How to switch between full-screen apps on Mac (and when to stop using full screen)

To switch between full-screen apps on a Mac, press Control-Right Arrow or Control-Left Arrow, or swipe left or right with three or four fingers on a trackpad. Every full-screen app lives in its own Space, so you're not really switching windows — you're sliding between desktops. That one fact explains every quirk people hit with full screen: the order that keeps changing, the app you can't find, the Control-number shortcut that skips it. Here are all the ways to move between full-screen apps, the settings that control them, and the point at which full screen stops helping.

How to switch between full-screen apps on Mac

There are four routes, and they behave differently:

Method	How	What it's good for
Control-arrow	`⌃→` / `⌃←`	Stepping to the neighbouring Space, one at a time
Trackpad swipe	Three or four fingers, left or right	Same as Control-arrow, by hand
Cmd-Tab	`⌘⇥`, pick the app	Jumping straight to a named full-screen app
Mission Control	`⌃↑`, F3, or swipe up	Seeing every Space at once and clicking one

Control-arrow is the keyboard answer most guides give, and it works, but it's linear. With a desktop and four full-screen apps, getting from the first to the last is four presses, and you have to remember the order.

Cmd-Tab is the one people forget. Pick a full-screen app in the switcher and macOS slides you over to its Space. It's the only built-in method that goes by name rather than by position — which matters, because the position isn't fixed (more on that below).

Mission Control shows the Spaces bar along the top: your desktops first, then each full-screen app as a thumbnail. Click one to go there. It's the best way to see what you actually have open when you've lost count.

Trackpad swipes are Control-arrow for your fingers. Whether it's three or four fingers depends on System Settings → Trackpad → More Gestures → Swipe between full-screen applications.

One thing that doesn't work: the Control-1, Control-2… "Switch to Desktop" shortcuts in Keyboard Shortcuts → Mission Control only cover desktops. Full-screen apps don't get a number, so there's no direct keyboard jump to "the third full-screen app".

Entering and leaving full screen

Control-Command-F toggles full screen in almost every app.
Fn-F (Globe-F on newer keyboards) does the same in apps that list it under the View menu — Safari, Mail, Notes. Support in third-party apps is patchy.
The green button: click it, or hover and choose Full Screen → Entire Screen.

Don't confuse Fn-F with Fn-Control-F, which is Fill: the window grows to the whole screen but stays a normal window on your desktop. That distinction is the most useful thing in this post, and we'll come back to it.

Why the order of full-screen apps keeps changing

If Control-Right takes you somewhere different every day, it's this setting in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control:

Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use. When it's on, macOS moves recently used Spaces — full-screen apps included — closer to the front. Turn it off if you navigate by position; your full-screen apps will stay in the order you opened them.

Two neighbours worth knowing:

When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application. This is what makes Cmd-Tab jump to a full-screen app. Turn it off and Cmd-Tab activates the app without moving you — so you see its menu bar but not its window.
Displays have separate Spaces. With more than one monitor, each display gets its own row of Spaces and its own full-screen apps. Our guide to that setting covers what flipping it changes.

Two apps in full screen: Split View

You can put two apps side by side in one full-screen Space. Hover over the green button and pick a left or right tile option under Full Screen, then choose the second app from the thumbnails on the other side. Or open Mission Control and drag a window onto a full-screen app's thumbnail in the Spaces bar.

The pair then behaves as a single Space: Control-arrow moves past both at once. Drag the divider to change the split. Our split screen guide covers the details — and the fact that Split View only ever does two.

When full screen stops helping

Full screen is great for one thing at a time: a film, a long document, a presentation. It gets awkward the moment your work involves several windows, because each full-screen window becomes a separate desktop:

Your other windows are a Space away, so dragging a file between two apps means Mission Control or a mid-drag hover at the screen edge.
The order is either reshuffling itself or something you have to memorise.
Notifications, the menu bar and the Dock are hidden until you go looking for them.
Switching between two full-screen apps plays the slide animation every time.

If what you actually wanted was "this window, big", Fill gives you the size without the extra desktop. The window takes the whole screen, the menu bar stays put, and every other window stays on the same desktop, one keystroke away. Our maximize-without-full-screen guide walks through Fill, Zoom and full screen side by side.

A keyboard setup that replaces full-screen hopping

Once your windows live on one desktop instead of five Spaces, switching between them becomes a window problem rather than a desktop problem — and that's the problem a window switcher solves.

Let's Switch is ours. Hold ⌥ and tap ⇥ and you get a live preview of every open window, most recent first, across all your monitors; let go and you're there. The window you were just in is always one tap away, whichever app it belongs to, and Option-backtick cycles one app's windows. That part is free, permanently. Pro ($9.99 once, no subscription, no account) adds an ⌥Space search palette: type three letters of a window's name instead of tapping through a list.

An honest caveat, since this post is about Spaces: like most window switchers, Let's Switch works with the windows in your current Space. It doesn't replace Control-arrow for jumping into a full-screen app — it makes the full-screen app unnecessary, because your big windows can all sit on one desktop.

To get them big without full screen, Fill works for one window at a time. For two or three, Let's Tile puts a grid over the screen so you can snap windows into halves or thirds in a couple of keystrokes — thirds are free.

Frequently asked questions

What's the shortcut to switch between full-screen apps on Mac? Control-Right Arrow and Control-Left Arrow. They move one Space at a time, and full-screen apps are Spaces. Cmd-Tab also works if you'd rather pick the app by name.

Why can't I find a full-screen app? It's in its own Space, not on your desktop. Open Mission Control (Control-Up Arrow) and look at the bar along the top — each full-screen app has a thumbnail there.

How do I stop full-screen apps changing order? Turn off Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control.

How do I make a window fill the screen without full screen? Press Fn-Control-F (Window → Move & Resize → Fill). The window fills the screen but stays on your current desktop, with the menu bar visible.

For more ways to move around without the mouse, see the rest of the blog, starting with how to switch windows on Mac with the keyboard.