10.3: Replace the Exposé 'Show Desktop' behavior
Oct 31, '03 10:12:00AM
Contributed by: Spaztik
This hack creates a new type of Exposé hidden desktop when you press F11. As seen in the screenshot below, all the windows scale down into a tiny translucent box. When you click it, they windows fly back open. Very neat effect!
- Launch Terminal.app in Utilities
- Type: defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-olddesktop -bool false; killall Dock
- Hit F11 and enjoy!
[robg adds: I personally prefer this "show the desktop" effect to the stock version, which shoves all the windows nearly off the screen. You can even drag the box around and place it whereever you'd like to. However, if you're going to test this, you need to know two things:- When a friend was testing it, it locked up his machine tight. Near as we can tell, it crashed/locked the WindowServer daemon. A full reboot was required to unlock the machine, but after that, this trick worked as expected
- When enabled on my machine, I cannot move certain windows (Tools, Layers, etc.) in Photoshop Elements. As soon as I revert the behavior (repeat the above command with true replacing false, or use defaults delete com.apple.dock wvous-olddesktop), everything works again. So for now, I've had to disable this useful hack.
Consider yourself forewarned ... save your work before you test this one!]
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