Mac window shortcuts: the complete keyboard cheat sheet
Apple documents Mac window shortcuts across about four different support pages, none of which tell you where they stop. This is the whole set in one place: every keyboard shortcut macOS ships for moving, sizing, hiding and switching windows — and, for each group, the thing it can't do, so you know when you've hit the edge of what's built in rather than assuming you pressed the wrong keys.
Everything here is a macOS default on Sonoma and later. Tiling shortcuts arrived with Sequoia, so on Sonoma that first table will be mostly empty.
The complete Mac window shortcuts cheat sheet
Tiling and resizing
The Fn key and the Globe key are the same key — Globe on recent Apple
keyboards, Fn on older and third-party ones. Every tiling shortcut is built
on it.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Fill the screen | Fn + Control + F |
| Center the window | Fn + Control + C |
| Return to previous size | Fn + Control + R |
| Left / right half | Fn + Control + ← or → |
| Top / bottom half | Fn + Control + ↑ or ↓ |
| This window left, the one behind it right | Fn + Control + Shift + ← |
| This window right, the one behind it left | Fn + Control + Shift + → |
| Top and bottom pair | Fn + Control + Shift + ↑ or ↓ |
| Half on one side, quarters on the other | Fn + Control + Option + Shift + arrow |
What it won't do: put a window in a corner. The four quarters exist in the Window → Move & Resize menu, but Apple ships no keyboard shortcut for any of them — the only quarter you can reach from the keyboard is the one that comes free with the half-and-quarters arrangement. There are also no thirds anywhere, by menu or by key. If your shortcuts don't fire at all, the causes are catalogued here.
Minimize, hide, close
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Minimize this window | Command + M |
| Minimize every window of this app | Option + Command + M |
| Hide this app | Command + H |
| Hide every other app | Option + Command + H |
| Close this window | Command + W |
| Close every window of this app | Option + Command + W |
| Show the desktop | Fn + F11 (or Command + Mission Control) |
What it won't do: bring a minimized window back. There is no "un-minimize" key. Once a window is in the Dock it drops out of Cmd-Tab, out of App Exposé and out of most switchers — which is the whole argument for hiding instead of minimizing, where Cmd-Tab brings everything back in one press.
Note the scoping in that table: Option + Command + M and Option + Command + W act on the front app only, not on your whole desktop. There's no built-in shortcut that closes or minimizes everything at once — that needs a different approach.
Moving between windows
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Switch apps | Command + Tab |
| Switch apps, backwards | Shift + Command + Tab |
| Cycle windows of the current app | Command + ` (grave accent) |
| Cycle them backwards | Shift + Command + ` |
| Full screen on / off | Control + Command + F |
What it won't do: get you to a specific window. Cmd-Tab is an app switcher — with four Chrome windows open it takes you to Chrome and then leaves you to find the right one with Cmd-backtick, blind, one window at a time. That gap is the single biggest reason people install a third-party switcher.
Seeing everything at once
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Mission Control (all windows) | Control + ↑ |
| App Exposé (this app's windows) | Control + ↓ |
| Move one Space left / right | Control + ← or → |
| Go to a numbered Space | Control + number |
What it won't do: stay out of your way. Both are full-screen takeovers that scatter every window into a grid you then have to aim at with the trackpad. They're fine for reorientation, expensive for the fifty times a day you just want a different window. More on seeing every open window.
Where to add your own
Two panes in System Settings hold everything customisable:
- Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Windows — the tiling and Move & Resize entries. You can rebind what's there and add the missing corner shortcuts by their exact menu names.
- Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts — the general-purpose escape hatch. Add a shortcut for any menu item in any app by typing the menu item's name character-for-character. This is how you give Zoom a key, or a corner, or anything else Apple left unbound.
The catch is that both only reach things that already exist as menu items. Nothing in System Settings can invent a layout macOS doesn't have — which is why "just remap it" stops working the moment you want thirds.
When the built-ins run out
The tables above are genuinely most of what a keyboard-first Mac user needs, and if halves and quarters cover your work, you're done — you don't need to install anything. Two specific walls are where people go looking:
You want layouts macOS doesn't have. Thirds and two-thirds on a laptop,
anything at all on an ultrawide, a corner without a menu trip. Third-party
tilers all solve this; they mostly differ in how much you have to memorise.
Let's Tile takes the opposite approach to a shortcut-per-layout —
one shortcut, ⌘↵, drops a visible grid over the window, you steer with the
arrow keys and press ↵. The free tier's 3 × 2 grid covers halves, thirds,
two-thirds, quarters and full screen permanently, which is exactly the set
missing from the first table.
You want a window, not an app. If your day is four browser windows and
three terminals, Cmd-Tab and Cmd-backtick are the wrong shape of tool.
Let's Switch puts ⌥⇥ on a list of every open window across every
monitor, most recent first, with a live preview of each. ⌥ + ` cycles one
app's windows the same way. Both are free, permanently. The open-source
AltTab is the other serious answer here and is
worth knowing about; it's older, more configurable, and rather more work to
set up.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a Mac shortcut to snap a window to a corner? Not by default. Corners exist under Window → Move & Resize but ship unbound. You can add one yourself in Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts using the exact menu wording, per app.
Why do my tiling shortcuts do nothing? Usually the Fn/Globe key: some third-party keyboards don't send it, and some apps grab the chord first. Every cause is walked through in our troubleshooting guide.
What's the difference between Fill and full screen?
Fill (Fn + Control + F) makes the window as big as the desktop, keeping the
menu bar and Dock. Full screen (Control + Command + F) moves it into its own
Space and hides both. The longer answer.
Can I get thirds without installing anything? No. macOS has no thirds in any menu or shortcut, so there's nothing to bind. That one genuinely requires a third-party tiler.
Does Command + Tab switch windows?
It switches apps. To move between windows of the same app use Command + `
(grave accent), one at a time, with no preview of where you're going.