Escape the grasp of Mission Control

My iMac is connected to an HP monitor (primary). Since upgrading to Yosemite, when I launch an application it replaces any application already up. Or, depending apparently on what check boxes I have ticked in Mission Control, launching an application sometimes shoves the existing application to the secondary monitor.
At present I have unchecked everything in Mission Control to no avail. How can I regain control so that I can drag and see windows where I want them without Mission Control interfering?

Ok so you have only one desktop/space. and you're apps are being shoved off to the other monitor
have you looked in your System Preferences/Mission Control settings, you will find several options for altering the
behaviour of apps in spaces, have a look and see which one is best for your needs. Experiment.
I think having more than one desktop/space for individual apps is a great idea
you can have Safari on 1, another for Mail, etc etc and it is easy to switch from one to another
and keeps things a bit more organised.

Similar Messages

  • What is the point of Mission Control?

    I have been a Mac user since 1987, when I got my first SE/30.  I understand a LOT about the Mac OS, and I consider myself and expert. For the life of me, however, I cannot figure out the point of Mission Control (or Exposé or Spaces, for that matter).  Let me explain, and ask if anyone here can clear this up for me.
    As I understand it, the point of Mission Control is to make it easy to access various open applications in an uncluttered workspace/desktop.  If this is the case, then how is this better than, say, Quickeys, which I have used forever? 
    In other words, I typically use the following applications, all open at the same time: Word, Mail, Safari, my office accounting program, iTunes, iChat, and maybe one or two more.  I use Quickeys and have assigned a keyboard shortcut for each - for example, control-E for mail; control-s for Safari; control-W for Word, etc.  It is second nature for me to immediately go to, say, Mail by pressing control-E.  Bringing the app to the front is literally instantaneous.
    I "get it" that, say, Safari can show below Mail, or iTunes can show behind Word, but that (multiple windows partially overlappiong each other) has never bothered me - indeed, I've never even considered it something worthy of worry.
    Thus, my question is, how does Mission Control do this - navigation of open applications - better than Quickeys? Is it simply and only to avoid the "behind the window clutter"?  If so, is the contortion needed to activate Mission Control - removing fingers from keyboard, clicking mouse, navigating mouse to proper desktop, and returning keys to keyboard - worth it? If so, how?  There has to be something else to this Mission Control that I am just missing.
    Could one of you enlighten me?
    Thanks!

    Different people have different ways of working and long ago I discovered the joys of virtual desktops (think mission control). Since System 7 (when the multi-finder stopped being optional) I've been keeping lots of programs open at the same time. The problem with that is the desktop gets very cluttered very fast and getting to the right window of the right program can be challenging. Thankfully between 3rd party tools and Apple's own built in tools we have many ways of dealing with this. Mission Control (virtual desktops) is one of them.
    I have assigned related programs to a single desktop. I have the Programming Desktop where the terminal, BBedit, Racket, and Xcode tools live. I have the Writing Desktop where Pages, Word, and InDesign live. And so on. This cuts down on the clutter of my display since only a couple programs appear on a single virtual desktop. Where Mission Control itself comes into play is when I need to get a resource from one Desktop to another. Say I'm writing an email and need to refer back to a document in Word. I might open the document in Word (which would move me into the Writing Desktop) then I'd shift to Mission Control and drag that Word document's window into my Internet Desktop so it would temporarily reside along with Mail so I could look at both the Word document and my email.
    It isn't the only way to work but I've found it very convenient and indispensible on my notebook. On my work desktop where I have two displays my workflow is a little different since I have lots of REAL window space.

  • The animation of mission control lock

    the animation of mission control lock, I have a macbook pro with 8GB of ram and dual core i5, what is the problem?

    System Preferences/Mission Control and un-check "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use".

  • How do i reposition desktops and full screen apps in the top of mission control?

    Full screen apps have there own space and so do desktops, how do i re-order them?

