Group windows by app in Mission Control

By default Mission Control scatters every open window across the screen in a rough grid, regardless of which app it belongs to. If you have six Finder windows, four Chrome tabs, and a few Xcode windows open at once, finding anything becomes a scan-fest. Enabling grouping clusters all windows from the same app together — much easier to navigate.

Turn on grouping in System Settings

1. Open System Settings → Desktop & Dock.
2. Scroll to the Mission Control section.
3. Turn on "Group windows by application".

Next time you open Mission Control, windows from the same app appear clustered together. Each cluster has the app's name above it. Click anywhere in the cluster to pick the exact window you want.

The Terminal command

The key is expose-group-apps in com.apple.dock:

# group windows by app in Mission Control
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-group-apps -bool true
killall Dock

To go back to the default scattered layout:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-group-apps -bool false
killall Dock

Grouped vs. scattered — which is better?

Grouping works best when you regularly have many windows from the same app open. Writers with multiple document windows, developers with multiple code editors or browser tabs, researchers with a stack of browser windows — all benefit from grouping because you can immediately see "all my Finder windows" or "all my Chrome windows" as a set.

Scattered mode (the default) can be useful if you only have a handful of windows and prefer to arrange them by context rather than app — for instance, keeping a Finder window and its associated Terminal window near each other rather than split across two app groups.

Using App Exposé alongside this

There's a complementary gesture: App Exposé (swipe down with three fingers, or press ⌃↓) shows only the windows of whatever app is currently active. It ignores Mission Control grouping and just shows the current app's windows. Combine App Exposé with grouping in Mission Control and you have fast access either way — global overview or app-focused view.

Does it affect performance?

Grouping has no meaningful performance impact — Mission Control still renders the same windows, just rearranges how they're laid out on screen. The animation may look slightly different (groups of windows animate in together rather than individually) but there's no CPU or memory cost worth worrying about.