Set up Hot Corners on Mac

Hot Corners let you trigger actions instantly by flinging your mouse into any of the four screen corners. It sounds gimmicky until you use it — then it becomes muscle memory. Here's how to configure all four corners, add modifier-key guards, and use a visual configurator that shows all four at once.

What Hot Corners can do

Each corner can trigger one of these actions:

• Mission Control — see all open windows at once
• App Exposé — show all windows of the current app
• Desktop — push all windows aside to reveal the desktop
• Notification Center — slide in the right-side panel
• Launchpad — grid of all installed apps
• Quick Note — immediately create a floating sticky note
• Lock Screen — instantly lock without the menu-bar trip
• Put Display to Sleep — blank the screen without sleeping the Mac
• Start Screen Saver — activate the screen saver
• Disable Screen Saver — prevent it from triggering (useful for presentations)

How to set them up in System Settings

1. Open System Settings (Apple menu → System Settings).
2. Click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Hot Corners…
4. A panel shows four dropdowns, one for each screen corner. Use each one to pick an action.
5. Click Done.

Changes take effect immediately — no restart needed.

Add a modifier-key guard

If you keep accidentally triggering a corner, hold ⌥ Option, ⌘ Command, ⌃ Control, or ⇧ Shift while opening the dropdown and selecting an action. The corner then only fires when you hold that modifier key as you enter the corner. This prevents accidental triggers when moving the mouse to a screen edge.

Setting corners via Terminal

Each corner is stored in com.apple.dock. The four keys are wvous-tl-corner (top-left), wvous-tr-corner (top-right), wvous-bl-corner (bottom-left), wvous-br-corner (bottom-right), with a corresponding -modifier key for the modifier requirement.

# example: top-left → Mission Control (2), no modifier (0)
defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-tl-corner -int 2
defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-tl-modifier -int 0

# bottom-right → Lock Screen (13), no modifier
defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-br-corner -int 13
defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-br-modifier -int 0

killall Dock

Common action values: 2 = Mission Control, 3 = App Exposé, 4 = Desktop, 10 = Sleep Display, 11 = Disable Screen Saver, 12 = Dashboard (removed in Monterey), 13 = Lock Screen, 14 = Notification Center, 15 = Launchpad, 16 = Quick Note.

To clear a corner, set its value to 1 (no action):

defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-tl-corner -int 1
killall Dock

Recommended setups

A popular layout: top-left → Mission Control, top-right → Notification Center, bottom-left → App Exposé, bottom-right → Lock Screen. Add an ⌥ Option modifier guard on any corner you keep hitting by accident. There's no wrong answer — the best setup is the one that feels natural after a day of use.