Interacting with Background Windows in Mac OS X

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

You may already know that you can move, resize, and scroll inactive windows by holding down the Command key. But did you know that when the Command key is held down, Mac OS X allows complete click-through to inactive windows? This makes it possible to almost completely interact with a window without making it active or bringing it to the front. Click toolbar buttons, make menu selections, switch tabs in Safari, select and drag text, etc. Needless to say, some of this doesn’t work in the Finder or iTunes, being the rebel apps that they are.

UPDATE: A few readers have pointed out that a held down Command key sometimes changes the behavior of a click. For example, in Safari, when the Command key is held, clicked links open in a new tab. So in the case of clicking a link in a background Safari window, a held Command key tells Safari two things: (a) don’t bring this window to the front; and (b) open this link in a new tab.