MacOS – Method to switch between group of groups of Mission Control Spaces

macosmission-controlspaces

I often find myself switching between multiple distinct tasks over the course of a day. For each of these distinct tasks, I have multiple Mission Control Spaces that I switch between.

For example, while I'm working on X, I might have an Excel window, then a PyCharm window, then a Finder window, then another Excel window. Then, when I'm working on Y, I might have an RStudio window, then a Chrome window, then a PyCharm window, then a Finder window.

Each of these is open to a very particular thing, and the order helps me cognitively by letting me maintain a model of "where things are physically".

My best solution so far is just to have lots and lots of Spaces, with task X being Spaces 1-4, and task Y being Spaces 5-8. The problem is that looking at Mission Control can then be incredibly confusing – so many windows, such small thumbnails. It's even worse when there's multiple monitors.

I would love to have a "meta-spaces" capability where I can switch between the Spaces for X and the Spaces for Y (and maybe also for Z, etc.). Ideally, this would be with a keyboard shortcut.

Best Answer

As far as I understand, no such capability exist natively in macOS. Neither am I aware of any such general purpose, third-party tool which works on top of Mission Control.

While the following solution doesn't completely fulfil all your requirements, it may help to a certain extent in achieving the desired.

In such a scenario, I'd separate groups of such task-focused Spaces (1 or more desktops) by a blank Space/Desktop as shown (by blank I mean a desktop with a blank image set as the background wallpaper):

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Since each desktop can be assigned a different wallpaper, you can create a custom wallpaper with largish text for the blank Desktop, indicating the group of Spaces with the custom task.

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This could help you in quickly locating the desired ground after invoking Mission Control.