Manage windows on Mac

When you open an app or the Finder on your Mac, a window opens on the desktop. Only one app at a time is active; the name of the app (in bold) and the app menus are shown in the menu bar.

Some apps, such as Safari or Mail, let you open multiple windows or different types of windows at the same time. macOS provides several ways to manage open apps and windows.

Move, align and merge windows

On your Mac, do any of the following:

Move a window: Drag the window by its title bar to where you want it. Some windows can’t be moved.

Align windows: Drag a window close to another one — as the window nears the other one, it aligns without overlapping. You can position multiple windows adjacent to each other.

To make adjacent windows the same size, drag the edge you want to resize — as it nears the edge of the adjacent window, it aligns with the edge and stops.

Merge an app’s windows into one tabbed window: In the app, choose Window > Merge All Windows.

To make a tab a separate window again, select the tab, then choose Window > Move Tab to New Window, or just drag the tab out of the window. See Use tabs in windows.

Maximise or minimise windows

On your Mac, do any of the following in a window:

Maximise a window: Press and hold the Option key while you click the green maximise button in the top-left corner of an app window. To return to the previous window size, Option-click the button again.

You can also double-click an app’s title bar to maximise the window (as long as the option to do so is set to “zoom” in Dock & Menu Bar preferences).

Minimise a window: Click the yellow minimise button in the top-left corner of the window or press Command-M.

You can set an option in Dock & Menu Bar preferences to have a window minimise when you double-click its title bar.

Most windows can be manually resized. Drag the window’s edge (top, bottom, or sides) or double-click an edge to expand that side of the window.

Quickly switch between app windows

On your Mac, do any of the following:

Switch to the previous app: Press Command-Tab.

Scroll through all open apps: Press and hold the Command key, press the Tab key, then press the Left or Right arrow key until you get to the app you want. Release the Command key.

If you change your mind while scrolling through the apps and don’t want to switch apps, press Esc (Escape) or the Full Stop key, then release the Command key.

Close windows

On your Mac, do any of the following:

Close a single window: In a window, click the red Close button in the top-left corner of the window, or press Command-W.

Close all open windows for an app: Press Option-Command-W.

Closing one or all windows for an app does not close or quit the app. To do so, press Command-Q, or click the app’s name in the menu bar, then choose Quit [App]. See Quit apps.

You can hide the active app by pressing Command-H.

Use Mission Control to quickly arrange open windows and spaces in a single layer to easily spot the one you need.

Close All Windows in a Mac App with a Keystroke

Most Mac users know that hitting the Command+W keyboard shortcut will close the currently active window, but with a slight modification and by adding an additional key press, you can close all windows in just about any Mac OS X app or the Mac Finder.

What is this super excellent keyboard shortcut for closing everything?

It’s easy to remember, just add Option to the traditional close shortcut making it this: Command + Option + W

Command + Option + W will close ALL windows on a Mac

Hitting Command+Option+W will close all windows in the currently active Mac application, or the Finder of Mac OS X. If the window is open, it will close after hitting that keystroke combination.

Not into keyboard shortcuts? You can also access the “Close All Windows” option from File menu options in either the Finder or just about any Mac application, but it’s invisible by default until you hold down the “Option” key when choosing the File menu. This transforms “Close” into “Close All” as shown in this screen shot:

The short video below demonstrates this trick as well:

The windows close rapidly, if you want to quickly try this out yourself an easy place to start is in the Mac OS X Finder. Just open a bunch of new Finder windows (by hitting Command+N in modern versions of Mac OS X a bunch) and then hit Command+Option+W to close them all out. Or you can try it in another app by opening a bunch of documents in something like TextEdit or Preview and closing those all out together too. Close All is best used in applications when auto-save is left enabled, otherwise the window closing process will halt as a save dialog box is summoned and waiting for an action. If you happened to turn off auto-save in Mac OS X at some point, just turn it back on to get uninterrupted use out of this keystroke.

Note how this is very different from closing windows on quit, which closes all the windows when the application is quitting, thereby preventing the auto-restore function of Mac OS X from relaunching those windows. This trick closes the active windows, but does not quit the app or discard the windows from restore.

The Command+W keystroke for closing a single window has been around on the Mac since the earliest days of the operating system, and the Option modifier has been around for ages as well, but despite that, few Mac users seem to be aware of it. Learn this trick, you’ll surely use it often.

