Hot Corners are one of the fastest, most underused features in macOS. Flick your pointer into any of the four screen corners and your Mac instantly does something — opens Mission Control, shows the desktop, starts the screen saver, or locks the screen. No keyboard shortcut to memorize, no menu to hunt through. Once you set them, they become muscle memory in a day.
Here is exactly how to turn them on, what each action does, and the one trick that stops you from triggering them by accident.
How to set up Hot Corners
- Open the Apple menu → System Settings (called System Preferences on macOS Monterey and earlier).
- Click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar, then scroll to the very bottom.
- Click the Hot Corners… button in the lower-right.
- You will see four dropdown menus, one for each corner of your screen. Click any corner and choose an action.
- Click Done. That corner is now live — move your pointer there to test it.
On older macOS versions the path is System Preferences → Mission Control → Hot Corners… — the settings pane moved, but the feature works identically.
What each Hot Corner action does
- Mission Control — zooms out to show every open window and desktop space. The single most useful corner if you juggle a lot of windows.
- Application Windows — shows only the windows of the app you are currently in. Great for finding a buried browser tab or document.
- Desktop — pushes every window aside so you can grab a file off the desktop, then flick back to restore them.
- Notification Center — slides open your widgets and notifications, the same panel you get by clicking the clock.
- Launchpad — opens the full-screen grid of all your apps.
- Start Screen Saver / Disable Screen Saver — kick off (or prevent) the screen saver on demand.
- Put Display to Sleep — instantly blanks the screen to save power without sleeping the whole Mac.
- Lock Screen — the best corner for anyone in a shared space, coffee shop, or open office. One flick and your Mac is locked.
- Quick Note — starts a new note in the Notes app, anchored to that corner for next time.
The modifier-key trick that stops accidental triggers
The most common complaint about Hot Corners is that they fire when you did not mean them to — you drag a window near a corner and suddenly Mission Control explodes across your screen. There is a clean fix.
In the Hot Corners panel, hold a modifier key (Command, Shift, Option, or Control) while you pick the action from the dropdown. The action label will now show the key symbol next to it. From then on, that corner only fires when you are holding that key as your pointer lands in the corner. Casual pointer drift no longer triggers anything — you get the speed of Hot Corners without the accidents.
The best Hot Corner setup for most people
After years of using these, a reliable starting layout is:
- Top-left: Mission Control (glance at everything open)
- Top-right: Desktop (grab a file fast)
- Bottom-left: Lock Screen — with Command held, so you never lock by accident
- Bottom-right: leave empty, or Notification Center
Leave at least one corner empty at first. The bottom-right corner is where your pointer naturally rests near the Dock and scroll bars, so it is the easiest one to trigger by mistake.
Hot Corners not working? Quick fixes
- Nothing happens in a corner. Re-open Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners and confirm the dropdown still shows an action — a macOS update can reset it to “—” (none).
- The corner needs a modifier you forgot about. If you set a modifier key earlier, the corner only fires while you hold it. Check the panel for a key symbol next to the action.
- An external display changed things. Hot Corners apply per the screen your pointer is on. If you added a monitor, test the corners on each display.
- Pointer feels too slow to reach the corner. Speed up tracking in System Settings → Trackpad or Mouse, or nudge your pointer firmly into the very edge — the corner target is only a few pixels.
Do this next
Hot Corners pair perfectly with the other window-management tools built into macOS. If you split your screen a lot, read how to use Split Screen on a MacBook. To go faster still, our list of the 30 Mac keyboard shortcuts that actually matter covers the ones that pair with Mission Control. And to find anything on your Mac in seconds, see how to use Spotlight. More walkthroughs are on our guides page.
Hot Corners work on every Mac, but they are noticeably snappier on Apple Silicon. If you are still on an aging Intel MacBook and Mission Control stutters, a certified-refurbished M1, M2, or M3 Mac is the easy upgrade — browse our current Apple clearance deals, every one tested and warrantied.