How to restore a minimized window on Mac (with the keyboard)
You pressed ⌘M, the window shrank into the Dock, and now you want it back without reaching for the mouse. This is one of the few places where macOS quietly refuses to help: the app switcher skips minimized windows entirely, ⌘` skips them too, and Mission Control doesn't show them. Here is every reliable way to restore a minimized window on Mac, ranked by how well each one works from the keyboard — plus the habit change that stops the problem recurring.
Why minimized windows disappear from everything
Minimizing isn't "hide this for a second." macOS treats a minimized window as deliberately set aside, so the tools that normally find windows for you skip it on purpose:
- Cmd-Tab switches between apps, and it won't bring a minimized window forward when you land on one. If every window of that app is minimized, you switch to the app and see nothing.
- ⌘` cycles the front app's windows on the current Space, but only the ones that are still on screen.
- Mission Control (⌃↑) shows open windows. Minimized ones aren't in it — that changed back in the Lion era and never came back.
None of that is a bug, which is why there's no setting to fix it. It just means you need one of the routes below.
The Cmd-Tab Option trick (the fastest keyboard route)
This is the one worth burning into muscle memory:
- Hold ⌘ and tap ⇥ until the app you want is highlighted.
- Still holding ⌘, press and hold ⌥.
- Release everything.
The app comes forward and un-minimizes a window instead of arriving empty-handed. The catch: it restores one window, and you don't get to choose which one. With four minimized Preview documents, you get whichever one macOS picks.
Arrow into App Exposé (when you need to pick a specific window)
Same start, different ending — and this one lets you choose:
- Hold ⌘ and tap ⇥ to the app you want.
- Still holding ⌘, tap ↑ or ↓.
You drop into App Exposé for that app, showing every one of its windows — including the minimized ones, which appear separately from the live ones. Arrow to the one you want and press ↵. This is the only native route that shows you all of an app's minimized windows at once and lets you pick by sight.
You can also reach App Exposé directly for the front app with ⌃↓, without going through the switcher at all.
The Window menu (the one nobody uses)
Almost every Mac app lists its open windows at the bottom of the Window menu, and minimized windows are marked with a diamond. Choose one and it comes straight back. The same list, with the same diamond markers, appears when you Control-click an app's Dock icon.
To get there without the mouse, press ⌃F2 (add fn if your top row is set to hardware controls) to move focus to the menu bar, arrow across to Window, then arrow down to the window you want. It's more keystrokes than the Option trick, but it's the only method where you read window titles before committing — useful when you have six untitled documents open.
The Dock, by keyboard
If the window is sitting as a thumbnail at the right end of the Dock, you don't have to click it. Press fn⌃F3 to move focus to the Dock, use ← and → to reach the minimized window's thumbnail, and press ↵. Press esc to back out.
This works, but it's the slowest option, and it gets worse the more things you've minimized — the thumbnails shrink and stop being identifiable. If you find yourself doing this often, the next section is the real answer.
Every method, compared
| Method | Keys | Picks a specific window? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cmd-Tab + Option | ⌘⇥ → hold ⌥ → release | No | Getting something back, fast |
| App Exposé via switcher | ⌘⇥ → ↑/↓ | Yes, visually | Several minimized windows in one app |
| App Exposé direct | ⌃↓ | Yes, visually | The app is already in front |
| Window menu | ⌃F2 → Window → arrow | Yes, by title | Documents with similar previews |
| Dock focus | fn⌃F3 → arrows → ↵ | Yes, by thumbnail | One or two minimized windows |
| Click the Dock thumbnail | — | Yes | You're already holding the mouse |
The better habit: hide instead of minimize
Once you've done the Option trick a few times, the useful realization is that minimizing is the wrong verb for what most people want. If you're setting a window aside to come back to it in ninety seconds, use Hide instead:
- ⌘H hides the front app. Its windows vanish, the app keeps running, and — crucially — ⌘⇥ brings it straight back, windows and all. No tricks, no Option key.
- ⌥⌘H hides everything except the front app. It's the fastest way to clear a screen you're about to concentrate on.
Hide is round-trippable with the shortcut you already use fifty times a day. Minimize is a one-way street with a toll booth on the way back. Save ⌘M for windows you genuinely want parked out of the flow — a long-running download, a reference doc for later.
The deeper fix: switch to windows, not apps
Most minimizing is a workaround for a different problem. You minimize Chrome because it's covering the window you actually want, and the only tool macOS gives you for "get to that window" is ⌘⇥ — which only understands apps. So you shove things out of the way by hand.
A window-level switcher removes the reason to minimize in the first place. Let's Switch puts ⌥⇥ on your open windows rather than your apps: hold it and you get a live preview of each one, most recently used first, across every monitor. The window you want is usually one or two taps away, so there's nothing to clear out of the way. ⌥` cycles the current app's windows the same way. That part is free, permanently — no account, no telemetry. Pro ($9.99, paid once, up to 20 devices per key) adds an ⌥Space search palette when you have more windows than you want to tab through.
Worth being straight about the trade: AltTab is free and open source and does window-level switching well, and if you specifically want minimized windows pulled back into ⌘⇥ itself, there are tiny single-purpose apps built for exactly that. The argument for switching by window is that it makes minimizing something you rarely reach for — not that it un-minimizes faster.
If the underlying complaint is that your screen is too crowded to see anything, the other half of the answer is placing windows properly rather than hiding them: see tiling windows on macOS and too many windows open on Mac.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a single keyboard shortcut to un-minimize a window? No. macOS has no dedicated "restore minimized window" shortcut. The closest thing is the Cmd-Tab Option trick above, which restores one window of the app you switch to.
Why doesn't Cmd-Tab show my minimized windows? By design — macOS reads minimizing as putting a window away. There's no System Settings toggle to change it. If this is a daily annoyance, either switch to using Hide, or use a switcher that lists windows instead of apps.
Can I restore all minimized windows at once? Not natively, and not from the keyboard. App Exposé (⌃↓) is the closest — it shows all of the front app's minimized windows so you can bring them back one at a time.
Where did my minimized window go? It's not in the Dock. Check whether Minimize windows into application icon is turned on in System Settings → Desktop & Dock. With that on, minimized windows fold into the app's own Dock icon instead of appearing as separate thumbnails — Control-click the icon and they're listed there, diamond and all.
Does minimizing use less memory or battery? No. A minimized window is a normal window that isn't drawn on screen. If you want an app to stop consuming resources, quit it (⌘Q).