One of the handiest new tools in “Lion,” the latest version of the Mac operating system, is Mission Control—the one-click feature that gives you a bird’s-eye view of all your virtual desktop “spaces.”

Now, Lion will go ahead and add a desktop anytime you activate the full-screen view for an app or a browser (just click the arrows in the top-right corner of the window), but what if you want to create a new desktop on your own?

Well, it’s easy to do—but like many things in Lion, it’s an option that’s well hidden.

See the square with the "plus" sign in the corner of the screen? Click it.

Here’s what you do (and if you haven’t installed the Mac OS X Lion update yet, click here for help):

• Activate Mission Control by swiping up with three fingertips on your Mac’s trackpad, or tapping the F3 button on your keyboard.
• Scroll your mouse to the upper-right corner of the screen; a translucent square with a “plus” sign should slide into view.
• Click the square, and presto—you’ve got a new virtual desktop. Click the desktop to open it.
• Done with your new desktop? Open Mission Control again, hover your mouse over the virtual desktop you want to close, and click the little “X” that appears in the corner; the desktop will close, and any windows that were still open in that space will fly to another active desktop.

Bonus tip

 
You can also create a new desktop in Mission Control by dragging an application window to the top-right corner of the screen; just drag, wait for the square with the “plus” sign to appear, then release.

Looking for more Mac OS X Lion tips? Click here!

Tagged as: Mac OS X "Lion", Mission Control