Keyboard shortcut to unhide or unminimize a window in OS X
I know how to Hide (Cmd+H
) or Minimize (Cmd+M
) a focused window in OS X, but I can't find a keyboard shortcut or even a menu item to restore, unhide, unminimize, or otherwise show a window that I've hidden or minimized.
Anyone have a suggestion?
Solution 1:
This way requires a bit of practice:
press ⌘ ⇥ (Command-Tab) to show your running apps. Keep holding ⌘.
press ⇥ until you've selected the minimized app
press the ⌥ (Option) key, and let go of the ⌘ key. You must release the Command key after pressing the Option key!
Note that this only works for an app with all of its windows minimized. If there is already a visible window of the app you won't be able to get to the minimized one with this trick.
Solution 2:
To restore one of many minimized windows using only the keyboard:
- Start with a minimized window
- Cmd + tab to the application icon (Continue to hold Cmd).
- Tip: After pressing Cmd + tab once, you can also use arrow left (and right) when holding the Cmd key, to quickly go to the application. This is a handy combination with the next step.
- While holding Cmd, push the up (or down) arrow key on the keyboard. This will bring up a list of all the application's windows (You can release key command key once the window list view comes up if you like)
- Push the down arrow key to select the minimized windows.
- Use the left and right arrow keys to select the minimized window you want
- Push enter to restore the window and bring it into focus (make it the selected window)
(Tested on OSX Mountain Lion. Step 2b tested on MacOS Sierra)
Solution 3:
Another option is to press ⌃F3
(fn^F3
on a MacBook) to bring focus to the dock. From there you can navigate left
/right
/up
/down
to select the window you want to unminimize.
Solution 4:
I always hide applications instead of minimizing windows:
- Just focusing the application again unhides it
- There is no animation
- When an application has multiple windows, I often want to show or hide them as a group
- I keep the Dock hidden, and it would be easy to forget minimized windows in the Dock
Anyway, here are a few (probably not that useful) scripts for unminimizing windows. You can assign shortcuts to them with an application like FastScripts or Alfred.
This unminimizes all windows of the current application:
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
try
set miniaturized of windows to false -- most applications
end try
try
set collapsed of windows to false -- at least Finder
end try
end tell
If minimizing to application icons is not enabled, you could also click the last Dock icon:
try
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
click (last UI element of list 1 where role description is "minimized window dock item")
end tell
end try
This clicks the dock icons of all minimized windows:
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
click (UI elements of list 1 where role description is "minimized window dock item")
end tell
Solution 5:
To show a window that you've hidden with ⌘H, you can unhide it and bring it back to the foreground by switching to it with ⌘⇥ along with perhaps ⌘`.
A clunky way to bring up a window minimized using ⌘M is to bring up the Application Exposé using F10, then navigate down to the realm of minimized windows to select the one you want to restore.