How to switch between full-screen apps on a Mac

Full screen hides the menu bar, the Dock and every other window, which is the point, until you need another app. Once you know where full-screen apps live, getting between them takes one key or one swipe.

Full-screen apps are spaces

When an app goes full screen, macOS gives it a space of its own. Apple's Mission Control guide shows full-screen and Split View apps as thumbnails in the Spaces bar, next to the desktops you create. So your desktops and full-screen apps form one row, and you move along it in either direction.

To put an app in full screen in macOS 15 Sequoia and later, click the green button in the window's top-left corner, or hold the pointer over it and choose Full Screen › Entire Screen. In macOS 14 Sonoma, hold the pointer over the green button and choose Enter Full Screen, or click it (Apple's full-screen guide). In any version, ⌃⌘F turns full screen on or off in apps that support it.

With the keyboard

These keys come from Apple's guide to spaces and its list of Mac keyboard shortcuts:

⌃← and ⌃→ step through spaces one at a time, so they're quickest with two or three full-screen apps. With more, Mission Control or ⌘Tab gets you there in one go. Don't mix them up with Fn-⌃← and Fn-⌃→, which tile a window to half of the screen in macOS 15 and later and don't change spaces. More on moving between spaces: how to switch desktops on a Mac.

With a trackpad or mouse

• Trackpad: swipe left or right with three or four fingers, depending on your Trackpad settings. Apple's Multi-Touch gestures list calls this swiping between full-screen apps.
• Magic Mouse: swipe left or right with two fingers.
• Any mouse: open Mission Control and click the app in the Spaces bar. A hot corner set to Mission Control (System Settings › Desktop & Dock › Hot Corners) opens it when you push the pointer into that corner.

If a swipe does nothing, the gesture may be off or set to a different number of fingers. You can turn it on or change it in System Settings › Trackpad or Mouse, where each gesture has a short demo.

Mission Control's Spaces bar

When you can't remember where a full-screen app is, look at all of them at once:

1. Open Mission Control

   Press ⌃↑ or the Mission Control key, or swipe up with three or four fingers.

2. Move the pointer to the top edge

   The Spaces bar along the top shows a thumbnail for each desktop and each full-screen or Split View app.

3. Click the one you want

   macOS switches to that space. To pair two apps instead, drag a window from Mission Control onto a full-screen app's thumbnail, then click the Split View thumbnail.

On a second display, Mission Control shows only that display's windows and spaces. Split View has its own guide: how to use Split View on a Mac. For everything else Mission Control does, see how to use Mission Control.

⌘Tab and full screen

⌘Tab lists every open app, wherever its windows are, and full-screen apps are no exception. When you switch to one, macOS by default switches to a space that has the app's open windows. Apple's guide to spaces names the setting, in System Settings › Desktop & Dock › Mission Control: When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application.

The limit is that ⌘Tab picks the app, not the window. If an app has one window in full screen and others on a desktop, ⌘Tab can't choose between them; the Spaces bar can.

The menu bar and Dock in full screen

Both hide in full screen, and both come back when you need them (Apple's full-screen guide):

• Menu bar: move the pointer to the top of the screen. It hides again when you move away.
• Dock: move the pointer to where the Dock is, at the bottom or side of the screen.

To keep the menu bar showing in full screen, set Automatically hide and show the menu bar to Never, as Apple suggests. On Desktop Only works too: it hides and shows the menu bar only when you're not using an app in full screen. Where the setting lives depends on your macOS:

Leave full screen

Any of these puts the app back on a desktop:

• Press ⌃⌘F, in apps that support it.
• Hold the pointer over the green button (move to the top of the screen first, so the title bar shows), then choose Exit Full Screen.
• In Mission Control, hold the pointer over the app's thumbnail in the Spaces bar and click the Exit button that appears. This works for Split View too.

If you went full screen just to get a bigger window, maximizing may suit you better: the window fills the screen but the menu bar and Dock stay visible, and you stay on the same desktop as your other windows. The difference, and the keys for each: full screen vs maximize on a Mac.

With Flick

Flick lists full-screen windows alongside all the others, marked with a Full Screen icon, so you can go straight to one without counting spaces. Hold ⌥ and tap Tab, or type part of the app's name or the window's title, and let go: Flick switches to that app's space. Flick opens over a full-screen app, so you can go from one full-screen app directly to another, or back to a window on a desktop.

If you turn on Show only the active Space in Flick's settings (it's off by default), each full-screen app counts as its own space, so the others drop out of the list. Flick needs macOS 14 or later, and the free version switches between your 5 most recent windows. The details are in Spaces, minimized and hidden windows.

See how Flick handles Spaces and full screen