Mission Control

Mission Control, formerly known as Exposé and incorporating the features of Dashboard and Spaces, was a tool for managing multiple open windows in Mac OS X (later macOS), allowing the user to quickly see all open windows (or specific sets) without the need to click through many windows to find a specific target. A modified version, App Exposé, was incorporated into iPadOS. Apple announced at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference that it would be superseded by Stage Manager in macOS Ventura (version 13).

Usage
Mission Control has different modes using different criteria to organize the windows:


 * 1) Mission Control can show all open and unhidden windows, shrinking their appearance so they all fit on a single screen. By default, this can be activated using the F9 key.
 * 2) Mission Control can show all open and unhidden windows for the currently-active application.  Again, the windows shrink to appear on the screen together, but generally they shrink less because there are fewer windows in a single application compared to the system as a whole. In the default preferences, this can be activated using the F10 key.
 * 3) Mission Control can move all windows off the screen, giving the user clear access to the Desktop.  In the default preferences, this can be activated using the F11 key.

In the first two cases, after Mission Control is activated, the user can select any window by clicking on it or selecting it with a keyboard-driven cursor and pressing Enter. Mission Control then deactivates, leaving the selected window in the foreground.

The key used for activating Mission Control can be customized to be any of the function keys, the shift, control, option or command key, the fn key on PowerBooks and iBooks, or even a mouse button on multiple-button mice.

The Quartz Compositor ensures that the animations and rescaling are quick and smooth.

Exposé was first introduced with Mac OS X 10.3 ("Panther") in October 2003. Since then, several Microsoft Windows and Linux applications have duplicated its functionality, including WinPLOSION (previously called WinExposé) and Expocity.