Mission Control is a feature of the

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

Dashboard For business applications, see Dashboard (business). A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel (IP), or fascia) is a control panel set within the central console of a vehicle or small aircraft. Usually located directly ahead of the drive ...

, Exposé, and Spaces were combined and renamed Mission Control in 2011 with the release of

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Specia ...

. Exposé was first previewed on June 23, 2003, at the

Apple Worldwide Developers Conference The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...

as a feature of the then forthcoming Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Mission Control allows a user to do the following: * View all open application windows * View all open application windows of a specific application * Hide all application windows and show the desktop * Manage application windows across multiple monitors * Manage application windows across multiple

virtual desktop In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the ...

Usage

Exposé and Mission Control include three separate features for organizing windows and open applications: ;All windows :Shows all open and unhidden windows, and all

s, shrinking their appearance so they all fit on a single screen. On newer Mac keyboards, this is activated from the F3 key, or F9 on older keyboards. On Apple's Magic Mouse or multi-touch trackpads, this can be activated by pulling up on the trackpad with three or four fingers. Mission Control redesigned this feature extensively to show all running desktops. ;Application windows : Also called 'App Exposé'. Shows all open and minimized windows for the currently active application. During this mode, the user can choose a window to switch to by using mouse or keyboard, or cycle through windows of different applications by pressing the tab key. This can be activated by pulling down with three or four fingers on a trackpad, the F10 key on older keyboards, by pressing Control + F3 on newer Apple aluminium and MacBook keyboards, or by right-clicking the app's icon on the dock and selecting 'Show all windows'. On

OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conferenc ...

, App Exposé can be activated by clicking and holding the application's icon in the dock. ;Desktop : Moves all windows off the screen, with just the edges of the windows visible at the side of the screen, giving the user clear access to the desktop and any icons on it. This can be activated by pressing

Command Command may refer to: Computing * Command (computing), a statement in a computer language * COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS * Command key, a modifier key on Apple Macintosh computer keyboards * ...

F3 on newer Apple aluminum and Macbook keyboards, the F11 key on older keyboards. On a trackpad, it can be selected by placing four fingers on the trackpad and pulling them away from each other. In the first two cases, after Mission Control is activated, the user can select any window by clicking on it or selecting it with arrow keys and pressing ''Enter''. Exposé then deactivates, leaving the selected window in the foreground. Using

Apple Mighty Mouse The Apple Mouse (formerly Apple Mighty Mouse) is a multi-control USB mouse manufactured by Mitsumi Electric and sold by Apple Inc. It was announced and sold for the first time on August 2, 2005, and a Bluetooth version was available from 2006 ...

, it is possible to select a window using the Scroll Ball, by scrolling in the direction of that window. The keyboard shortcuts used for activating Exposé can be customized to be any of the function keys, the shift, control, option or command key, the

fn key The key, short form for ''function,'' is a modifier key on many keyboards, especially on laptops, used in a compact layout to combine keys which are usually kept separate. It is typically found on laptops due to their keyboard size restrictio ...

on Mac laptops, or even a mouse button on multiple-button

mice A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

(including Apple Mighty Mouse). Different features of Mission Control can also be activated by moving the mouse to a 'hot corner' of the desktop. This system is off by default; it can be enabled from

System Settings System Settings (System Preferences on macOS Monterey and earlier) is an application included with macOS. It allows users to modify various system settings, which are divided into separate Preference Panes. The System Settings application wa ...

Changes in Mission Control

When Exposé first premiered in 2003, it could be controlled using the F9, F10 and F11 keys. The Exposé shortcut keys were moved to the F3 key to make room for the "rewind", "play/pause" and "fast forward" keys. On Mac keyboards made after 2004, Exposé can be activated by using the F3 key or in combination with the command key, or on the trackpad of Macbooks supporting multi-touch interface. (However, F9, F10 and F11 can still be used for controlling Exposé with the function modifier key, or by enabling the "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" setting.) On Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Exposé featured a new organized grid view and allowed users to activate Exposé from the Dock. In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, some features of

, Exposé, and Spaces were incorporated into Mission Control. This gave an overview of all running applications just like "All windows" but grouped windows from the same application, and added a display of Spaces. Desktop view and application window view were retained, the latter under the name of App Exposé, and could be accessed through gestures on multi-touch trackpads. Some users criticised Mission Control in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for not offering an unobscured "Exposé" view of all the windows in single workspace: windows of the same application are always hidden in bundles. This issue was fixed in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, however, with a checkbox in the System Settings pane allowing a user to choose whether to group windows of the same application. Some features of Exposé and Spaces from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard did not return, however: it does not show the names of the windows displayed, nor does it return the added functionality provided by Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard multiple desktops feature, known as "Spaces," which allowed users to drag and drop windows between desktops with a single click, and also allowed for larger thumbnail previews of each desktop in a 2D grid when in use. In

OS X Mavericks OS X Mavericks (version 10.9) is the 10th major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mavericks was announced on June 10, 2013, at WWDC 2013, and was released on October 22, 2013, wo ...

