How do I use spaces in Mountain Lion?

Okay. I assumed something at the very get go. (And you know what they say about that!)

Go into System Preferences and select Mission Control.

You will see a parameter that you should uncheck called "automatically rearrange...." If that is checked, then uncheck it. That does just as it says it will.

The Reopen windows is not going to solve your problem completely.

I (here's that word again) assumed that you checked out all the params and still had these problems. I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Jerryb wrote:

Okay. I assumed something at the very get go. (And you know what they say about that!)

Go into System Preferences and select Mission Control.

You will see a parameter that you should uncheck called "automatically rearrange...." If that is checked, then uncheck it. That does just as it says it will.

The Reopen windows is not going to solve your problem completely.

I (here's that word again) assumed that you checked out all the params and still had these problems. I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

👿

I had already done that. It was only after reopen windows was set that application assignments stuck.

But it is even more complex than that. Making an application assignment stick seems to involve having a window for that application open, not quitting the application, and sometimes even restarting the computer, before the correct options become available, and you may have to reset them after the restart. At least this seems to be the case for some applications.

Not intuitive.

⚠

Jerryb... Thanks for this great tips. First place I have seen this tip. I liked Spaces in Snow Leopard, but this is better and might I add down right cool!

Thanks

Not sure if this "solved" it but it seems to have worked for me. I closed and while in "space" #1, reopened the app that I wanted to have in "space" #2. Then, opened Mission Control, dragged the app to space #2, and then the extended Right Click options appeared, including the option to assign to a space.

So I don't know how to get that menu to show up for every app, but you should be able to anchor apps to specific spaces/desktops through the plist file 'com.apple.spaces.plist' located in the Preferences folder of the user's Library folder. The plist file has an item called "app-bindings" which for me shows 'org.mozilla.firefox' and then a string. I'm not familiar with this plist file, though, so maybe someone else knows better how to work with it.

Found the solution:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4138506?start=0&tstart=0

I've had the same issue. I removed the spaces preference file and restarted the dock. This seems to restore the function for all apps.

Open terminal and type:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist; killall Dock;

Hi izaakm,

I've got the same issue. Unfortunately, trashing the spaces prefs makes no difference (well, it resets spaces... but Mail and Safari simply refuse to reveal the right-click menu items that allows me to select which space they are tied to).

I'm guessing that this is a 10.8 "feature" (i.e. a bug), which I hope will be ironed out in the soon to be released 10.8.1.

We can but hope.

There seems to be a frustrating amount of "one step forward, two steps back" about Apple's OS releases... With each release they seem to iron in as many wrinkles as they iron out!

Okay, yeah, so there's definitely some weird behavior going on here. I was having the problem described (no option in the dock menu to keep an app stuck to a certain 'space') with another third party app, and I didn't check Safari. Deleting the plist file enabled the menu for me with the third party app, and I didn't think to check Safari, but you are, of course, correct.

However, I was able to modify the plist file to assign Safari to a space. But again, there's some weird behavior, because I wasn't able to assign Mail to a space. Here's how I assigned Safari to my second space. (I'm not a developer, nor am I really into coding, so maybe someone else with more knowledge can offer some help with this, or simply provide better instructions.)

1. Open Firefox

2. Assign Firefox to my second desktop

3. Open '~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist' (you might need a plist editor or text editor)

4. Find the item "app-bindings" under the item "root"

5. "org.mozilla.firefox" should appear under "app-bindings" with a type "string" and a value that appears to be a long, random string of characters

6. add a new item under "app-bindings" (at the same level as "org.mozilla.firefox") called "com.apple.safari" of type "string" and the same value as "org.mozilla.firefox"

7. Save the plist file

8. Open terminal and type "killall Dock", then press 'return' -- you should see the dock restart.

(Note: The plist file is automatically updated by the system periodically, so you have to make the changes, save the file, and kill the dock fairly quickly.)

9. Open Safari from your 1st desktop and it should move you to your second desktop and open Safari there

Here's what my plist file looked like when I was done.

I hope the people at apple are aware that the ability to add a new desktop fails completely if you have your dock positioned on the right edge of the screen.

It's not failing, it's just different -- the "new desktop" function is now available in the top-left side of the screen.

Confirmed; thanks for pointing that out.

I do think that apple might have done better to just have the "+" button visible, the same way the "+" to add a new tab is visible in most browsers.

Thanks

Michael

I finally figured out how to set specifc desktops to specific apps like in snow lepard. It was really ******* me off and i came close to uninstalling montain lion but I changed my mind. It was the simplest thing, just go down to your dock, right click on the app(safari for example) go up to options then click assign to this desktop AND then finally the mutiple desktops acts like spaces!!

Is it still possible to use the option-number combo to jump to a space (i.e. pressing option+3 to jump directly to space 3)? I still have that ability on my iMac that I upgraded to Mountain Lion - but I set it up two years ago under an earlier OS. I can't seem to enable this behavior on my new Mac Mini. I can swipe through Spaces with the Magic Trackpad, I can Option-Arrow between Spaces, but I can't Option-1, Option-2, etc.

@Bill Aviles - On my system in Mountain Lion, control+[number] jumps to that space. Interestingly, I searched System Preferences for "Spaces", and it took me to the Mission Control preference pane, but I couldn't figure out how to access any menu that would let me adjust the keyboard shortcuts for Spaces from there. However, If you go into the Keyboard preference pane, and choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, there should be a list of keyboard shortcuts for Mission Control that you can change.

You are right, sir! I don't remember ever having to go into Keyboard Shortcuts before (as I think they were enabled by default before), but lo and behold I saw the list of unchecked shortcuts under System Control. I checked them all, and now I'm good. Thanks for the tip!

Whilst on the subject of Spaces...is there a way of showing an 'empty' desktop in a space? i.e. Without documents, files or folders from other spaces?