How to Customize Stage Manager on macOS 13

Stage Manager in macOS 13 Ventura organizes your open apps into a single center stage while stacking inactive windows along the left side of your screen. You can customize the appearance of these windows and workspaces to reduce visual clutter, adjust how applications group together, and control the visibility of your desktop icons and recent apps.

Accessing Stage Manager Customization Settings

To change how Stage Manager displays windows and app strips:

  1. Open the Apple menu and select System Settings.
  2. Click Desktop & Dock in the left sidebar.
  3. Scroll down to the Stage Manager section.
  4. Ensure the toggle next to Stage Manager is turned on, then click the Customize… button.

Adjusting Window and Element Visibility

Inside the customization menu, you can configure several display preferences:

  • Recent applications: Turn this setting on to keep the strip of recent app thumbnails visible on the left side of your screen. If you turn it off, the thumbnail strip hides automatically, reappearing only when you move your pointer to the left edge of the display. This grants more screen space to your active windows.
  • Desktop items: Turn this on if you want your desktop files, folders, and widgets to remain visible while Stage Manager is active. If you toggle this off, desktop content is hidden, allowing you to click anywhere on the empty wallpaper to reveal it temporarily.

Changing How App Windows Open

Below the display toggles in the same menu, you will find the Show windows from an application setting:

  • All at once: Clicking an application icon in the sidebar brings forward every open window associated with that app simultaneously.
  • One at a time: Selecting an app brings forward only the most recently used window of that app. You can cycle through the remaining windows by clicking the app icon in the sidebar repeatedly.

Click Done to apply your selected settings.

Creating and Rearranging Custom Window Groups

You can manually group multiple windows into a single Stage Manager workspace:

  • Group windows together: While working in an active window, drag another window or app thumbnail from the left sidebar into the center of your screen. Both windows will now share the workspace and stay grouped whenever you switch between tasks.
  • Resize and reposition: Click and drag the edges of any window in the group to resize it, or drag the title bar to position it anywhere on the screen. macOS remembers the layout, size, and positions of the windows within that specific group.
  • Ungroup a window: To remove a window from a grouped set, simply click and drag it back to the left sidebar strip until the strip highlights, then release the cursor.