Apple WWDC: What We Expect Best Mattress Deals Assessing Viral Sleep Hacks Netflix Password Sharing Meal Subscription vs. Takeout Best Solar Companies Verizon 5G Home Internet Best Credit Cards
Want CNET to notify you of price drops and the latest stories?
No, thank you
Accept

Manually rearrange full-screen apps, spaces in OS X Lion 10.7.2

If you hate OS X Lion's Mission Control because of the inability to manually rearrange desktop spaces and full-screen apps, the recent 10.7.2 update should turn your outlook around.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani

Mission Control was touted by Apple prior to Lion's release as a feature that would increase OS X user productivity by providing quick access to various windows and apps. Instead, many users have found the feature lacking, specifically lacking the ability to rearrange desktop spaces and full-screen apps in their order of preference.

With last week's release of the second maintenance release of OS X Lion, OS X 10.7.2 brings with it the ability to rearrange desktop spaces and full-screen apps by simply dragging and dropping them.

Rearranging items is easy, but if you are accustomed to the feature not being present, and you didn't read the full release notes of the 10.7.2 update, it's something you might not discover on your own.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani

Launch Mission Control either through gestures or the Mission Control icon. Decide what order you would like your desktop spaces and full-screen apps in. For demonstration purposes, we are going to move iCal to the last position. To do so we click and drag the iCal thumbnail to the right, toward the end of the row.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani

While you are dragging the thumbnail across your screen, it will take on a transparent look. As you move past a space or app, it will shift automatically.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani

When the space or app is in the position you are happy with, drop it in place.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani

If you had previously set Mission Control to rearrange items in order of last used, you will need to turn it off if you want the order you placed spaces and apps in to take remain in place. You can do so by visiting System Preferences > Mission Control.