    Hi Anthony, hi ya guys!
    Actually you can do a bit of a trick to re-arrange a fullscreen apps but there is one thing which you should know - the first screen can't be a fullscreen app screen.
    So, here is what you can do.
    Example: you have 3 fullscreen apps running on your OS: Pages, iPhoto, Mail.
    So you go to Mission Control and you see on the top the first screen which is an empty screen or a screen with any opened apps (not a fullscreen apps) and also you see your fullscreen apps in a row of 3 screens.
    So talking about these 3 screens (windows). Your Pages screen is the first fullscreen app window, iPhoto is the 2nd and Mail is the 3rd but you want to make it the 1st. So to do this you need to go to your second window (iPhoto), and press twice the Mail icon in your dock (one click and then another click).
    It will make your 3rd screen with Mail to take a place of 1st screen and iPhoto will be moved to the end.
    It all should be done while you are in a MC.
    Good luck!

  • Who agrees the thumbnails in Mission control need to be bigger?

    Yes/no . I am on an eleven inch air. They look like little postage stamps with braille on them. Totally useless to me. Did anyone at Apple bother to test it on an 11 inch air to see how it worked? I have to wonder.

    I am also having the same problem. However I do notice that when I open a fresh desktop and I view mission control from that desktop I can see all of the desktop thumbnails ok. However they fail to work when I 'slide' across to the other desktops... See the below images. Anyone know a fix?

  • I can't drag selected items in to mission control using the 3 finger swipe in 10.7.2

    After upgrading to 10.7.2 I cannot drag items from the finder to mission control anymore. I used to select the items I wanted, click to drag and then swipe three fingers to show Mission Control and then drop the items in to the selected app/folder.
    Now I can't. And it's irritating.

    Made the same post. No one responded, it seems that there are not many users interested in this change for the worse. I'm braking my fingers here trying to move files from mail to desktop... Lousy move Apple, but considering the fact that people are not making a fuss about it it could be that there's something wrong with us .

  • Why does Mission Control switch to the Desktop 1 without me issuing a command?

    This happens to me constantly. I'll be working and not even touching the keyboard and Mission Control, without me doing ANYTHING switches me to Desktop 1. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?

    I'm having the same issue.  The only thing I can think is that there is something stealing focus back to the main screen.  This didn't happen for me prior to upgrading to Mavericks.

  • Mission Control: How to change the order of the Apps?

    OS X Lion
    Is it possible, to change the order of the Apps in Mission Control?
    When I swipe with my 3 fingers, I first get the Apps, witch I started last.
    Any way to change that?
    Thanks Mark.

    Here is a simple way to use Mission Control just as Spaces:
    Let's assume in this example we like to assign iPhoto to Desktop 3 (which in Spaces was called Space 3).
    1. Turn off 'Automatically rearange spaces on most recent use
    2. Scroll up with 3 fingers simultaneously or launch Mission Control from the Dock. Click on Desktop 3. While you are in Desktop 3 launch iPhoto. Doublecheck with a right click on the iPhoto symbol in the Dock. Choose options. Confirm 'This Desktop'
    NOTICE: Apps are automatically assigned to the Desktop / Space where they are launched for the very first time. However you change this by ctrl-click the application's symbol and assign to None than switch to let's stay with Desktop 3 and launch the application from here. From then on it will be assigned to Desktop 3.
    NOTICE: Apps in fullscreen mode will temporarily (for the duration they are in fullscreen mode) be assigned to right most Desktops in Mission Control. Once you restore to a window you will find yourself again in its (app's) asigned Desktop.

  • Is it possible to show the dock bar only in mission control mode?

    Hi.
    I dont wont to have the dock in my workspace. Can I move the dock to mission control an launch apps from there?
    tx
    mitschel

    You could however maybe trick the Dock by setting the delay rate to some high number, say  one hour.
    In terminal copy and paste:
    defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 3600.00 && killall Dock
    To restore the default behavior, enter:
    defaults delete com.apple.Dock autohide-delay && killall Dock
    Message was edited by: leroydouglas

  • How do i change the secondary click from starting up mission control to standard right click

    Downloaded lion but i can't seem to changes the secondary click. The secondary or right click opens up mission control instead of the standard right click menus
    Any ideas?

    I had the same problem with my 2010 MBA.  I plugged in a mouse and changed the preference on the right button to secondary click in the mouse preferences.  For some reason it changed the setting on the trackpad from mission control to standard right click as well, even after the mouse is unplugged.  So if you have a mouse you might try that.  Hopefully Apple will fix this with an update.

