How to Manage your Open Windows with Stage Manager

In this video, we’re going to look at Stage Manager on the Mac. This was introduced with MacOS Ventura. With stage manager, what we’re able to do is manage all of our open windows, we can easily move some of our windows off of our display. And then when we need them, we can pull them back onto the display. Let’s see how stage manager can help us manage our open windows on the Mac.

Now, as I mentioned, this was introduced with MacOS Ventura. So if you’re using an older version of Mac OS, you will not be able to use this feature. Let’s open up a number of windows and see what the problem is, when we have a lot of windows open. We’ve all been through this, I’m going to open up Safari here. And now let’s just open up a few Pages.

And I’m going to open up maps. Let’s open up my calendar, we’re also going to open up my reminders. And then we’re going to open up my notes. So I have a lot of windows open, what I would like to do is go to my calendar, I click on it, and it brings a forward. Now what I’d like to do is go to one of my Pages from Safari, the only way I can do that is by going to Safari here, and then I can click on the page that I want, I can also go up to Window here and select the page. And what I can use is Expo ze or Mission Control, this is another way of doing it, I swipe up with four fingers on my trackpad. And I can see all my open windows and I select which one I want. So those are the various ways that we can manage our windows. But with Stage Manager, what we’re able to do is group these different windows together. And it makes it a lot easier to find a specific app open up a specific app such as the Calendar app. In order to turn on stage manager, what we need to do is go over to our control center. So now I’m going to go to my control center here. And then you’re going to see stage manager. I’m going to click this and watch what happens with the left side of my display here. When I turn it on. I’m going to turn it on here. And we can see that all of my apps moved over to the left are the apps that are in the background. Right now I’m in Safari. So all of the other apps, they just moved in to the side here. So now all I’m doing is looking at my Safari windows here, I want to go to my calendar, all I have to do is just click on the calendar here and watch what happens with my Safari windows, they move over to the side, I want to go to my notes, I click on my notes here, calendar moves over to the side.

So this is the basics of stage manager. The way that it basically works is what we’re looking at here is on our stage. Over on the left, we have our cast members, this is how I like to picture it. When I’m working on my stage, I want to see just the apps that I’m working with, in this case, it’s Safari, when I’m working with my calendar here, I’m no longer working in Safari, so I need to move those off of the stage. So I just click on it. And now we can see that Safari is off on the side there and it’s no longer on the stage. Now what we can also do is group these different apps together, maybe what I’m doing is I’m working in notes along with Safari. So I’d like to have both of these open at the same time. Well, I can do that. All I have to do is just click on safari here, I have Safari on the stage. And I also want to bring notes up on the stage. How do you think I do that, all I have to do is just drag this out. And now I have notes and Safari on my stage. When I click on my calendar here, watch what happens. Both of those apps move over to the side here, there are no longer on the stage, I need to get back to my notes in Safari, click on it. And it brings me back to just those two apps. Let’s say I wanted to add my reminders in here. All I have to do is just drag it on to the stage I can have multiple apps on my stage at the same time. Now I am no longer needing my notes on here. I want to move this off of the stage. But I want to keep my reminders and Safari open. All I have to do is just drag this over to the left.

And now we can see my notes are here. And when I click on it, it moves Safari and reminders over to the side.

Click on it again. And now I can see my two apps here. I want to remove reminders from here. I just take this and drag it over to the side. And now my reminders are on the side. So I’m just looking at Safari here I can even separate these windows. So I have four different windows open in Safari. Let’s move this window here. Over to the side, if we look, you’re gonna see that I have my one Safari window here, but I have these other three Safari windows open here, I want to go to this Safari window, I click on it, it closes to the other three. So we can even separate windows from apps.

Now we do have a few settings for this. These are located in our system settings. So I’m going to go to my Apple menu here. And we’re going to go to System Settings. Watch what happens when I open this up, it’s going to move Safari over to the side, because I just want to work in my system settings. So it can keep our desk clean our display clean, we can only see the windows or we only see the windows that we want to work with.

