Minimizing windows the Snow Leopard way.

If there’s one thing I really envied about Microsofts Vista operating system it was their users ability to minimize their windows in a way that wasn’t ass backwards. Since moving to OS X I’ve moved away from minimizing applications as much as I did on my beige boxes, mostly because having all of those windows next to the trash was annoying.

Snow Leopard has taken a step towards fixing the problem. Sadly it does not handle minimized windows as well as Vista or Windows 7 but it’s a huge step forward. You can now minimize to the icon, but you need to enable it before you can access it.

Enable Access

Open your Preferences, then click Dock, and then check the “minimize windows into application icon” button.

Use it

There you go, but, before you’re confused on how to get them back, you need to hold the option key and right-click on the icon that has the minimized windows. Click the window that you want and Viola!

Added Tip: If you hold down the option key while clicking the minimize window button, all the open windows in that application will be minimized together and at the same time. Super Handy.

Photo Credit:bolti22

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.