Mission Control (macOS)

Mission Control is a feature of the macOS operating system. Dashboard, Exposé, and Spaces were combined and renamed Mission Control in 2011 with the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Exposé was first previewed on June 23, 2003, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 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

Background

Mission Control was introduced in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as part of Apple’s efforts to unify window management. The goal was to combine the features of Exposé, Spaces, and Dashboard into a single user interface, reflecting a shift toward gesture-driven multitasking and full-screen apps. The feature was first demonstrated publicly at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2011.

Features

Mission Control provides an overview of all open windows, virtual desktops (Spaces), and full-screen applications. Users can interactively move windows between desktops, access the desktop, or enter full-screen mode using gestures or shortcuts. It supports multi-display setups and customizable hot corners.

Usage

Mission Control includes three primary features to help users organize open windows and navigate macOS efficiently. These can be activated through keyboard shortcuts, gestures, or hot corners configured in System Settings.

All windows

Displays all open and unhidden windows and virtual desktops, shrinking them to fit on a single screen. Activated by the F3 key on newer Mac keyboards (F9 on older ones), or by swiping upward with three or four fingers on a trackpad. On Magic Mouse devices, it can be triggered by double-tapping with two fingers. This view allows the user to click on any window to bring it to the foreground.

Application windows (App Exposé)

Shows only the windows of the currently active application, including minimized ones. Users can switch between windows by clicking or using arrow keys. This can be activated by:
* Swiping downward with three or four fingers on a trackpad
* Pressing F10 (older keyboards)
* Pressing Control + F3 on newer Apple keyboards
* Right-clicking the app's Dock icon and selecting "Show All Windows"
* Holding the app icon in the Dock in OS X Snow Leopard

Desktop view (Show Desktop)

Moves all windows offscreen, showing the desktop and its icons. Activated by:
* Pressing Command + F3 on newer Apple keyboards
* Pressing F11 on older keyboards
* Spreading four fingers apart on a trackpad

Interaction and shortcuts

After Mission Control is activated, users can select a window by clicking or pressing Enter. Some Mac input devices, such as the Apple Mighty Mouse, allow selecting windows by scrolling in the direction of the window using the Scroll Ball.

Mission Control shortcuts are customizable: users can assign them to function keys, modifier keys (Shift, Control, Option, Command), the fn key, or mouse buttons.

Additionally, different features can be assigned to screen corners (hot corners), enabling quick access by moving the cursor to that location. This must be enabled manually in System Settings.

Development and design goals

The introduction of Mission Control coincided with Apple's shift toward unifying user interfaces across devices. The growing popularity of full-screen apps, multi-touch gestures, and the need for simpler workspace control motivated the redesign. Mission Control prioritized visual clarity and touch-friendly interaction over detailed window labels or grid previews from earlier versions.

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

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

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

Reception

Mission Control was praised for simplifying multitasking on macOS, particularly for users of MacBooks with multi-touch trackpads. However, early versions were criticized for forcing window grouping by application and omitting certain features from Exposé, such as labeled windows and a grid layout. Macworld and other reviewers noted a loss in functionality for power users.

Undocumented features

The "blob" was a hidden and undocumented interface to Exposé that was discovered by a member of the MacNN forums. When clicked, it enabled the "Application Windows" mode. When Option+click, it enabled the "All Windows" mode.

Another undocumented feature of Exposé was for the show desktop function. It placed all the open windows in a small box on the screen that can be moved to anywhere on the screen. This function had some bugs, such as 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 was 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, Mission Control can be activated in slow motion, as can Dashboard and the minimise effect and several other animations. This is the same effect that was demonstrated by Steve Jobs during the unveiling of Exposé during the 2003 Worldwide Developers Conference.

In macOS Big Sur, Mission Control received visual updates aligned with the system's new design language, including refreshed icons and animations. macOS Ventura introduced Stage Manager (macOS), a new multitasking feature that complements Mission Control but has a different workflow. Mission Control remains available and functional in parallel. In macOS Sequoia, released in 2024, Mission Control added smoother transitions between Spaces and enhanced support for Apple Silicon Macs with multiple displays.

Similar alternatives on other Operating Systems

Similar effects are used on other operating systems.

Microsoft Windows 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, 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 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 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.

Microsoft's Windows 7 introduced a feature called "peeking" that allowed a user to hover their mouse over an icon in the taskbar to reveal a small thumbnail depicting the contents of the application's window or windows. 0
Compiz and KWin are compositing window managers for systems using the X Window System. 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 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 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.

See also

* Dashboard (macOS)
* Taskbar
* Stage Manager (macOS)
* Zooming user interface

References

{{Reflist

User interface techniques