OS X Lion: Hide and show windows

To more easily see your work when you have several windows open, you can shrink windows to thumbnails, or temporarily hide individual windows or entire applications.

• Zoom into Mission Control using one of these methods:

  • From a trackpad, swipe up using three or four fingers. To make a window active, click it. To leave Mission Control, swipe again.

  • From the keyboard, press the Mission Control key. If your keyboard doesn’t have a Mission Control key, press F9 (Fn-F9 on portable keyboards).

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• To make a window active, click it.
• To leave Mission Control, swipe again, or press the key you used to enter Mission Control.

1. Press and hold the application’s icon in the Dock. You may have to first open the application from Launchpad to see its icon in the Dock.
2. From the shortcut menu that appears over the icon, choose Show All Windows or Show Recents.

   The smaller thumbnails are for closed documents you recently worked in.

3. To make a window active, click it.

• To hide one window, click the yellow minimize button (-) in the window’s upper-left corner. The window is minimized to the Dock.
• To hide the windows for specific applications, open the application menu and choose a Hide option. For example, in the Finder, choose Finder > Hide Finder, or Finder > Hide Others. In TextEdit, choose TextEdit > Hide TextEdit, or TextEdit > Hide Others.
• To hide all windows so you can see the desktop, press Command (⌘)-Mission Control key. If your keyboard doesn’t have a Mission Control key, press F11 (Fn-F11 on a portable keyboard).

• Click a window or an application icon in the Dock.
• Choose Show All from any application menu.
• If you pressed keys, release them or press the key combination a second time.