The Mission Control Clutter
Mission Control (accessed by swiping up with three or four fingers on a trackpad, or pressing F3) is the fastest way to see every open window on your Mac at a glance. By default, macOS tries to organize this view by grouping windows belonging to the same application together. For example, if you have three Safari windows and two Pages documents open, Mission Control will stack the three Safari windows slightly behind each other, and do the same for Pages.
While this looks neat, it actually makes Mission Control slower to use. Because the windows are stacked, the ones in the back are partially obscured, forcing you to hover your mouse over the stack to see which window is which. If you frequently have a dozen windows open across five different applications, this grouping behavior defeats the purpose of an “at a glance” overview. If you want every single window spread out flat so you can see their contents instantly, you need to disable grouping.
How to Ungroup Windows in Mission Control
You can force macOS to lay out windows individually via the Desktop & Dock settings.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of the menu bar and select System Settings… (or System Preferences).
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Desktop & Dock (In older versions of macOS, click on “Mission Control”).
- Scroll down to the Mission Control section near the bottom of the right-hand pane.
- Look for the setting labelled Group windows by application.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position (or uncheck the box).
Activate Mission Control again. Instead of neat but confusing stacks, every single open window will be laid out flat across your screen, allowing you to instantly identify and click on the exact document or webpage you need.