spaces Based on Most Recent Use.
More Ways to Switch to an App’s Space
Click the app’s icon in the Dock.
Move to the app using the Application Switcher (press and hold the Command key while tapping Tab to move through open apps).
Removing a Space
Open Mission Control, grab the space in question on the Spaces Bar, and drag it off.
New! Split View
Many Mission Control features have been around in one form or another over a decade. But El Capitan adds a significant new twist: Split View.
This feature lets you focus in on two things at once—say, the document you’re writing in Pages and the Google Docs page that contains your research. Or, the book you’re reading in iBooks and the Notes app where you’re writing notes about the text. By filling the screen with only the things you need to see, you can minimize distractions.
Activating Split View
Click and hold the green button at the upper left corner of a window. The window shrinks and the left side of your screen fades to blue ⑧.
⑧ Invoke Split View by clicking and holding a window’s green button. Half of the screen fades to blue.
Move the window to the left or right (the blue background follows) and then drop it. It fills that side of your screen; the other side goes into Mission Control mode, so you can easily see other open windows ⑨. Select one of these and it fills the second half of your screen.
⑨ The window or apps fills one side of the screen; the other shows a Mission Control view of the remaining windows. Pick one to make it fill the other side of the screen.
If you’re already working in an app full screen, there’s another easy way to enter Split View. Open Mission Control and then drag the second app you want onto the first in the Spaces Bar at the top of your screen. The two now appear together in Split View.
Adjusting Split View
Drag the black divider between the views to make one side smaller or larger ⑩. Note that there is a limit to how small you can make one side.
⑩ To make one side of your Split View wider, drag the center divider.
Working in Split View
Just as could if you weren’t in Split View, you can do more in Split View than just look at one document while you’re working in another. Copy and paste information back and forth. Drag and drop from one side to the other—for instance, you can drag an image from a Finder window to a document, or text from Safari to Notes.
Leaving Split View
Move your pointer to the top of the screen to reveal the menu bar.
Click the green button at the upper left of either window.
button at the upper left corner of a window. The window shrinks and the left side of your screen fades to blue ⑧.