  • MISSION CONTROL, LAUNCHPAD, and FULL SCREEN APPS (one month later)

    I'm pretty good embracing a new thing when it comes along.  I downloaded LION the day it come out, which was over a month ago at this point. On that day, I immediately found MISSION CONTROL and LAUNCHPAD both uninituitve and pointless.  Unhandy iCandy.   And of FULL SCREEN APPS?  Not necessary on an iMac anyway.
    So I quickly sought out quick solutions to 'fix' these new features.  Launchpad and full screen apps have the advantage that they can be simply ignored.  This is a good thing.  Mission Control, on the other hand, got in the way of a beloved feature for me:  what was once SPACES and EXPOSE.  That is, I couldn't simply ignore MC because I still needed the previous helpful features in Snow Leopard.
    My solution was kind of surprising and eye-opening.  It's complicated to explain but I thought I'd share.  This conclusion is likely best suited for someone not using a small screened Mac.  It turns out that most users (with big enough screens) don't really need Mission Control, Launchpad, Spaces, or Full Screen apps. 
    At all.
    Let's go through that conclusion, one by one:
    FULL SCREEN APPS
    If you have a relatively big screen (20 iMac for instance), why do you need Safari full screen?  Unless you intend to sit across the room from the computer, no reason.  And there's lots of bright empty space when you do this.  Do you need the Mail app full screen?  If you need reading glasses, maybe, but otherwise, nope.  I find it's easier just to stretch out an app pretty big and leave it at that.
    Full screen apps DO offer a nice feature which is making your desktop, menubar, and dock go BYE BYE.  I can see where sometimes this is a useful feature, but typically -- NOPE.  Typically I want access to my dock (to switch between open apps without the added step of cancelling full screen first), and typically I want access to my menubar so that I can glance up and see what time it is or find an app menu quickly.
    The only feature I find worthy of praise with full screen apps is that they hide the clutter on your desktop.  But there's an app in the Mac App Store which makes your desktop icons vanish with the touch of a button (CAMOUFLAGE).  I mean, what's the point of a wallpaper if you bury it with desktop clutter or eliminate it with full screen apps?  If it's a busy and distracting wallpaper, umm... you picked bad wallpaper.
    LAUNCH PAD
    LAUNCH PAD offers an iOS experience inside OS X.  At first I thought it was completely silly.  After a month now, I kinda get why it's there.  Kinda.
    You see, before LP, to duplicate it's functionality, you'd have to organize folders yourself.  Put folders of various apps together.  Place them somewhere in the finder heirarchy.  Then drag those folders into the part of the dock with the trashcan.  Then you could click them open and have access to similarly themed folders of apps.  The problem here, of course, is that unless you're a power user, you'll never do this.
    So Apple thought, AH-HA, we'll just drag into OS X a paradigm that users already get from iOS.  Clumping apps together any way you like them.  The misfire, if you ask me, is not allowing users to drag the new iOS folders straight into the dock when finished.  That is to say:  copies of said organized folders.  It's as if Apple's software people have complete contempt for the dock -- and are desperate to have users abandon it.
    My problem is that I like having folders in my dock of stuff I need.  It just works, as Steve says.  Going to the same EXACT place every time I need anything is more intuitive and graceful than ADDING an app called Launchpad that launches you into a different finder altogether.  Makes zero sense and THIS is why I say, like FULL SCREEN APPS, LP can basically be abandoned.
    By the way:  need proof that Apple has complete contempt for the Dock?
    MISSION CONTROL/SPACES
    A month has passed since MC was introduced and SPACES was eliminated.  I dare anyone to tell me why either is needed at all.  Before you get iMiffed, humor me for a moment and hear me out.
    The notion of SPACES was that it's a neat way to keep like minded open apps together.  I totally bought into this, back in the day.  So much so that I was iMiffed when it was gone in Lion.  But let's look at this closer.
    The REASON why we needed SPACES was that we could have WAY too many windows open at once on a Mac.  Right?  A big mess of windows covering each other up.  Suppose you're surfing in Safari but need iTunes?  But iTunes is hidden.  So what did you do?  You went to Spaces as step one, moused over to your iTunes space as move two, and then clicked it as move three.  Seems like a great solution until the day you discover that you could simply click on iTunes in the dock as move one and arrive at iTunes.  As one step.  Period.  Really simple, right? 
    Why have Spaces and apps dance around when you can just click the app you want and be done with it?  That's the critical observation to make in order to follow my entire line of reasoning.  Sure, it may look really cool and make Windows machines look like junk, but at the end of the day, why add two steps to something you might do 100 times a day -- switching between apps.
    So why OH why did Apple add Spaces?  Simple:  because too many apps were visible at once in one 'desktop' window.  So if you can build many new desktops, there might only be one or two in each.  Great solution.  Right?
    Wrong, as it turns out.  Because we still have the two extra steps.  It's a weak solution.  And it's in complete contempt of the Dock, which as it turns out, offers the strongest solution.
    The strong solution would be that only one app is visible in your Mac's window at all times.  Say you're in Safari.  Despite having 12 other apps open, you only see Safari.  Your dock tells you that you have other apps open, but nothing else sits in your window BUT the app you're using.  So you want to go to iTunes?  So click on it in the dock and Safari vanishes and iTunes emerges by itself.  No other windows.  What could be simpler?  (This app is freeware known as ISOLATOR.)
    If you download and try ISOLATOR, you'll say, umm, okay, but wait:  sometimes I do want more than one window in view.  Okay, fine, turn it off then.  From the handy menu bar menu.  I find that 98% of the time I need ISOLATOR on.  Mileage may vary.
    So let's recap.  One third party software removes distracting desktop clutter, the other removes distracting app windows.  Both can be toggled on and off from the menu bar.  One is free, one costs $2.  These two solutions remove the only real feature of FULL SCREEN APPS and make SPACES and it's newfangled cousin MISSION CONTROL pointless.
    Need that last one explained?  Well, what's Mission Control but a variant of spaces?  To invoke MC and switch to the needed window are those same two annoying steps Spaces added into the mix.  Nothing was fixed.  Plus, like spaces, you must invest time and energy organizing such spaces.
    Why bother?  And so I ask again:  can somebody who's read and tried the above carefully explain to me why Mission Control, Launchpad, and Full Screen Apps are really needed at all?  (Outside of small screened Macs.)  Doesn't the dock and these two sharewares together solve most problems?
    Am I missing something?

