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The fact that each monitor acts on its own in OS X Mavericks is pretty cool. However, I find that I have to use my mouse and click on the unfocused monitor before I can actually slide back and forth its screens (or spaces).
What's the keyboard shortcut to switch focus to another monitor?
update: follow up question
Here's a way that works from the keyboard:
Open System Preferences -> Keyboard and click the Shortcuts tab.
Choose Mission Control from the sidebar.
Scroll down until you see Mission Control listed in the main panel; check its box if not checked, and click the disclosure triangle.
You should see Move left a space, Move right a space, and then a series of Switch to Desktop 1, Switch to Desktop 2, etc. for as many desktop spaces as you have going at the moment.
Check all of the boxes of the Switch to Desktop N type.
In my prefs, each of those Switch-tos has a shortcut already there - Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, ... Ctrl-N, where N is the Desktop number (Control key is shown as a carat ('^'). You can assign whatever you want to these, but keeping them in a sequential scheme helps, so I suggest leaving them as is.
Now, you can switch among your functioning desktops (aka Spaces), and if one you choose is on the other display, focus will shift to that display.
If you don't remember which number a Desktop is, you could first use your shortcut for Mission Control itself (mine is ⌥ Opt-Up Arrow, which I think was the default, but again you can set that for whatever you want). You'll see your current numbered Desktops, and can then use the appropriate shortcut. Press ⎋ Esc to get out of Mission Control.
I see that if I have all of the Switch-tos checked, then if I had another Desktop and check keyboard shortcuts again, the new Desktop is added to the Switch-to list and its shortcut is checked as well. So no need to go back to Prefs after the above steps.
Thanks for stimulating me to poke into this. I was having the same frustration as you and others!
ADDED for El Capitan: In my October 31 2016 note I describe my latest finding for switching to a space in the external display. It seems you need at least two spaces defined on your external display, and then you need to hit Control-N, Control-M, and you will be live in space M, where N & M are space numbers of spaces on the external display.
Best solution I've found thus far is to install the free CatchMouse utility off the app store. It allows you to assign different keyboard shortcuts to "warp" the mouse pointer to the center of each monitor. In my case I've mapped my left hand monitor to Ctrl+⎇ Alt+←, and the right one to Ctrl+⎇ Alt+→.
Note: The link to CatchMouse has been updated to an unknown and untrusted source. Download and use at your own risk!
I just found an open source window manager called slate.. From my point of view it's better than divvy and better than sizeup.. and it has a key binding for switching focus between screens. Its default key bindings are shown here (very customizable).. it defaults to~ ⌘→ and ⌘←
bonus: here is my slate config file.. it can give you some ideas to get you started
From the comments I realized that my above answer isn't about switching focus, rather it's about throwing windows around from one monitor to another. That's not what the question was about.
This solution works assuming that you already have application windows already open in all your monitors..
Take a look at this screenshot to understand my solution (click on it to zoom):
scenario 1 i simply click on ⌘tab to switch between the applications (ie i switch from chrome which is on the already focused monitor to terminal which is on the monitor i want to focus on
scenario 2 I do the same simply by clicking on ⌘`, this makes me switch between windows of the same application.. in the example below i got chrome windows in all three monitors, so I simply go through them until I reach the window I want to switch focus to..
(This should be a comment but I don't have the reputation to post one.)
I have the same issue. I work almost exclusively in full-screen apps and switch between them with ctrl+◀︎ and ctrl+▶︎. I like to work on my primary monitor and use the secondary for Messages. But I don't want to leave Messages visible when I'm not using it; I would rather switch back to the Desktop on the secondary monitor. But to put focus on the secondary monitor, I have to move the mouse pointer, totally defeating the time and effort savings of using the keyboard shortcut for app switching.
For what it's worth, you don't have to click on anything to change focus to a different monitor. You only need to move your mouse pointer where you want focus.
I use Keyboard Maestro to do just this. I mapped the F16 thru F19 keys in this order.
F16 Left monitor move left
F17 Left monitor move right
F18 Right monitor move left
F19 Right monitor move right
I created 4 Keyboard Maestro Actions for this, one for each monitor and one for each direction. Here is the basic shortcut which gets adjusted accordingly:
Move the mouse over to whichever monitor without clicking.
Keystroke Ctrl-[left arrow] or [right arrow], depending.
Actually I changed the Keyboard Shortcut in System Preferences under mission control from:
Ctrl-Arrow to move left/right a space to:
Shift-Control-Option-Command left/right arrow to free up the simpler control arrows for other activities. I also changed the Keyboard Maestro Macro to reflect the change.
While at it I also have the following mission control operations.
F13 Show desktop
F14 Show application windows
F15 Mission Control
I have it set up for the mouse to stay on the changed monitor but it could easily be set to return to where it started from.
just move at SCREEN(Internal,MidX), SCREEN(Internal,MidY) relative to the absolute position
Keyboard Maestro can help you do that.
In my case, I use CTRL + 0,1,2 to refer screen 0, 1, 2. Below is how I configure that. Also, 0,1,2 on number pad is close to your arrow keys, then you can use CTRL + arrows to switch windows on selected display.
Notice, I use click because I want to move the focus to the window under cursor.
Another option is the MacOS window manager inspired by xmonad called Amethyst which has some key-bindings (default) ⌥⇧P and ⌥⇧N to cycle the mouse pointer between screens. There's more it can do of course.
