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Mac 101: Active Screen Corners

New to the Mac? Welcome back to our Mac 101 series, which explores the basics of Mac OS X, provides tips and tricks, and dives into key features of Apple's bundled tools.

If you've ever had a panicked moment at work when you need to clear your screen quickly (because you're working on a colleague's birthday card, of course!), Active Screen Corners are for you. They can also activate your screen saver, and help you manage Spaces and Exposé.

To use Active Screen Corners, first open System Preferences (by selecting it from the Apple Menu). Then, click the "Exposé & Spaces" icon.

In the Exposé tab, you'll see there are four corners that you can activate. To use an Active Screen Corner, just move your mouse all the way into that corner. To reverse the action, just move your mouse out of, and then back into, the same corner.

For each corner, there are several handy options. Read on to see what you can do with your Active Screen Corners.

  • All Windows shows you every open window in the current Space.
  • Application Windows shows you just the windows from the application you're using now.
  • Desktop temporarily hides your windows, and shows you your desktop.
  • Dashboard shows your Dashboard, obviously.
  • Spaces shows you all the Spaces you have configured (which you can do in the Spaces tab, if you haven't already).
  • Start Screen Saver will activate your screen saver, naturally.
  • Disable Screen Saver will prevent your screen saver from appearing. This can be helpful, for example, if you're monitoring a long file copy, or making a presentation.
  • Sleep Display puts your display to sleep, as you might imagine.
  • simply disables that Active Screen Corner.


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Mac 101

New to the Mac? Welcome back to our Mac 101 series, which explores the basics of Mac OS X, provides tips and tricks, and dives into key...
 

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emilyrln

Is there a way to temporarily disable the active screen corners without going into System Preferences and resetting each one to the "-" (no function) setting? I've been playing a game that uses the mouse to navigate and I keep accidentally falling into Dashboard or Desktop or what-have-you, but I hate having to undo and reset my screen corners each time I start or stop the game.
Any suggestions?

February 07 2009 at 7:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DrewMack

Recently one of my Macs refused to respond to its hot corner command to activate the screen saver which I use to quickly lock the screen. Resetting the preference and logging out and back in failed to restore this hot corner. I had to restart to get it working again.

December 12 2008 at 2:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Keakealani

Exposé is one of my favourite features... although I should point out that it's not exclusive to Leopard since I used it on Tiger and only just recently upgraded... but it is one of the better features for multi-window type people. My setup is usually upper left=desktop, lower left=dashboard, lower right=all windows, upper right=app windows (and more recently, spaces)

November 19 2008 at 5:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Emortio

I absolutely LOVE the active screen corners!

Top Right = Spaces
Top Left = Dashboard
Bottom Left = All Windows
Bottom Right = Desktop

Need some help though. Is there any way to get an active screen corner to do two things? I use the top right corner for spaces, but I find it more useful if it shows Spaces AND All Windows (Exposé) at the same time.

I know there's a way around it using the blue blob (or glob, or whatever), but you have to click on that blob.

At the moment, I set up my active screen corners as top right spaces, then I just click the middle mouse button (which I reserved for All Windows).

I don't mind the status quo, but it'd be nice if i could have it do both at once.... maybe a terminal command??

November 11 2008 at 8:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charlie

Hi !
I use a dual monitor setup (just recently) and used to REALLY LOVE the screen corners thing. But now, the bottom right screen corner is no longer active on my primary monitor, and I have to drag the mouse ALL the way to the other monitor lower right corner, thus making it no longer useful.
Do any of you know a way to make the active corners only work on the primary monitor ??

thanks for your help (in advance)

November 10 2008 at 9:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
richard funnell

I don't think this was mentioned, but you can also add a modifier key to activate hot corners, like apple-option-top right will perform X command. Just try holding control, command, option or shift on the dropdown menu to see your options.

This is actually really helpful to keep from accidentally hitting a corner, having to hold down another key can give you a bit more control if you (like me) swing the mouse around like a crazy person.

Multiple possibilities for one corner would be even better, but that'd probably add a lot more complexity than it's worth :)

November 10 2008 at 9:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to richard funnell's comment
TuxToaster

I actually just mentioned that in my comment a bit ago, but the more the merrier :-)

IMO it would be a great idea to add it to the post as well, since not everybody reads the comments.

November 10 2008 at 10:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sockatume

I'm incredibly jealous of these, I've got to say. Back in Win98, you had an active corners feature where you could, for example, assign one corner as a "disable screensaver" area if you just wanted to sit back and stare at the screen. And then MS took it away.

November 10 2008 at 5:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to sockatume's comment
TuxToaster

I think it's still available if you buy the Microsoft Plus! add-on pack.

November 10 2008 at 8:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dorv

Is there something that might get in the way of active corners?

I've got the 'clear all windows' tied to a corner, and sometimes it just doesn't (I locked it to two of the corners, and neither will work when there's a problem).

November 10 2008 at 5:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
cmuska902

This has been one of my favorite things about Mac OS since I discovered it. It's an absolutely key feature to excellent productivity for us artists.

Top Left = Screensaver
Top Right = Desktop
Bottom Right = Spaces
Bottom Left = All Windows

Only negative to these is that if someone else is using your computer and they accidentally venture into one of the corners, they have no idea what is happening.

November 10 2008 at 5:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ArrowJ

I wouldn't mind screen corners if there was just some way to control the sensitivity of them. When I'm using the track pad it isn't much of a problem, but when I'm using an external mouse I'm constantly setting them off on accident which means I end up not using the top corners (the worst offenders for my setup). I've searched high and low for a solution to this, but have found nothing.

November 10 2008 at 3:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to ArrowJ's comment
TuxToaster

I know at least in 10.4, you could set modifier keys to the hot corners (i.e. you would hold shift and move your mouse to the corner to activate it, instead of just moving your mouse.) To set it up, you just held down shift, control, command or option (or any combination of them) while selecting the corner action in the preferences.

There is also a 3rd party option, called QuickSilver (http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver), that lets you do a number of things, including setting actions to hot corners with a configurable delay.

Hope this helps!

November 10 2008 at 4:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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