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I'm aware of all the hide all / minimize all shortcuts (cmd + alt + h/m) and am looking into something more sophisticated: I want to minimize all windows except active one – like the Shake function in windows 7 (Minimize Windows using shake)

I work with lots of chrome windows and I have to focus on one of them

Can this shake be customized to minimize all except the one with focus?

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  • 1
    Why not just "Hide Others" with cmd-opt-H?
    – daGUY
    Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 15:29
  • 2
    because it will just hide other apps and all the windows of Chrome will remain there. I need to hide all WINDOWS (even of the same app I am using) except for active one
    – Emil
    Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 20:57
  • Why not make the one to concentrate on full screen then everything else is hidden?
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 18:44
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    @Mark who asks "Why not make the one to concentrate on full screen then everything else is hidden?" // A: because that only works completely on a singkle display. On multiple displays, other windows stay visible. Which may or may not be what you want. // Also, because sometimes apps won't maximize, or because sometimes the window geometry must stay fixed.
    – Krazy Glew
    Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 19:53

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Select Hide Others from the active application menu, or use shortcut alt ⌥+cmd ⌘+H

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  • 17
    hide others isn't the answer. the osx window manager groups windows together by app. so "hiding others" actually just hides other apps, not other windows. :/
    – worc
    Commented Sep 21, 2016 at 22:16
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Not the straightest way to accomplish it, but better than "hide others" or "buy 3rd party app".

  • Go to "Window" menu to get a notion of what name or number your current window has;

  • Minimize them all: ⌥⌘M (or just hold ⌥ to get "All" while at "Window" menu);

  • Then, while you still have minimized app's active focus, you can either press control↓ to get preview of its windows or you can try finding window you need using windows list in "Window" menu.

P. S. Not strictly necessarily but rather useful to have window minimisation effect changed from Genie to Scale (I'd prefer to turn off animation at all but unlikely there's such an option); Genie is noticeably (more) slow when you have a bunch of windows minimizing at once

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    Thanks for the tip! Using BetterTouchTool (a third-party app, but extremely useful) I bound both steps to one key combination (CTL + ALT + M) which first minimizes the windows (ALT + CMD + M) and then brings up the Exposé (CTRL + ↓).
    – P A N
    Commented Aug 17, 2017 at 9:09
  • You're welcome. I added a note about Scale/Genie there — since I'm here again :)
    – poige
    Commented Aug 17, 2017 at 10:43
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For TextEdit, so far, as well as GoogleChrome for this OP who I copied and hacked from https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/115523/user3439894,

on Build keyboard shortcut for "minimize all windows of current app except the current window" cheers, ta,
the AppleScript, of which I know very very little

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    set miniaturized of windows of application ¬
        "TextEdit" whose index is not equal to 1 to true

worked ok for me EDIT: snarfed and adapted to get this Automator script which so far works on Mojave on Finder, TextEdit, Terminal, Preview, Opera after granting access control in System Preferences

tell application id "com.apple.SystemEvents" to tell the first process ¬
    whose frontmost = true to tell a reference to windows 2 thru -1 to ¬
    if exists then tell the value of attribute "AXMinimizeButton" to click

Many thanks to @CJK Applescript - Close all windows except frontmost window

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There are third party applications you can purchase that mimic Aero Shake / Aero Snap features.

See here: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/

Here is an article on another app that can do it: http://lifehacker.com/5873264/isnap-brings-aero-snap-and-shake-to-minimize-to-the-mac

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  • Thanks, but neither of them work for Chrome (which I'm using most) in hiding the windows.
    – Emil
    Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 8:29
  • The best thing to do would be to create a script for alt+s/h for example to hide all windows except focused
    – Emil
    Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 8:30

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