How to quickly close all Finder windows on Mac

Have you ever had a ton of Finder windows open and took the time to close each window one-by-one? I think some people get into the habit of doing this simply because Command (⌘)+Q doesn’t work with Finder. You can’t “quit” the Finder app, so that popular shortcut for closing apps won’t work.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be relegated to the tedious effort required to manually close a bunch of Finder windows. Instead of individually closing out of each window that you have open, there’s a simple way to quickly close all open Finder windows.

How to close all Finder windows at once

Step 1: Open Finder.

Step 2: Hold the Option key while clicking the File menu.

Step 3: Click Close All.

This will close all Finder windows in one fell swoop. Actually, the Close All command works with pretty much any app, but it’s especially useful for Finder since you can’t actually quit the Finder like you can with other apps.

If you’d prefer to avoid the menu bar, you can just use this keyboard shortcut instead:

Do you use this shortcut to quickly close out of the Finder windows on your Mac? Share your thoughts down below.

Hide All Windows on a Mac with Keyboard Shortcuts

We’re going to share several approaches to hide app windows in Mac OS X by using keyboard shortcuts. This is a great collection of tips that will undoubtedly speed up your Mac workflow once you remember the keystrokes and understand how they work.

To be completely clear, hiding a window does just what it sounds like, it hides the app window(s) but does not close them. All of the hidden windows can be made visible again by choosing the application again.

How to Hide ALL Windows in the Active Mac OS X App Instantly

If you need to quickly hide all windows within an active Mac OS X application, just hit Command+H and all the apps windows will become hidden. You can then manually retrieve the windows of the app by clicking through onto the applications Dock icon.

How to Hide All Windows *Except* the Currently Active App / Window

Another great alternative is to hide all the windows on screen except for the currently active window or application. To do this, hit Command+Option+H at any time. This is a great trick to help focus on the task at hand, as literally everything but the most forefront app will be hidden instantly on the Mac screen. Again you can resurface those hidden windows by clicking on the apps Dock icon.

I would recommend combining both of these tips with the ability to make hidden application icons translucent within the Dock, which is activated through a simple Terminal command and it helps to determine which apps are hidden by a visual indicator that is quite obvious. It works great with the use of the aforementioned commands.

Hiding Apps & Windows from the Application Menu in OS X

Any active application menu item can also be used to either hide the current app, or to hide other apps. Just pull down the currently active apps menu bar item (for example, in Safari you would click the Safari menu) and choose either “Hide Appname” or “Hide Others”.

Those menu options are what the keyboard shortcuts are linked to.

Hide away from active apps by Option + Clicking elsewhere

You can also hold down the Option key and click away from a Mac application and it will hide the application or windows being clicked away from.

Remember, hiding windows is not the same as closing windows, though there is a keystroke to close all windows in Mac OS X too. Equally useful to know, just different!

How do I close window(s) in MAC without re-opening the window

How do I close windows from dock or anywhere else without needing to open the window each time just to close it

If I have 10 windows opened(of the same application) and want to selectively close 7 of them belonging to the same app, is it possible to close them(without needing to re-opening those windows) by right clicking the app icon in the dock/mission control/App Expose/etc and then closing the ones I don’t need? (I also have windows of other apps opened and I don’t to want to navigate through them)

Re-Opening each window and then clicking the close button(or a keyboard shortcut) seems to be too much work. Looks like a useful feature that is missing in MAC

2 Answers 2

No, what you’re asking is not natively possible.

In other words, an application’s Dock Tile menu does not natively allow for closing individual windows the app has open.

If you are looking for the fastest way to close several document windows within an application, then there are already plenty of better ways than using the Dock might provide.

You can cycle through open windows in one app with Command ` (this might vary in other keyboard layouts, but it’s usually the key to the left of Z). You can close several documents in one application with a succession of Command W , using Command ` to flick past documents you want to keep open. I’d say that’s much quicker than trying to close 7 of 10 in the Dock. If you get a prompt to Save or Don’t Save, you can use Command S or Command D .

You can use the Application Windows function key to show all the windows of an application. Also Mission Control shows you all the windows of all apps.

You can close all documents of one app with Alt Command W , or by alt-clicking on any window’s red dot.

You can also Minimize windows into the Dock, but I would advise against it. It’s very easy to forget about what you’ve minimized, and you have to un-minimize before you can do anything else with the window. You can’t use the window cycling shortcut above to access minimized windows.