MacOS – What will cause spaces to rearrange in Lion

macosmission-controlspaces

I'm having a hard time figuring out what constitutes as "recent use" in Lion that will cause spaces to rearrange(I have the "automatically rearrange spaces based on recent use" box checked). I use both the Option + Number keyboard shortcut and the four finger swipe to navigate between my spaces, but I can't figure out what causes them to auto rearrange.

Here is an example:

  • I've got 3 spaces.
  • In Space 1 let's say I've got Safari and Mail open, Space 2 is iTunes, and let's say TextEdit is open in space 3. The spaces are currently in order 1-3.
  • I start in space 1, then I use the keyboard shortcut to go directly to space 3. I do a few things in text edit and then want to navigate back to space 1. Any way that I choose to navigate back to space 1 will not cause the spaces to reorder, they stay in the order they begun in.

I've tried every form of navigating between and using apps in different spaces to get the spaces to reorder, but I can't cause it to happen. However every once in a while It happens automatically, and I can't figure out what actually caused that reordering to occur, it always seems a bit random. Based on the setting name, I would assume that if I were in Space 1, and then used an app in Space 3 it would rearrange the spaces so that Space 3 was in the 2nd spot, since it was used more recently than Space 2. Am I misunderstanding this?

Has anyone been able to pinpoint what causes the spaces in Lion to rearrange? I'd love to be able to make more sense of this.

Best Answer

From my observations, when you alt-tab or click on an app icon on the dock, the clicked app will automatically be on the second space. This only happens only if the app is in another space that's not in the second one (if it's in the second one then the arrangement won't change).

Control-arrow key and Mission control navigation won't change the arrangement either.