Ooops....One-Window-@-A-Time-It is

Hmm...suddenly my desktop will show only one program at a time. If I am doing email and want to look at the calendar then the email vanishes from the desktop and the calendar appears. To get the email back I need to click on it's dock icon. Same for any other programs. Only ONE can be on the desktop at any given time. Like all are always on top, sort of.

Any suggestions? I tried a few obvious things with no success.

Thanks.

Are you using Snow Leopard 10.6? If so I wonder if somehow it got into this mode?

TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Revealing Mac OS X's Hidden Single-Application Mode

Read it all and see if that is your issue.

That's an interesting article.

Another possibility is that Spaces is active and Stanley is switching between them without knowing it.

I would check Spaces in System Preferences and/or try the "F8" key and see if it shows several Spaces.

Sometimes you can inadvertently, or intentionally, move an app to another space by dragging to the edge of one space.

It was "single application mode".

No idea how I invoked it.

Now that I have tried it and see that you can add apps via the four-finger action on the touchpad I may use it again.

The only recent thing I did was install some Canon digital camera software.

I'm on a mbp 13 with Snow Leopard 10.6.2

THANK YOU!

Excellent tip dtravis7!

There is no end to things to learn no matter how long you've been playing with OSX!

In the 6 or 7 years I have been helping people with their problems I have never heard of that mode before. How do you suppose Stanley managed to invoke that in the first place?

I know that sometimes one application will make changes to seemingly unrelated preference files and maybe that's that happened. Although, I doubt it had to do with the Canon drivers since I just installed them without winding up in Single Application Mode.

BTW, one of these days we need to "do" lunch at BJ's and go terrorize the Apple Store!

RickPrather said:

How do you suppose Stanley managed to invoke that in the first place?

Click to expand...

I think I know what I did to wind up in SA mode.

I have the secrets pane in my system preferences. This allows access to many things including SA mode.

So I am thinking that I must have clicked it by mistake and noticed nothing wrong at the time such that I did not connect cause and effect later on.

That's my guess.

Stanley said:

That's my guess.

Click to expand...

And a good one!

Thanks for clearing that up.

Rick