Four finger swipe to show apps running

in snow lepard i could do a Four finger swipe to show apps running, how ever this doesn't work on lion. anyone know how to do this? i know mission control sort of does it but its not as good

gadgetboyry said:

in snow lepard i could do a Four finger swipe to show apps running, how ever this doesn't work on lion. anyone know how to do this? i know mission control sort of does it but its not as good

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true, cmd+tab does it, though dont know the key gesture

yea, command tab is the only way i know of now.

I was really disappointed that this gesture was removed. Mission Control only shows unhidden applications while the App Switcher shows all open applications. I use the App Switcher constantly so it really blows to be missing this functionality. I really hope this is addressed in an update soon.

Thanks for that shortcut and yea i used that gesture all the time

Totally with you guys. Used that constantly and miss its presence in Lion. Having to cmd+tab is a step back in efficiency IMO.

Doug

Honestly, I've always command tabbed it - more accurate, since you couldn't keep 4 finger swiping to move the selected item. kinda lame how it was. I do make use of 4 finger swiping between spaces, however.

randalthor said:

Honestly, I've always command tabbed it - more accurate, since you couldn't keep 4 finger swiping to move the selected item. kinda lame how it was. I do make use of 4 finger swiping between spaces, however.

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Not quite sure of what you mean, but it was/is very accurate for me. I just tap my 4 fingers on the track pad to invoke the action, and then I can either single tap on the item I want directly, or I can either scroll with 2 fingers left and right or up and down until I reach the desired application. Obviously just single tapping the app directly is less time consuming.

Doug

Try better touch tool. 4 finger gestures are taken but I assigned 5 finger tap to bring up Application Switcher. Another bonus is once you switch to the application with application switcher, you can use the default application expose to get to minimized windows, thus fixing my issue with Mission Control not showing hidden/minimized windows. Thanks guys, for the idea.
Great Tools For Your Mac By Andreas Hegenberg » BetterTouchTool, BetterSnapTool & SecondBar

I've downloaded and installed bettertouchtool twice in the past week (specifically to get back the four-finger lateral swipe to bring up all running apps), and both times my MBP has frozen and forced me to do a hard reboot.

Anyone have similar issues? Is this a Lion issue?

Does it lock up when you try to do the swipe? I don't think you can use 4 finger lateral swipe anymore as that is now the full screen switching built in gesture. If it is just generally locking up then no - I haven't seen that. I've been using BTT ever since I got Lion and it hasn't caused me any problems - but I don't have any gestures that overlap the default gestures.

Yes -- it locks up when I try to swipe. So would you say that I should re-download bettertouchtool (I trashed it after the lock-ups) and give a different swipe gesture to open the running apps?

Thanks for your help

I would give it a shot again. I actually cleared out all gestures that overlapped with the built in swipes and I haven't had any problems. There are plenty of gestures available that don't overlap so I think it is worth a shot.

I gave it another shot. I found out that you can recreate the 4-finger side swipe to show running apps, by actually setting that gesture (in bettertouchtool) to equal "Cmd-Tab" (the equivalent keyboard shortcut). So -- I did it and it worked -- but with a new problem:

Swiping four fingers across now gets me my running apps -- but it also moves me between desktops in Mission Control. Now, I've gone in to System Prefs... Trackpad... and made sure that the 3-finger swipe switches my desktops, NOT the four-finger swipe. But BOTH trigger this, even though the 4-finger gesture is unchecked. I'm a sad camper right now.

You could try 5 finger swipe - but sometimes that gets detected as a 4 finger swipe. You could also try a tip-tap gesture to get you to the cmd-tab. As I said I try not use overlapping gestures, it just tends to cause heartache more than anything.

Wow, thanks for the link! So glad to have the App Switcher back on my trackpad! It's a shame that I have to resort to a third party tool to get what should already be possible.

ok, i'll try what you suggest. thanks very much for your ideas!

Oneironaut said:

Wow, thanks for the link! So glad to have the App Switcher back on my trackpad! It's a shame that I have to resort to a third party tool to get what should already be possible.

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Yes, it's a shame because as we we know, there has never been 3rd party apps that have filled the void before in any other OS X release.

I rarely used the 4 fingers swipe for running apps, even back in SL. So much quicker just to click on the Dock icon with a running light. The window for that app would pop back into the foreground or if in another space, it would switch to the window in that space.

Well I can't think of that many third party apps that provide a functionality that was actually TAKEN AWAY from OS X. I believe this is the first time I've had to use one for this kind of purpose.