Finally, someone clarifies the most confusing and complex concept every computer user is expected to know, yet no one talks about! This is the hardest thing to explain to someone who is new to OS concepts. Well done, Gary. Loved the layer graphics!

This is the best Mac guy.

great presentation that clearly defines workspaces and the desktop...love the graphicals

We’d be lost without you. Excellent job, sir. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

Thanks, Gary. One thing you didn't mention is that you can pin apps to always open on a particular desktop space. I like to have Music on one, and say maps, or my movie editor on another. You do this using the context menu of an open app Options/. They can also have their own wallpaper if you want. Awesome graphics, btw.

Gary, once again thank you from a viewer in the UK. And female aged 68! Always something good to learn from you. I hadn’t even considered the 3 desktop concepts or layers. Yes I do use all 3 but now I know how and why. Please don’t retire ever! You are the best.

By far…..one of the best channels I’ve come across in a while.

I wish this had been explained to me years ago - great tutorial.

Great explanation using layers. Thanks Gary, you've made it very clear. I noticed that when right clicking app icons in the dock, then select 'Options' | 'Assign To' it refers to 'All Desktops', 'This Desktop' or 'None'. It would have helped to reduce confusion if Apple had used the word 'Space' instead of 'Desktop' in this context.

You are the most professional Mac teacher ive ever seen😊thanks

I put my 5 most used apps full screen on separate desktop spaces. This is my favorite thing about MacOS.

The clearest and most concise explanation of macOS I've seen, as usual. And what you talked about today took me a few years of playing around to learn. ....I hope the ppl at the Cupertino 'big doughnut' give you a tour, or at least a hat or something. You're doing independent "genius" things.

Thank you Gary, you explain it very well. If you would ever want to create a follow up on this video, maybe one idea would be to look at what happens with the desktop on a second screen and how that can have a menu bar, how you can turn it off but also that it works quite different then.

Very clear explanation Gary, thank you. It's another example of something I kinda sorta already knew and you have laid it out so clearly and effectively to help me understand it even clearer. A confusing glitch that I see people struggling with is when they've dabbled with "Documents & Desktop syncing with iCloud" on/off in the past and as a result they have multiple different desktop folders and just throw their hands up in the air in confusion. Looking forward to your next video!

Thank you for making this, you are such a good teacher/advisor!.

Thank you for the clarification! I can see another way to describe the desktop “spaces”, would be to describe them as “virtual monitors”. So, instead of having two or more physical monitors [for extra screen real estate] mounted on top of your actual desk, you have the one monitor of the Mac itself and the desktop spaces function as virtual forms of extra monitors. It would be good if Apple actually changed the labelling from ‘Desktop’ to something like ‘Virtual Monitor’ or maybe even just ‘Monitor’.

Such clarity. Thanks.

Brilliantly explained. Thanks.

Thanks a lot! Lots of new and clear info, again, for this learner Mac user. 👏🏼

Another awesome video Gary!! After I watch other people's videos I see how to do stuff. After I watch your videos, I understand why I'm doing it.

Nice animations! As a Windows guy I can see the similarities in the desktop concept between the two OS's, although frankly I'd never thought of it in terms of layers like that. Very efficient.

Excellent presentation! I hope you do more at this level and speed. You often go too fast for me to capture it all and by the end I have lost many of the things you are showing.

Excellent basic info no one understands because no one ever explained it before! Kudos as usual.

Simply BRILLIANT! Thanks for sharing this clear info

Great explanation, thanks a lot!

Very clear explanation. I use desktop spaces a lot. I wish you could name them as I cannot always tell when going to Mission Control which one is the one I want.

Very clear. Thanks.

Thank you, it was so clear

Great explanation. thank you!!

I was today years old when I learned about desktop spaces 🤯Thanks for another in depth video Gary!

To be fair, the ability to assign different wallpapers to different spaces makes them kind of look like "multiple desktops", so people get all sorts of ideas.

Whew - thanks for the clarifications!

Excellent as always!

Yeah, Apple really should've and needs to rename additional 'desktops' to Space 2, 3, 4, etc. They're not being consistent with their own OS features which adds more confusion than it should. Another great video Gary.

You're truly amazing - So well explained.

Really clear presentation and explanation.

The visual representations were really helpful and has such an effect, thankyou.

Great explanation

Excellent !!

I finally understand the different desktop spaces! Thanks, as always, for a very clear explanation.

As always I learn at least one thing I didn't know from your videos. Thx

Brilliant explanation. I am made aware of the desktop

❤❤crystal clear😊😊thank a lot😊😊

Gary, great Presentation! You presented the concepts well, clearly and concisely. Thank you

Nice job, as usual. You're my go-to for all things Mac. What I find confusing is drop-downs in the dock that allow assigning apps or docs to particular desktop (spaces). It does not seem intuitive at all. How about a video on that?