Now what I need to do, I’m in my settings here, what I need to do is go to desktop and dock. This is where the settings are located for Stage Manager. From here, you’re going to see stage manager. If you want to turn it on and off, you can tap on the slider, although I find it a lot easier to go through

the control center. Now we can also add this to the minibar, I’ll show you how you do that towards the end of the video. Let’s first look at our customization options. What I’m able to do is show my recent applications on the side here, if you no longer want to see those, maybe you’d have a smaller screen and you’d like to move these off of the screen, all you have to do is just tap on the slider here. And when you do, we can see it no longer shows all those apps. So how do I get to him, all I have to do is just bring my cursor over to the left edge. And it shows all those apps again, I move my cursor away, and they disappear.

We can also have it show our desktop items, you’re gonna see that I can see everything on my desktop here. Well, when I turn this off, what it’s going to do is it’s going to hide those desktop items. Let’s go ahead and turn it off. I can no longer see my desktop items, I want to see what is on my desktop. How do I do that? Well, all you have to do now is just click on the desktop anywhere on the desktop and watch what happens.

I can see my files here and moved to Settings off to the side, I can open up these folders here. Click on the desktop to bring it back. Now I want to go back to my settings or my other app. When I do that. It hides the desktop items again. So if you no longer want to see your desktop items, you want to have a nice clean background. This is how you can do that by turning this off. And it’s very easy to get to your desktop items, all you have to do is just click on the desktop.

We can also show the windows from an application all at once, or one at a time. When this is turned on, I’m going to leave it at all at once right now. And we’re going to close this. We’re going to quit out of Safari. And now I’m going to reopen it. And what I’m going to do is open up a number of windows here. So I have four different windows open. When I go to another app, what it’s going to do is

move all four of those windows off of the display. I click on it, it brings them back all at once. If I wanted to bring them back individually, what I would do is I would go to my system settings here. And we go over to our desktop and dock we go to customize our stage manager. I go to one at a time. And now we can see I only have one window open in Safari when I click on it or when it brings me to SAFIRE it’s just bringing them in one at a time. It’s not bringing them in all at once. Now of course I can bring other windows in by dragging them out here. And now those two windows are going to be in this stage or on this stage. And then when I go over to these two windows, it closes those other two and brings the other ones back. So you can have all of your windows come in and all at once for a specific app or one at a time. Now I mentioned that we could also add our stage manager to our mini box.

So then you no longer have to click on the control center here to turn it on and off. I do not leave stage manager on all the time in some apps, I have a little bit of a tougher time such as Final Cut Pro. So I like to turn stage manager off so I need easy access to it. Well the way that you can do that or turn it on and off easily is just by adding it to your menu bar. To do that, we go back over to our System Preferences or system setting sorry. And then what we do is we go to our control center and under our control center, we have all the different options for our Menu Bar, including our stage manager, what I’m able to do is set this to show in the menu bar. When I do this, we can see that stage manager here is in my menu bar, and I can easily turn it on and off, just by going to my menu bar. It also gives me easy access to the settings. So as you’re setting it up, what you may want to do is add it to your menu bar here, so then you can easily access the settings. Now, this does not interfere with our other options, I can still use XYZ or Mission Control to get to all of my windows. Remember how I did that at the beginning of the video, I swipe up with four fingers, and I can see all of my open windows, I can still do that. So this complements all of the other features with Mac OS to manage your windows, it doesn’t replace anything, I can still use Mission Control to find a specific app window. But in addition to that, what I’m also able to do is use stage manager here to group different windows together.

So that is the new stage manager that we have on the Mac. This is a great way to manage your open windows. It does work well with other Mac OS features, it complements them. So again, we can still use all of our other features such as motion control. But in addition to that, what we are able to do is just show specific windows on our Mac when we’re working in an app. Let’s say we can group different windows from different apps together. We turn this on by going over to our control center and then turning it on and off and then we can also set it up in the menu bar. So that is the new stage manager that was introduced with Mac OS Ventura and how it can help us manage our open windows on the Mac.