[frankmcma]

Windows has a "Show Desktop" command..is there something like this in OSX? I know about Expose, and thats close, but I would love to hit a key or click something and have all Apps instantly hide. Even if its a 3rd party something or other. Any ideas?

FM

[MacOS-Fan]

Try "F11" and see if that is what you are looking for.

[frankmcma]

Yes (that is Expose) but I don't really like the borders and stuff around the screen. Like to just "go to desktop" - hide all - any ideas?

FM

[milhous]

not sure if there's a one-button or one-click solution, but with windows open on the desktop, press [APPLE + OPTION + left-clicking any area where the desktop is viewable] and that will hide everything.

[chris v]

I don't know of one, but you could switch to an app that didn't have any windows open, then hide others. Don't know why you can't hide all, or once you've "hidden others," you can't then hide the one app still visible.

[Chuckit]

You can't hide all apps because some app or another has to be active. For instance, when you're working on the desktop, the Finder is the active program.

[frankmcma]

Milhous...you got it! That is exactly what I was looking for!

I just found this program:
http://www.everydaysoftware.net/showdesktop/index.html

Which does exactly what I want to...seems to work great! But any other solutions..please post them..thanks!!

FM

[chris v]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

You can't hide all apps because some app or another has to be active. For instance, when you're working on the desktop, the Finder is the active program.

This is true-- the Desktop is just a directory displayed full-screen in the Finder.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by chris v

This is true-- the Desktop is just a directory displayed full-screen in the Finder.

It is more than that.

[tooki]

Not really. chris v is quite right. The desktop really is just a big Finder window. You can verify this with the Quartz Debug application from the developer tools.

Yes, Apple has it set to have special properties (e.g. you can't hide the desktop, even if you hide the rest of the Finder), but other apps do things like that, too.

But yeah, holding command and option when you switch to another application (whether it's by clicking on one of the app's windows or its Dock icon) will switch you to that app and hide all the others. Holding down just option will switch you to that app and hide only the app you were in immediately before.

tooki

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by frankmcma

Windows has a "Show Desktop" command..is there something like this in OSX? I know about Expose, and thats close, but I would love to hit a key or click something and have all Apps instantly hide. Even if its a 3rd party something or other. Any ideas?

FM

Command + Option + clic on the Desktop works for me.

[frankmcma]

Originally Posted by tooki

But yeah, holding command and option when you switch to another application (whether it's by clicking on one of the app's windows or its Dock icon) will switch you to that app and hide all the others.

Cool. Does anyone know if there is a program that does that? I'd love to have only one app showing at a time, and when I click another app icon on the dock it switches to that and hides all others.

Any ideas?

FM

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by frankmcma

Cool. Does anyone know if there is a program that does that? I'd love to have only one app showing at a time, and when I click another app icon on the dock it switches to that and hides all others.

ASM?

[tooki]

Originally Posted by frankmcma

Cool. Does anyone know if there is a program that does that? I'd love to have only one app showing at a time, and when I click another app icon on the dock it switches to that and hides all others.

Any ideas?

FM

Just hold down the option key as you click on programs in the dock. It'll switch to the program you click and hide the one you left. Holding command option will hide all programs except the one you're switching to.

You don't need any special apps to do this.

tooki

[markwm]

I really missed show desktop when I moved to OS X.

OPT-CMD-CLICK desktop does not hide all, it hides everything but the finder. So if you have 20 finder windows open, these remain.

The Show Desktop application linked above works great when it's in the dock, but it doesn't work when in the menu bar for some reason, very buggy app.

I started looking for an applescript to hide all, I've not found one yet that work well when a shortcut key is assigned to it.

[TETENAL]

Just press the F11 key.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by markwm

OPT-CMD-CLICK desktop does not hide all, it hides everything but the finder. So if you have 20 finder windows open, these remain.

Command-option-click is NOT "hide all" -- you CANNOT hide all open applications. Command-option-click hides all the applications EXCEPT the one you clicked on. When you command-option-click on the desktop, you are switching to the Finder, so everything EXCEPT the Finder is hidden.

tooki

[markwm]

Originally Posted by tooki

Command-option-click is NOT "hide all" -- you CANNOT hide all open applications. Command-option-click hides all the applications EXCEPT the one you clicked on. When you command-option-click on the desktop, you are switching to the Finder, so everything EXCEPT the Finder is hidden.

tooki

Didn't I just say that?

