macOS tip: Use Hot Corners to improve access to Notification Center, Desktop and more

There are a lot of little tweaks in macOS that I rely on to make a Mac feel like my own. Placing frequently accessed folders on the right side of the Dock, turning off auto-correct, and turning up mouse and trackpad tracking speed are all in this category for me.

A rather hidden but critical example is Hot Corners. My Mac honestly feels broken with Hot Corners disabled, and my workflow is severely slowed. Here’s how it works:

Hot Corners turns each of the four corners of your display into actions. Just move your cursor to the designated corner, then an action that you assign to that corner is invoked.

I rely on Hot Corners to access Notification Center and show my desktop for accessing files. There are keyboard shortcuts, buttons, and gestures for doing these tasks, but no method is as fast or natural for me than a quick cursor move.

Hot Corners can currently be used with a handful of actions:

• Mission Control
• Application Windows
• Desktop
• Notification Center
• Launchpad
• Quick Note
• Start Screen Saver
• Disable Screen Saver
• Put Display to Sleep
• Lock Screen

You can only use four actions at a time, however, as each action is tied to a specific corner and displays only have four corners … for now.

Here’s how to set up Hot Corners: launch System Settings, select the Desktop & Dock section, scroll down to the bottom, select Hot Corners.

From here, you can assign each corner its own action.

Turning this feature on is always one of the first things I do when setting up a new Mac for myself.

Opening Notification Center isn’t too hard thanks to the ‘swipe left with two fingers from just off of the right edge’ trackpad gesture and menu bar button, but slinging my cursor to the area where a new alert just flew in and now awaits is more fluid to me.

There’s also a trackpad gesture for moving open windows out of your way and back in place to work with the desktop, but it hurts my fingers.

I’m frequently working with images and moving files between apps and the desktop, so quickly accessing those files as well as open windows is essential. I can’t imagine working without the desktop Hot Corner now.