How to Setup Hot Corners in Mac with Keyboard Shortcuts?

Mac has lot of hidden features that many users never know. Hot corners is one such feature very useful to assign functions to any four corners of your Mac. You can simply move the mouse over to the corner to activate the function. For example, you might be familiar with Windows show desktop button on the lower right corner of the taskbar. If you miss that button on Mac, you can easily have a similar setup in Mac as well using hot corner.

Setup Hot Corners in macOS Monterey or Earlier

Follow the below instructions in macOS Monterey or earlier versions:

• Click on the Apple logo menu and go to “System Preferences…” option.
• You will see lots of icons along with your Apple ID details and click on “Desktop & Screen Saver”.

• Go to “Screen Saver” tab and you will see “Hot Corners…” button on the bottom part as shown in the below picture.

• Click on the button to open a pop-up. You will see four dropdown boxes indicating the four corners of your Mac’s screen.

• Click on one of the dropdowns to see the list of the available functions. You can assign same or different function for each corner.

Setup Hot Corner in macOS Ventura or Later

If you are using macOS Ventura or later versions, then follow the below steps.

• Go to Apple logo menu and select “System Settings” option.
• Select “Desktop & Dock” from the sidebar and scroll down to the bottom on the right pane.
• You will see “Hot Corners…” button and click on it.

Hot Corners Functions in Mac

There are 11 different functions you can assign to the corners of you display.

• Mission Control
• Application Windows (shows the highlighted application)
• Desktop
• Notification Center
• Launchpad
• Quick Note
• Start Screen Saver
• Disable Screen Saver
• Put Display to Sleep
• Lock Screen
• None

Using Hot Corners in Mac

You can select the function from the dropdown and click “OK” button to save the changes. Mac will activate the function automatically whenever you move the mouse over the corners. If you miss Windows show desktop button or lock screen options, then using hot corner can help you in Mac. You can select the same or different functions for each corner. For example, selecting “Desktop” option on all four corners will show the desktop when you move the mouse over any of the corners.  

However, we recommend you to setup four different functions for each corner to make use of the feature effectively.

Setting Keyboard Shortcuts for Hot Corners

The problem with the hot corner is that it may interrupt in your workflow if you are frequently moving the mouse pointer towards one of the corners. For example, we use apps like sticky notes or one-click screen capture from Snagit on the top right corner. Also, by default, your Mac will have “Notification Center” nearer to the top right corner. In such cases, it will be embarrassing to get the hot corner function when you move the mouse just few centimeters. Don’t worry, you can also setup keyboard shortcuts with mouse movement for hot corner functions.

When clicking on the dropdown, press and hold one of the modifier keys. You can press and hold command, shift, option or control key. This will show the selected key in the dropdown menu against each item like below.

Now select the function and you will see the shortcut key is attached to it. In our example, we have assigned command key as a modifier for showing desktop to lower right corner.

Now, you need to press command key and move the mouse to lower right corner to show the desktop. This will avoid accidentally activating the function with mouse movement. You can assign any combination of the command, shift, option and control keys to activate the hot corner function. For example, you can assign “Control + Shift + Option + Put Display to Display” for lower left corner and “Control + Shift + Launchpad” to upper left corner.