If you’re like me, chances are that more often than not, your Mac’s desktop looks like a clutter of open apps and windows. While Mission Control is helpful in such cases, it doesn’t help with organisation. That’s where macOS 13 Ventura’s new ‘Stage Manager’ feature comes into play. This feature can neatly arrange your windows for you and you can even create groups of apps based on the tasks you’re performing. So, if you want to get started with Stage Manager to streamline your desktop, here’s how to enable and use Stage Manager on macOS Ventura.

How to Enable Stage Manager

Enabling Stage Manager is fairly straightforward. Just follow the steps below and you’ll be up and running in no time.

  • How to Enable Stage ManagerGroup and Unground Apps in Stage Manager

  • How to Group Apps in Stage ManagerHow to Ungroup AppsShow Desktop Items When Stage Manager is Enabled on MacTurn off (Disable) Stage ManagerFrequently Asked Questions about Stage Manager in Mac

  • How to Group Apps in Stage ManagerHow to Ungroup Apps

  • Here, click on the ‘Stage Manager’ icon to turn on Stage Manager in your Mac.

That’s it, macOS Ventura will now automatically stack your open windows, and you can cycle through them with ease. You can click on different apps from the Stage Manager side-bar to cycle through them. Alternatively, you can use the command + Tab shortcut to cycle through apps.

How to Group Apps in Stage Manager

By default, Stage Manager separates every single app that’s open on your desktop. However, what if you’re using two (or more) apps together? For example, what if you’re using Microsoft Edge, while also keeping Slack up to keep a track of incoming messages? Fortunately, it’s very easy to group apps together in Stage Manager. Here’s how to do just that.

  • Now, say I want to bring the Settings app into the same group. Simply drag the settings app from the Stage Manager and drop it into the desktop. That’s it! The two apps have now been grouped together.

Note: You can do this with two separate apps, or two windows of the same app, etc., depending on your workflow.

Pro-tip: If you have grouped multiple apps or windows together, you can cycle through them by using command + tilde (~).

If you’ve grouped apps or windows together, and later want to ungroup them, it’s just as straight forward.

  • If you have multiple apps that are grouped together, you can repeat the process to ungroup as many windows or apps as you want.

Show Desktop Items When Stage Manager is Enabled on Mac

Using Stage Manager automatically hides all the icons from your desktop. This ensures that you get a clean-looking workspace to focus on the task at hand without worrying about clutter. However, if you need to access something from your desktop, you can simply click anywhere on the empty area of the screen. This will hide all the open windows and make the desktop icons visible.

Stage Manager, while useful, is not everyone’s cup of tea. If you don’t find the new window management feature useful, or if you just want to temporarily turn it off, you can do so by following the steps below.

  • Open Control Center on your Mac, and click on the Stage Manager icon.

  • Now, disable the toggle next to ‘Stage Manager’ to turn off Stage Manager on your Mac.

Frequently Asked Questions about Stage Manager in Mac

Which Macs support Stage Manager?

With the command+ tilde (~) keyboard shortcut, you can quickly switch between different windows of the same app.