Work on one thing at a time with Stage Manager
It parks everything you are not using down the side of the screen and lets you build sets of windows that travel together.
Works on: macOS Ventura 13 and later · checked on macOS Golden Gate 27
Published: · Source: Rod Herzstrom
Stage Manager keeps the window you are working in centred on screen and parks everything else as small thumbnails down the left edge. The desktop and its clutter vanish behind them, which is the whole idea: nothing is visible except the job in hand.
Turn it on in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Desktop & Stage Manager, or from Control Centre if you would rather switch it on and off through the day.
Clicking a thumbnail brings that app forward and the one you were using slides out to take its place in the strip.
The part worth staying for is groups. Drag a window from the strip into the middle and those windows stay together from then on, appearing and vanishing as a set — notes beside the browser, terminal beside the editor. Drag one back out and the pair is broken.
Related tips
Give each job its own desktop
Mission Control shows every open window at once and lets you split your work across desktops you swipe between.
Tile windows from the green button
The three coloured dots do more than close, minimise and maximise — hold the green one.
See every window of the app you are using
App Exposé spreads out the windows of the current app, including the ones hiding on other desktops.