Keyboard shortcut to unhide or unminimize a window in OS X

Question

I know how to Hide (Cmd+H) or Minimize (Cmd+M) a focused window in OS X, but I can't find a keyboard shortcut or even a menu item to restore, unhide, unminimize, or otherwise show a window that I've hidden or minimized.

Anyone have a suggestion?

Answer 1

This way requires a bit of practice:

• press ⌘ ⇥ (Command-Tab) to show your running apps. Keep holding ⌘.

• press ⇥ until you've selected the minimized app

• press the ⌥ (Option) key, and let go of the ⌘ key. You must depress the Command key after pressing the Option key!

Note that this only works for an app with all of its windows minimized. If there is already a visible window of the app you won't be able to get to the minimized one with this trick.

Answer 2

Another option is to press ⌃F3 to bring focus to the dock, from there you can navigate left or right and select the window you want to unminimize.

Answer 3

To show a window that you've hidden with ⌘H, you can unhide it and bring it back to the foreground by switching to it with ⌘⇥ along with perhaps ⌘`.

A clunky way to bring up a window minimized using ⌘M is to bring up the Application Exposé using F10, then navigate down to the realm of minimized windows to select the one you want to restore.

Answer 4

I always hide applications instead of minimizing windows:

• Just focusing the application again unhides it
• There is no animation
• When an application has multiple windows, I often want to show or hide them as a group
• I keep the Dock hidden, and it would be easy to forget minimized windows in the Dock

Anyway, here are a few (probably not that useful) scripts for unminimizing windows. You can assign shortcuts to them with an application like FastScripts or Alfred.

This unminimizes all windows of the current application:

tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
    try
        set miniaturized of windows to false -- most applications
    end try
    try
        set collapsed of windows to false -- at least Finder
    end try
end tell

If minimizing to application icons is not enabled, you could also click the last Dock icon:

try
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
        click (last UI element of list 1 where role description is "minimized window dock item")
    end tell
end try

This clicks the dock icons of all minimized windows:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
    click (UI elements of list 1 where role description is "minimized window dock item")
end tell

Answer 5

To restore one of many minimized windows using only the keyboard:

1. Start with a minimized window
2. Cmd + tab to the application icon (Continue to hold Cmd)
3. While holding Cmd, push the up (or down) arrow key on the keyboard. This will bring up a list of all the application's windows (You can release key command key once the window list view comes up if you like)
4. Push the down arrow key to select the minimized windows.
5. Use the left and right arrow keys to select the minimized window you want
6. Push enter to restore the window and bring it into focus (make it the selected window) (Tested on OSX Mountain Lion)

Answer 6

Some applications bind commands to their windows (Terminal comes to mind, but iTunes also with Cmd-Opt-1/2), you can restore those that way.

You want Witch for the kind of functionality you want. And having the zoom button accessible via keyboard is also pure bliss.

You can't hide windows, only applications. Unhide via Cmd-Tab (the hidden applications are to the right, so use Cmd-Shift-Tab to start there).

You can always open the Help menu's text field and type the window name (if you know it) to access its Window menu sub-item.