"Switch to App" instead of "Start new instance"

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1

Hi there,

sorry if my question has been answered before, I tried to search at various places with no results.

I am using virtual desktops and have e.g. Thunderbird on desktop 1 and Firefox on desktop 2. When I finish using Thunderbird, I’d like to click on the Firefox icon of the App Launcher to switch to Firefox on desktop 2, but when I do, a new Firefox window opens on desktop 1.

Is there a way to change this behavior of the App Launcher?

Thanks a lot in advance!

2

Hello and welcome!

You want to disable the option to filter out windows from other virtual desktops there. (Right-click where the icons are and go to Configure Icons-Only Task Manager)

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Currently you are clicking the pinned icon, which of course starts a new instance, because it considers there is no Firefox open (which is correct, but only on Desktop 1).

3

high, welcome.

you can set firefox to show on ALL desktops from the context menu so that when you click on the icon in the task manager it brings up firefox on whichever desktop you are currently on.

—or—

in the task manager configuration under behavior, you can also uncheck the Show only tasks box for current desktop and the task manager will show you the open instance of firefox so that when you click on it, it will take you to that desktop.

4

Thanks to you both! This is indeed the solution. I did right-click on the top (left) field of the bar, which only showed the “App Launcher settings”, so I didn’t see the “Icons-Only Task Manager” settings. Actually, the two-finger-click on the touchpad is unreliable, so when I tried to right-click on the apps’ icons, I only started the apps (but that’s a different problem related to the MacBook trackpad: I sometimes have to two-finger-click on the top third of the trackpad).