Thanks bunches

Hey Gary, thanks for the vid, I am veteran Mac user/owner from 1991. I have not been a subscriber for long but I do find your vids helpful even for a person like myself. Sometimes we forget more than someone else learns. I am not sure you have already covered this but since you are touching on the subject of the Desktop you mentioned Wallpaper. How about one to explain to people the difference between Wallpapers and Screen Savers, one of the most annoying things for me even to this day is how people will call their wallpaper (background image) a screen saver. When I would get calls about someone's screen saver not work or not looking right. I would roll my eyes when I discovered it was their wallpaper they were actually talking about. (hahaha) I think too often terms being misused end up being what people actually think they are.

Very nice presentation. Wallpapers can be different on every desktop :)

Great video. Spaces always screw me over!!

Thks. It was confusing for me!

A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary!👏🏻❤️

Fantastic video, Gary. Thanks! While doing some experimenting I noticed that if you have a 2nd display set up it appears as its own Desktop Space. Yet the layer rules you mentioned in the video don't apply in the same way. For example widgets, files and drives showing on my primary display desktop screen don't appear on my second display desktop space. Could you elaborate on how a 2nd display is treated as a unique desktop space?

This is very helpful to understand Desktop Spaces. How did you create the layers graphics?

Excellent explanation. Thank you for putting this together. I loved the graphics. What tool / app did you use to generate them?

Cover window managers next

Excellent as usual. Tantalising, however, when you said that you had your iCloud folder on your desktop, or did I misunderstand. The mystery I pursue is where on OS I put things I want to get into the iCloud folder (then enabling me to have those files available for iPhone or iPad.

Gary is the best.

Sorry, but when you ask what would happen to corresponding folders were we to close actual multiple Desktops, the answer doesn't pose a mystery. Just as the current Desktop folder doesn't disappear just because we have nothing in it, so needn't the others. Desktop folders 1 thru however can be dynamic - that's up to Apple. It's just that, the fact remains that naming them Desktops but having them behave as the previously named Spaces, is bad form. I love macOS, but it has always had perennially basic, commonsensical problems, which have likewise caused a lot of needless confusion. I'm a fanatical Desktop / Spaces user, and in fact even have black Desktop spaces to demarcate categories of work, and wish Apple would just go back to calling it Spaces. That way when they're ready to create true Desktops, they won't have to, you know, make stuff up. Sorry to randomly rant. Fantastic video, as always. 🙇🏿

Desktop spaces basically serve as additional monitors…expanding the current desktop.

To me the desktop seems useless, as in I am always in an app so the desktop is just a fancy picture frame. I hope Apple gets rid of it in the future and make it more like iOS/iPadOS with all the apps listed. I do thank MacMost for making this I have a better understanding of it now, but I was kinda hoping this video could show me how it can be useful. Regardless great video, keep up the amazing work! :D

Informative and interesting. Thanks, Gary. Of course Apple had to go and make it confusing by calling the Desktop Spaces "Desktop 1" "Desktop 2".

Now I understand what and why I didn’t understand Desktop. Now I have to understand the purpose of more than one desktop space. How can you prevent it from becoming confusing?

It’s like virtual monitors

Gary-My MacBook Air system data storage is a shocking 72GB. Do you have any suggestions why it would be such a high number and how to possibly reduce the number?

I have different pages on my Ipad. It would be nice if something similar were possible on the mac.

Hi, I hope you are well. I love your videos but am struggling to find a solution to my numbers question. Is it possible to input some information into “A2” such as “Apples” and then numbers will autofill B2, C2 and so on with information you’ve pre assigned to the product “Apples” Thank you so much for your help.

Hello, I hope you are doing well. Why don't you use a stage manager in your videos? Would it be interesting to make a comparison video between the uses of a mouse and a trackpad?

Interesting, can I use the same Desktop Folder on iCloud across my Mini and MacBook Air? Or does that create other sync problems? (Am using same AppleID of course).

Thanks for clarifying, that's all good, but what I want to have is an overlay window on top of the desktop, so that I don't have to use applications like obs or anything like that, is there any way to do that.

My Mac is sitting on my desktop. Is that a glitch in the matrix?

So, where is the dock? Isn’t it also on the desktop?

Apple hear that? Not a bad way to name DT spaces in OS 15. DT Space 1, DT Space 2, etc. 🍎💻🧑🏻‍💻

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

How can I change the name of desktop spaces?

Stupid me. When I looked into my basic fold and not just "Documents" (Document in my Italian system) I found iCloud Drive! (Blush)

I didn't realise that Apple only recently started calling it "wallpaper".

doubt:-- If all desktop spaces are the same, then why are we able to set different wallpapers in different desktop spaces?

Apple not helping by naming spaces desktops.

All your files locations are just short cuts, they are not actually there on the system level.

Thank you so much - I've been a Mac user for decades and I still found this presentation extremely useful. I'll borrow a quote from another comment (@markhenderson7286) "This is the hardest thing to explain to someone who is a long time user of OS. Well done, Gary. Loved the layer graphics!"

I miss Command-Y…

Seems to me the different desktop SPACES are of limited use (i.e. useless)...what is the point?

I am old school and leave the widgets and the desktop spaces and *mission out of control* to the rest of ya'll.

new mac users? do they exist? who can afford a new one?