    I agree with everything you said about full screen apps, mission control and launchpad. For apps that made sense to run full screen, they already could under SL. Launchpad is totally unnecessary and Mission Control is a mere shadow of Expose and Spaces.
    However, I feel you have not given due credit to Spaces. The point of Spaces is to let one organise logical desktops for different tasks, not just a way to reduce the number of windows on display. For example, I have a Space for software development where I run Xcode and the iPhone simulator, a Firefox window showing perhaps documentation or some other websites pertaining to software development, a Finder window that is opened in the folder with my design docs. I have another Space where I have the remote login sessions, yet another Space with another Firefox window where I do general surfing and emailing. I can switch between these spaces using a keyboard shortcut, which is much quicker than having to lift my hand off the keyboard, move it over to the mouse, move the mouse pointer over the Dock, find the app and click on it, only to find that it has switched to the wrong window of the app.
    Without Spaces, organisation of my desktop is disrupted each time I want to switch task, whereas Spaces allows me to drop everything I am doing, go and do something completely different for a while and go back to my exact previous environment. I have a 27" iMac so am not short of screen space but I use Spaces extensively. BTW, switching Spaces using a keyboard shortcut is a lot faster on SL than the equivalent on Lion, thanks to the gratuitous screen animation of the latter.

  • Messages stuck in background of mission control

    When I click the Full Screen button on Messages it becomes the background for Mission Control.  If I quit and restart Messages the issue is still there.  If I quit all my open applications, and then restart my computer the issue is still there.  The background on mission control stays updated; if I get a message it shows there.
    Does anyone know what settings I would want to look at in order to make this stop happening.  I want to be able to switch to the space for Messages in Mission Control to see my messages but not to see Messages all the time.

