Making the Most of Expose
Debuting over five years ago with OS X version 10.3 (aka Panther), Expose has been around for a while now. I wondered recently how much people really use this feature of the operating system. A quick look at this entry on Wikipedia regarding Expose quickly disabused my notion that I was familiar with everything it can do.
I’m familiar with the basics: one button to display all open and unhidden windows in thumbnails, one to view all windows of the application current in focus and one to get to the desktop. But to my surprise, Expose allows for much more. For example, did you know that you can do any of the following?
- With the ‘Application Windows’ mode, you can tab through the various applications. Or you can use the scroll wheel on the mighty mouse.
- When activating Spaces, you can use the Expose shortcut for the ‘All Windows’ mode to see all open windows in all spaces.
- Heck, I didn’t even realize that you can use the F3 on the newer keyboards to access all three Expose modes: F3 for ‘All Windows’ mode, Command+F3 for ‘Desktop’ Mode and Control+F3 ‘Application Windows’ mode.
One of my goals this year is to spend less time tinkering and drooling over new applications and getting more familiar and efficient with the ones I already have. Expose is a great example of how my usage only scratches the surface. And I’m curious if others users—even power users—experience the same revelation from time to time.
So how about it? Do you have a feature of OS X that surprised you recently? Or an application that you’ve been using for quite some time? Let me know—I’d love to hear your experiences.
