Switch to another application in Mac OS X
The Mac OS X interface gives you several options to manage your open windows and applications.
The first option is the "Mac OS X Dock". It is a transparent bar lined with icons, located by default at the bottom of your screen. When you move your mouse cursor to the Dock, you will see the application icon and the name of the selected application. A black triangle under the icon indicates whether or not the application is open. For example:
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| This shows iTunes open. | Here, it is not running. |
To return to an already open application, just click on the icon in the Dock. If the application is not open, it will launch when you click it.
A second way to access an open application is just to click on an open window that belongs to that application. For example, if you are creating a document in Microsoft Word, you can click on an open window of another application, like Safari. That brings the selected Safari window to the foreground.
A useful keyboard shortcut for switching applications is to hold down the Command key and tap the Tab button. This creates a list of the currently running applications onscreen; you can use the Tab button to navigate through them.
One final way that you can switch through application in OS X is by using the Expose feature (Expose is only featured in Mac OS 10.3). This feature is activated by default when you press the F9 button on your keyboard. This moves all the windows on your screen into smaller windows to remove clutter and allow you to find a desired window and easily select it. This option is very useful if you have several windows open. It is customizable in the System Preferences application, under Expose.
