Docs / The Board
The Board
The Board is the full-screen grid of every desktop on your Mac. It is where you look to see what is open where, and where you go to switch, rename, reorder or add a desktop. Most of what DeskSay does can be done from here.
What you see
The Board takes over the screen and shows one tile per desktop, in your order. Each tile carries the desktop's name, its icon and its colour, and the icons of the apps open there. It can also show the app names and pictures of the windows themselves. The window pictures are the one part that needs the Screen Recording permission; without it the rest of the tile still works.
A desktop with no icon or colour of its own is given one derived from its name, and the Board, Settings and the menu all draw the same one. See naming a desktop for how to choose your own.
New Desktop sits at the bottom left. The gear sits at the top right.
Opening the Board
By default, press Option and 1. There are five other ways in, and each one is a setting you turn on yourself.
The chord, the F3 option and the shortcut recorders all live in Settings, Switching. The chord and the recorders are also reachable from the Board's own gear, described below.
The keyboard
The Board is built to be driven without the pointer. Start typing and the grid filters as you go.
A number key refers to the position of the tile in your order on the Board, not to macOS's own numbering. Mission Control keeps its own numbers.
The pointer
Hovering a tile and selecting a tile are two different things. When you hover, the tile rings lightly and shows two controls: a button for full size and a pencil for renaming. The selection does not follow the pointer. It moves only when you click, press an arrow, type, or say a name, and a number key goes straight to that tile without stopping on it. That way you can leave the pointer anywhere on the screen and keep driving the grid from the keyboard without it being pulled somewhere else. Clicking a tile switches to that desktop.
Full size
Press Space, or click the full-size button on the tile under the pointer, to see one desktop filling the screen. The arrow keys step through your desktops from there, Return switches to the one you are looking at, and Escape takes you back to the grid. Clicking the name renames the desktop.
Reordering
Drag a tile to move it. The order you set is DeskSay's order, and it is what the number keys and "Desktop 3" refer to.
There is also a setting that carries your order into Mission Control itself, so macOS agrees with the Board. That one is slower: each move takes about four seconds, and DeskSay takes over the screen while it does it. Leave it off if you reorder often.
New Desktop
Press Command N, or click New Desktop at the bottom left. DeskSay asks for a name, adds the desktop through Mission Control, gives it the name and takes you there.
macOS allows 16 desktops per display. At that limit the New Desktop button is hidden.
To delete a desktop, hover its tile and click the trash button at its corner, select it and press Command Delete, or right-click it and choose Delete Desktop. After you confirm, Mission Control removes it the way its own close button would and moves its windows to another desktop; DeskSay forgets the name, notes, shortcut and automations it kept for it. Mission Control takes the screen for a few seconds while it works, so keep your hands off until it is done. A display's last desktop and fullscreen apps are not offered.
When some desktops have nothing on them, a "Delete N Empty Desktops" button appears beside New Desktop. It names them, asks once, and removes them one after another the same way. One desktop per display always stays. A desktop with only minimised windows is not empty.
The right-click menu
Right-click a tile for everything you can do to that one desktop:
- Switch to This Desktop
- Show Full Size
- Rename or Name
- Icon and Colour
- The linking submenu, for joining this desktop to one on another screen (see more than one display)
- Hide from Indicators (Dim)
- Remove Name
- Delete Desktop, which asks first and then removes the desktop through Mission Control (also the trash button on the tile, or Command Delete)
The gear
The gear at the top right opens the Board's own settings and edits them in place, so you can see each change on the grid in front of you. It covers tile size, name size, app icon size, whether app names are shown, whether window pictures are drawn, tips, the chord, and the shortcut recorders. Everything else is in Settings.
More than one display
By default the Board opens on every display at once. Each one shows that display's own desktops at that display's own tile size. The keyboard belongs to the display under the pointer, so move the pointer to the screen you want to drive. Pressing Escape, switching, or clicking empty space closes all of them.
The setting is "Open the Board on every display". Turn it off and you get a single Board on the pointer's display, with a picker for the others; Tab cycles through them.
The gear edits the display it is on, and has "Use for every display" when you want the same sizes everywhere. Joining a desktop on one screen to a desktop on another is covered in more than one display.
You should seeOne Board per screen, each filled with that screen's desktops, and your typing going to the screen the pointer is on.
If it does not workIf the tiles have no window pictures, grant the Screen Recording permission. If F3 still opens Mission Control, check the Accessibility permission and the F3 setting in Settings, Switching.
To drag a window from one desktop to another using the Board as a drop surface, see switching.