[Chuckit]

The equivalent of Show Desktop is F11.

[moonmonkey]

I have mapped Apple + D to show to the desktop with exposé.
Just like Windows.

[monkeybrain]

You can also use Butler to do this. You can use it's 'Show Desktop' command and put it in the Menubar as a button or set it as any hotkey you want. All completely free as well.

Using Butler you can also discover life on Titan, control iTunes, save the rainforests, use multiple pasteboards, and cut your gas bill in half.

[Brass]

Windows is very different to Mac OS X, and the implementation is therefore very different. Windows is a window-centric OS, Mac OS X is an application-centric OS. In Windows, the show desktop utility simply minimises all windows. This effectively hides all applications except for the desktop.

In Mac OS X, minimising all windows would NOT hide all applications except the desktop (eg, the Menu bar would still contain all the menus of whatever application was frontmost, and would most likely not be relevant to the desktop).

The nearest equivalent in Mac OS X that I can think of would be to hide all applications except the Finder, and then to minimise all Finder windows. This ought to be fairly simple to do with an Apple Script.

[Brass]

In fact here's a script that will do it (made by combining two of Apple's example scripts):

Code:
tell application "Finder"
	activate
	set visible of every process whose visible is true and name is not "Finder" to false
	if the (count of windows) is not 0 then
		set collapsed of every window to true
	end if
end tell

Paste the above into a new script, using AppleScript, save it as an application (turn OFF the startup screen), and put it in your dock.

If you prefer, you could make it close all Finder windows, instead of minimising them (which would be faster, if you use the genie effect), and if you were unlikely to want to use them again (Finder windows are easy to create again anyway).

You could optionally create a second AppleScript application to "set collapsed of every window to false" to bring all the Finder windows back at once instead of un-minimising them one by one.

[Krusty]

Option-clicking a dock icon that you want to switch to seems to do the trick for me (and I have option-click set to the custom click of the scroll-wheel button of my 3-button mouse, so its really just a single click of one button).

I still wonder what goal you hope to achieve that F11 through Expose doesn't serve. You want a blank desktop why? To show off a swell wallpaper or something ? If you want quick access to the files on the desktop, just drag an alias of your user's desktop folder to the dock ... voila, you have single-click to show you all files or click-n-hold to choose a file directly off the desktop ... no "show desktop" needed.

[amazing]

try using Paradocks (free): I hide the doc so having the small floating strip that lists ONLY the open apps is very handy for switching. Double-clicking any app in the floating palette opens that app and hides everything else (Finder is listed in the palette since it's an app)

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16203

[Brass]

Originally Posted by Krusty

Option-clicking a dock icon that you want to switch to seems to do the trick for me (and I have option-click set to the custom click of the scroll-wheel button of my 3-button mouse, so its really just a single click of one button).

I still wonder what goal you hope to achieve that F11 through Expose doesn't serve. You want a blank desktop why? To show off a swell wallpaper or something ? If you want quick access to the files on the desktop, just drag an alias of your user's desktop folder to the dock ... voila, you have single-click to show you all files or click-n-hold to choose a file directly off the desktop ... no "show desktop" needed.

I agree with this. It's one of the differences between Mac OS X and Windows, that switchers find difficult. They really want feature X from Windows, whereas feature Y in OS X does the same job at least as well, sometimes even better, even though it is not actually the same feature (or in other cases, no equivalent feature exists in OS X at all, because it just ain't necessary).

[Hal Itosis]

While I agree with every solution above, let me also mention this:

If what the user wants is instant access to desktop items, then
another method to achieve that end is to (open the Home folder
and) drag the blue icon for the Desktop folder onto the Dock.

That way, one click on that icon will open a window which can
be set to whatever view is preferred (list by date, icon by kind,
whatever). It will have only actual desktop items (no disks, etc).

That desktop icon could be also used as a contextual menu...