Quick Hide!

Quick Hide!
Mac Tip#77/06-Nov-2002

Application Switcher, Mac Tip#24/10-Oct-2001, mentioned in passing that you could Hide applications. Here’s a more detailed look at that.

With it coming up to the time of year when many people buy presents for others you may well find that you’re busy surfing the web one day researching the perfect present for a family member when they suddenly walk in the room. Don’t worry — you can quickly Hide what you’re looking at and seem to be enjoying the delights of your desktop picture, or maybe the spreadsheet you claimed to be working on.

Under OS 9 and earlier you would simply go to the top right-hand corner of your screen to the Application Switcher. Click on the word or icon available there and choose Hide [name of application], eg Hide Internet Explorer.

Under OS X you’ll find the Hide command under the Application menu at top left of your screen (to the right of the Apple menu).

Under both the older and the newer operating systems though there’s an even quicker and easier way to hide what you’re currently working on: hold down the Option key and click on a window which doesn’t belong to the application or click on the Desktop.

For example, if I’m working in Eudora (my email software) and want to hide it I can click on the Desktop or on a window belonging to perhaps Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word. Eudora will be hidden and Explorer or Word will come to the front.

It works the other way round too. If I want to admire my desktop picture and there are bits and pieces of other software cluttering up my screen — a toolbar from Word, a list of mailboxes from Eudora then instead of choosing Hide I can choose Hide Others. That’s better — my desktop picture is fully revealed while all those stray toolbars etc are hidden.

If you’re using Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) then there’s a handy keyboard shortcut for Hide Others: Command Option h. [Update for Mac OS X 10.6: this still works.]