Open Default Window

By Peter N Lewis on Thursday, July 1, 2010

When you switch to an application using the process switcher (either Apple’s or Keyboard Maestro’s) the default window will not re-open even if no windowsare open. So for example, if you’ve closed the all windows in Mail, and then switch to Mail, the Message Viewer will not be displayed. You need to click in the Mail Dock icon to or figure out which menu or command key to use (often command-0) to display the default window.

The Mac Observer folks asked me (discussed here) how to resolve this, and I suggested a simple AppleScript:

tell application "System Events"
 set f to file of first item of (processes whose frontmost is true)
 open f
end tell

Basically, it just finds the from application and asks the system to “open” it.

Use Keyboard Maestro to wire that script up to a command key (command-option-0 perhaps?) and you’re all set.

You can download this macro from the Macro Library.

Updated Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 3:38 AM. Permalink. 1 Comments.