    Hi,
    My Normal Settings are.
    Left  gives me Dashboard.
    Right  is normally iTunes in Full Screen Mode.
    I run Messages with 8 or 9 individual Buddy Lists open as well as the Chat/Interface Main window.
    If I set  the main Messages window to Full Screen then it will do so but the Buddy lists remain on the "central" screen (Space?).
    The Main window has moved to the right.
    If  go to look at Messages and then use the Dock > Mission Control icon the Messages app is still on view.
    EDIT
    Or it was when I tested this first and made me wonder if this was what you meant by "background"
    I repeated this to take a snap shot  and can only get my Desktop as the Background whilst the Dashboard, Desktop space and Messages spaces show across the top.
    During the initial process I did change some things in the Messages > Preferences > Accounts.
    I had spotted two were not Logged in and I also changed the Descriptions for them.
    9:26 pm      Saturday; January 25, 2014
      iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad

  • Mission Control Crashing? This solution worked for me

    The first OS I used from Apple was Panther. Since then, I have had 3 machines and I never did a fresh install. I simply upgraded from one release to the next.
    I never had any issue, but with Lion, things were different.
    Lion installation process is full of rough edges and I lost many tweaks I have done on my OSX all these years, several icons were missing on Finder, several apps missing from the Dock and Mission Control was not working after the installation.
    I banged my head on the wall for 24h until I found the culprit and Apple should test this better.
    Here is the solution that worked for me.
    The first test you should do is this:
    1) create another user on your system
    2) login to that user and see if Mission Control works there
    3) if it works, congratulations and welcome to my private club: the Mission Control Crashers Club.
    If MC works on the other user, the problem is with your account. So, continue reading this...
    Do you have experience dealing with terminal and unix?
    If you open a terminal window and type
    cd ~  (enter)
    ls -al .*   (enter)
    you will see a list of all invisible files and directories that are stored on your home directory.
    look at the names and dates you see there. In my case I have located files and directories created in 2008 (on another mac I don't even have anymore) and I also saw files and directores belonging to apps I have removed a long time ago.
    look at each file or directory that starts with a point (= invisible).
    if you locate a file you want to remove, type
    rm .aaa
    where aaa is the file name
    if it is a directory, type
    rm -r .bbb
    where bbb is the directory name
    when you feel you have removed all the old crap, log out and login again.
    Try Mission Control and Dashboard then.
    OBVIOUSLY, MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE REMOVING ANYTHING. DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.
    In my case, the problem was solved.

    Thanks for taking the time to come back and let us know - it is valuable to see when a fix has worked for someone.

  • Why is iTunes window open in every mission control window

    I have a 27" iMac with the latest Mac OS and the latest version of iTunes. I have my iTunes library installed on an external Hard Drive. When I open iTunes, every mission control window has an open iTunes window? 10 screens 10 open iTunes windows? This is very annoying! How can I fix this so only one iTunes window is open on one mission control screen?

    Hey llsorens,
    Thanks for the question.  Take a look at the resource for Mission Control below.  It sounds like in your Mission Control preferences, you have the options set to All Desktops, which means the application (iTunes) will appear in every space.
    OS X Yosemite: Work in multiple spaces
    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18757?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US
    Assign apps to spaces
    If you assign an app to a particular space, it opens in that space by default.
    Press and hold an app’s icon in the Dock. You may have to first open the app from Launchpad to see its icon in the Dock. 
    From the shortcut menu that appears, do one of the following:
    Have the app open in the current space: Choose Options > This Desktop. 
    The app appears only in that space. However, if you open the app in full screen, it appears in its own space. 
    Have the app open in the current space on a specific display: Choose Options > Desktop on Display [number]. 
    Have the app open in every space: Choose Options > All Desktops. 
    The app appears in every space.
    Have the app open in whichever space you’re using at the time: Choose Options > None. 
    In Mission Control preferences, you can also specify that, when you switch to an app, your desktop should switch to a space with open windows for that app. To open Mission Control preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Mission Control.
    Hope that helps ...
    - Judy

  • Mission control error when starting

    I receive error below when I start mission control. Can someone assist?
    $ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jrockit
    $ export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
    $ /usr/java/jrockit/bin/jrmc
    Jun 15, 2008 12:14:00 PM com.jrockit.console.model.ConsoleModel initializeSettings
    INFO: Reading console settings from /home/chase/.missioncontrol/consolesettings.default.xml
    The program 'JRockit Mission Control 3.0.2' received an X Window System error.
    This probably reflects a bug in the program.
    The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
    (Details: serial 1055 error_code 11 request_code 144 minor_code 5)
    (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
    that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
    To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
    option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
    backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

    Which operating system are you on? Is it on the list of supported platforms: http://e-docs.bea.com/jrockit/jrdocs/suppPlat/supp_plat.html ?
    Regards,
    /Staffan

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