Use Option-Click on Desktop to hide unwanted apps

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If you’re in the Finder and there are a lot of other apps’ windows cluttering up your desktop, it can be hard to concentrate on just that Finder window. If you’re looking for a file and there’s just too much on screen, you could start minimizing all the other windows, but that can take quite a while to complete.

You can, however, make things a lot clearer with a few key presses and a click of the mouse.

Simply hold down the Option+Command keys on your keyboard and click anywhere in Finder’s Desktop. After clicking, all other app windows will temporarily disappear from view.

Alternately, you can Option-Click on the Desktop to hide only the frontmost app.

While banished from the desktop, those apps are still running in the background, so there’s no need to worry about losing any work at all. However, rather than bring all of the open windows back up, you can take this opportunity to bring up just the most immediately useful windows.

To get any one app’s windows back, simply Command-Tab to cycle through open apps to the one you want, then release the keys. The selected app will be brought back to the foreground with all of its windows.

You could also click the app’s icon in the dock to bring up all of that app’s windows.

The Option-Desktop-click trick is not known by many Mac users, but it is a fast and powerful way to declutter your Desktop in an instant.