Hiding Applications Using ‘Show Desktop’

March 16, 2010 by Nick

This tutorial will show you how to speed up your work flow using Everyday Software’s Show Desktop application to quickly access your desktop and the Finder.

1. Download Show Desktop from the Everyday Software website. Once the download is complete, you will find a compressed disc image (.dmg file) on your desktop. Double click the .dmg to decompress the disc image and mount the volume for installation.

2. To install the application, drag the Show Desktop icon to your hard drive. Because we like to be neat and tidy, we’ll put it our Applications folder. From the File menu, create a new window and drag Show Desktop to the Applications shortcut in the Sidebar.

3. You are now ready to use Show Desktop! In your Applications folder, find the Show Desktop icon and double click to launch it.

4. You will notice a new icon appear on your Dock, right next to the divider between the Apps and Documents. By default, Left Clicking this icon will automatically hide all open applications, and return you to the Finder. But we can also configure Show Desktop to ignore certain applications, more on that later.

First, let’s set up what we want Show Desktop to do. Right Click on the icon to bring up Show Desktop’s feature menu. Users with a single button mouse can click while holding the Ctrl key to bring this up.

5. As we mentioned above, left clicking the icon will hide everything except the Finder. But try Right clicking and notice the heading Toggle Visibility. This is a list of your currently open applications. By selecting an application from this list, you will show or hide windows on an app by app basis. Now, let’s customize Show Desktop’s behavior by selecting Preferences from the top of the list.

6. The Preferences window lets you configure Show Desktop to your liking, such as appearance. By default, Show Desktop will appear in your Dock but by selecting Show In Menubar, you can instead control Show Desktop via the menu bar. Please note that to enable this feature you must quit and restart Show Desktop.

7. You’re almost ready to go! One last feature to note is Show Desktop’s ability to exclude applications from being hidden when you enable it. Let’s return to Preferences. Click on the Exclude button to bring up a list of your Applications. From here, you can select which programs will not be affected by Show Desktop.