Mac 101: Using Spaces to organize your windows and applications in Leopard

Setting up Spaces

Getting started with Spaces is easy.

1. Click the Spaces icon in the Dock.
2. When you see "Spaces is not set up. Would you like to set it up?", click Set Up Spaces. Spaces preferences opens.
   
   Tip: You can also choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and click the Spaces icon there. Either way, you'll end up in the Expose & Spaces preferences window.
3. Click (check) the "Enable Spaces" checkbox.
4. If you want Spaces in the menu bar, check "Show Spaces in menu bar".
5. You can add up to 4 rows and 4 columns for your Spaces by clicking the "+" buttons.

How many spaces do you want or need? What you want to use them for? It's completely up to you. You can change your Spaces setup anytime, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Assigning applications to specific Spaces

Leopard not only lets you switch window views with Spaces, you can tell certain applications to open in certain Spaces if you want them to!

Example using iChat, Mail, and Safari

Let's say you want a Space for iChat, one for Mail, another for Web browsing with Safari, and maybe an unassigned space for something later. You’ll need four spaces for this. Decide how you want your four spaces laid out. You can use 2 rows of two columns, or one row of four columns. Either way, click the Rows + (or -) and Columns + (or -) buttons in Spaces preferences until you have the layout you want in the black layout area. We’re going to click the Columns + button twice to use one row of four columns.

Notice "Application assignments" in the middle of the window. Click the "+" button there to add an application. In this case, we'll select iChat for this Space. Highlight iChat and click Add. iChat now appears in the “Application Assignments” pane. To assign iChat to the second space (if you want it there), click the arrows at the far-right of the list to open the drop-down menu below. Choose "Space 2" from the menu.

With this setup, whenever iChat opens, it automatically opens in Space 2!

Use the same process to add the Mail and Safari applications to the Applications Assignment pane, and to set them to use Spaces 3 and 4.

Changing shortcut keys

You can change the shortcuts used to switch between Spaces by changing the pull-down menus at the bottom of the Spaces preferences window. The menus are "To activate Spaces", "To switch between Spaces", and "To switch directly to a Space".

You can set any key combination to move to the next space in your specified order, from Space 1 to Space 2, from 2 to 3, and so on. You can also disable any shortcut if you want to by choosing "-" from the menu(s).

Using Spaces

Once Spaces is set up, press F8 (or your assigned "To activate Spaces" key), or click Spaces in the dock, to display Spaces. Click any space shown to jump directly to that space. You can also drag any window you see in any space to any other space!

Press Control-1 to jump to your first space, Control-2 to jump to your second, and so on (unless you reassigned these shortcut keys, in which case use your assigned key combination).

If you’ve enabled "Show Spaces in menu bar” in Spaces preferences, you can click the Spaces icon in the upper-right of the menu bar, and select any numbered space from the menu.

Use control and the left and right arrow keys to move forward or backward through your Spaces (unless you reassigned these shortcut keys, in which case use your assigned key combination).