“So wouldn’t it be great if all you had to do was hit one hot key to snap all of that window chaos into order?”
In fact it is great, really great. Expose is a fantastic program that ships with Mac OS X and performs a handful of functions that make using your Mac a breeze. At the touch of a button or a flick of the mouse, Expose will:
- Shrink down and neatly arrange your windows so that you can see every single open window. Now having 15 different programs running at once is not a problem. Who needs a taskbar?
- Move all of the open windows off-screen so you can see what’s on your desktop. I use my Mac’s desktop like a virtual workbench – files and folders for things I’m currently working on sit here until I complete them or decide where they should permanently reside, and Expose makes getting at these items a breeze.
- Tile all of the current application’s windows. Are you working on 10 different graphics in photoshop? Expose can instantly arrange them all in rank and file, letting you see and access each one at the same time.
So how do I get Expose to do these fancy tricks?
Glad you asked. Expose’s default triggers are:
- F9: Tile all open windows.
- F10: Tile the current application’s windows.
- F11: Reveal the desktop.
Customize Expose
You can easily customize these triggers – open the System Preferences and click on Expose (or Dashboard & Expose in OS X 10.4). The first thing you can do here is set any or all of Expose’s actions to be triggered when you touch one of the four corners of the screen with your mouse. The second thing you can do is change which keys trigger each of the Expose functions. I found that second customization method useful because I have a Powerbook – I reassigned “All Windows” to F11, since F9 is mainly used for adjusting screen brightness.
My words probably don’t do Expose justice. To get a sense of what’s actually going on here, visit the Expose website and watch the demo video, or better yet just try Expose out! You won’t regret it.