, the linen-texture background in Mission Control has been changed into a dark-grey background, as a part of moving away from

skeuomorphism A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, ) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort t ...

. In

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...

, the dark-grey background has been replaced with a translucent background, lightly showing the desktop's background and the desktop no longer zooms out. In

OS X El Capitan OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Followin ...

, the grouped window by app view has been changed into ungrouped windows view by default and the translucent background being changed to being transparent that fully shows the desktop's background. In

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the ...

has been discontinued, therefore removing Dashboard from view permanently (if it was previously activated) in Mission Control.

Undocumented features

The "blob" is a hidden and undocumented interface to Exposé that was discovered by a member of the MacNN forums. When clicked, it enables the "Application Windows" mode. When Option+clicked, it enables the "All Windows" mode. Another undocumented feature of Exposé is for the show desktop function. It places all the open windows in a small box on the screen that can be moved to anywhere on the screen. This function has some bugs, after exiting the show desktop mode, the foremost window will not have a shadow and the user will not be able to move the window. However, this is easily fixed by using the show all function. It also had another bug that causes an area of screen the width of the minimised preview to become unresponsive to mouse clicks requiring the windowserver to be restarted.

Mission control evolution

Using the

Shift key The Shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row. The Shift key's name originated f ...

, Mission Control can be activated in

slow motion Slow motion (commonly abbreviated as slo-mo or slow-mo) is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger in the early 20th century. This can be accomplished through the use ...

, as can

and the minimise effect and several other animations. This is the same effect that was demonstrated by

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

during the unveiling of Exposé during the 2003 Worldwide Developers Conference.

Virtual desktop

Similar effects are used on other operating systems.

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

2.0 first introduced a window switcher in 1990. Using , users could see a flattened view of all open windows. Every version of Windows since then has also provided this window switching functionality. Vista and Windows 7 provide an additional feature called

Windows Flip 3D Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are very numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including Management features new to Windows Vista, additional management features, Security and ...

, which has a broadly similar purpose. Flip 3D allows a user to flip through all open windows with a three-dimensional perspective. A downside to this method is that the front-most window covers a significant portion of the other windows, unlike Exposé. On the other hand, this allows the user to see the contents of the front-most window, while this can be difficult in Exposé, especially if the user has a large number of windows open. Vista's

Desktop Window Manager Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE) is the compositing window manager in Microsoft Windows since Windows Vista that enables the use of hardware acceleration to render the graphical user interface of Windows ...

exposes a public API that allows any application to access the same thumbnail representations that Flip3D uses, and so there are a number of third party add-ons that are able to provide Exposé-like functionality in Vista. A very few third-party applications, such as the Emcee Desktop Organizer, provide Mission Control-like organization of similar windows into visual "stacks," or support Windows 8's "Immersive" Apps.

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

adds a very similar feature called Task View which also includes multiple-desktop support. Microsoft's Intellipoint Software for Microsoft Mice has a feature similar to Exposé as it also works with live images of windows, rather than static representations. Additionally, several freeware Windows applications exist to emulate the functionality of Exposé. Compiz and

KWin KWin is a window manager for the X Window System and a Wayland compositor. It is released as a part of KDE Plasma 5, for which it is the default window manager. KWin can also be used on its own or with other desktop environments. KWin can be c ...

are compositing window managers for systems using the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

. Both include plugins similar to Exposé - the scale plugin in Compiz and the present windows effect in KWin. Skippy also performs similar functions to Exposé. Starting with version 3.0, the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

desktop environment has gained a new mode called "Overview", which is used to launch applications and manage workspaces. In this mode, windows are scaled and arranged in an Exposé-like fashion for quick switching. For Classic or Legacy Macintosh systems, the free Finder Workspaces offers functionality similar to Spaces.

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

has a window overview mode that shows a thumbnail of all open windows, available by pressing the 'window switcher' key or swiping up with 3 fingers on the trackpad. Windows in overview mode can be closed by clicking an associated close button, or selected by clicking on the window thumbnail, which also closes overview mode and brings the selected window to the foreground.

References