Shortcut to minimize all windows on OS X

Is there a shortcut to minimize all windows like in Windows? In Windows it's Windows Key + D.

5 Answers

There is no shortcut to minimize all windows of all applications. Some alternatives:

• To hide (all windows of) all applications but the current one, press ⌘⌥H, or ⌘⌥-click on another application's window. If you ⌘⌥H while in an application with no windows up, this will have the effect of hiding all windows.

  Hiding an application is distinct from minimizing its windows; the application's windows will not appear in the Dock, and all of them will reappear the next time you switch to that application.

• To minimize all windows of the current application, press ⌘⌥M, or ⌥-click on the minimize box .

  (In general, the ⌥ key often means “apply to all”, especially for windows.)

• To reveal the desktop, press ⌘Mission Control key (shared with F3), or use a separate keyboard, mouse button, or screen corner shortcut set in System Preferences → Mission Control → Show Desktop.

  While in Show Desktop mode, existing windows are pushed off the edges of the screen but newly-created windows (such as from menu commands in the current application) can be interacted with. Switching applications, except to the Finder, will cancel Show Desktop mode.

There's no exact substitute. Mac OS X is designed more around applications with multiple windows each, e.g. in the separation of application switcher (Shift-)Cmd-Tab and window-cycling (Shift-)Cmd-Backtick, while windows is designed more around windows (largely, but the Windows 7 taskbar recognizes related application windows).

You can press F11 (or Fn-F11, depending on the configuration in System Preferences » Keyboard) to move all windows out of the way to get access to the desktop (part of Exposé, configure in System Preferences » Exposé & Spaces), or press Cmd-Opt-H to hide all applications but the currently active one. To minimize the currently active application's windows, press Cmd-Opt-M, or select Window » Minimize All while keeping Opt pressed.

---

The following AppleScript hides all applications but one -- it doesn't seem to be possible to hide all of them.

tell application "System Events" to set visible of every application process to false

---

The following AppleScript should minimize all windows. It can be a real pain to restore them though.

tell application "System Events" repeat with p in every application process whose visible is true click (first button of every window of p whose role description is "minimize button") end repeat
end tell

5

Could also be useful: What are the differences between minimizing and hiding an application? - Apple - Stack Exchange.

Another Applescript for minimizing all windows:

tell application "System Events" set procs to file of processes whose visible is true
end tell
repeat with proc in procs set proc to proc as text try tell application proc to set (miniaturized of windows whose miniaturizable is true) to true end try
end repeat
tell application "Finder" to set collapsed of windows to true

1

There is no standard way to do this. I double checked on Mavericks and El Capitan, one of the following three ways will work:

1. ⌘⌥H and then M
2. fnF11
3. ⌘F3

using the first method, all windows will be hidden. For method 2 and 3, all windows are hidden temporarily -- if you click on any app, then all windows will come back.

Why not use the key code for F11 in applescript. Special thanks to for helping me figure this out.

tell application "System Events" key code 103
end tell

2

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy