Hot Corners: put your screen corners to work

Steps

1. 01

   Open Hot Corners

   It is tucked inside the desktop settings

   Ventura or later

   • Apple menu → System Settings → Desktop & Dock in the sidebar, then click Hot Corners

   Monterey or earlier

   • Apple menu›System Preferences›Mission Control, then the Hot Corners button

   ✓You should see: A small panel with a pop-up menu for each of the four corners.

2. 02

   Give each corner a job

   • For each corner you want to use, click the pop-up menu and choose an option
   • Apple's examples include Notification Centre, Apps and Lock Screen
   • Lock Screen in a corner is the one most people keep — it is faster than any keyboard shortcut when you stand up to leave

   ✓You should see: Each corner's menu showing the action you picked.

   Also see: Turn on FileVault full-disk encryption

3. 03

   Stop a corner firing by accident

   • Add a modifier key so the corner only acts when you mean it
   • While the pop-up menus are open, press and hold Command, Shift, Option or Control — or a combination — and the menu choice records that key alongside the action
   • The corner then does nothing unless that key is held

   Why?

   This is the fix for the classic complaint that the screen keeps locking while you reach for the menu bar. Do not abandon hot corners over it — add a modifier.

4. 04

   Know about the corner that is already set

   Apple notes that by default the bottom-right hot corner is set to Quick Note

   • That is why a note sometimes slides in when you push the pointer to that corner — it is a default, not a fault
   • Change it from the same menu if you would rather have something else there

   ✓You should see: The bottom-right menu showing Quick Note until you change it.

5. 05

   Undo anything that annoys you

   • Set a corner's pop-up menu back to the dash and it does nothing again
   • Nothing here is permanent, and nothing here affects anything but the pointer

   ✓You should see: A corner with no action set, behaving like an ordinary corner.