When you’re busy working on your Mac, you may sometimes have more and more application windows open, even though you don’t actually use most of them anymore. The desktop becomes more crowded and it becomes difficult to keep an overview of the actual tasks you are working on.
Luckily, you can use a super-fast key combination to temporarily hide all open windows on a Mac and focus on just one. You can also hide windows per app. We explain how it works.
How to Hide All Open Windows on a Mac
Want to quickly hide all open application windows on your Mac? Then you can use the following handy key combination: command⌘ + option⌥ + H. Immediately, all open application windows will be hidden, except the one that is active while you perform the key combination.
The windows are not minimized in the Dock; they are immediately hidden and can then only be consulted by clicking on the app icon in the Dock.
Hide manually
Do you want to manually hide a window and not minimize it? Then enter the key combination command⌘ + H off when the window is active. Immediately, the application window will be hidden behind the app icon in your Mac’s Dock.
Difference between hide and minimize
When you minimize a window on a Mac, the window is placed in the Dock but remains visible as a thumbnail. When you hide an application, all windows of that app disappear completely from the screen until you activate the app again. So minimize hides only one window in the Dock, while hiding makes all windows of the active application invisible.