Mac Hot Corners are shortcuts for your mouse. Just throw your mouse cursor to the corner of the screen (the easiest place to hit) to perform quick actions. You can instantly lock the screen, start a screensaver, show the desktop, show all windows and more.
If you use your Mac with a standard two-button PC mouse instead of Apple’s Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse, Hot Corners can replace the multitouch gestures that you miss out on. The Mac’s built-in Hot Corners feature gives you a really quick and easy way to navigate your computer, and I recommend you turn them on and use them.
How to use Mac Hot Corners
To start using Hot Corners on your Mac, first open System Settings > Desktop & Dock (on older versions of macOS, that’s System Preferences > Mission Control). Click the Hot Corners… button at the bottom of the panel.
You can set a different control for each corner of the screen using the four pickers. Here’s what all of the Mac’s Hot Corners settings do:
- Mission Control shows you all the windows you have open.
- Application Windows shows you all windows from the current app only.
- Desktop moves all your windows aside to show your desktop. This proves handy if you have a bunch of stuff in the way and you just need to open a file on your desktop.
- Notification Center (does anyone use that on the Mac?) will show your notifications and widgets.
- Launchpad shows you all the apps you have installed.
- Quick Note creates a little scratch pad for copying down snippets of text, pasting images, etc.
- Start Screensaver plays your screensaver without requiring a password.
- Disable Screensaver does just what it says
- Put Display to Sleep will turn off your display without locking the computer.
- Lock Screen will put you on the login screen.
You can set any of these Mac Hot Corners settings back to “—” if you want to disable it.
A hidden feature: Modifier keys
There’s a hidden feature in the Hot Corners panel on your Mac. If you click one of the Hot Corners dropdowns while holding down any of the modifier keys — Control, Option, Shift and/or Command — you’ll see that key or key combo symbol in front of the selected setting. That means the Hot Corner will only activate if you have that key (or set of keys) held down as you move the cursor there.
If you really want to set a Hot Corner in the top-left, hold down Shift or Command so that you don’t accidentally set it off when you’re just aiming for your Mac’s menu bar.
How I set up my Mac Hot Corners
I set the Hot Corner in the upper-right to Desktop. Since I keep a few folders in the upper-right of the desktop, it makes sense to make that Hot Corner activate in the same place. Plus, the Desktop Hot Corner hides a secret trick up its sleeve. If you start to drag a file, you can bump your cursor into the Hot Corner mid-drag to move it between your desktop and another Finder window or app.
I set the bottom-left Hot Corner to Application Windows, which shows you all of the open windows of the current app. I collect a bunch of Finder windows on the left half of my screen, so this comes in handy frequently. (You can use this feature in combination with the Desktop feature for moving files between windows.)
I set the bottom-right Hot Corner to lock my Mac’s screen. You can use a keyboard shortcut for this (⌃⌘Q). However, it’s faster to use the Hot Corner if my right hand is already on the trackpad. I use this with the Shift key (from my left hand) to prevent me from locking the screen accidentally.
Charlie Sorrel contributed to this post. We originally published this post on how to use Mac Hot Corners on April 15, 2019. We updated the information.
