Snow Leopard changed a lot of small things in the system, and not all of these were detailed by Apple. One such change occurs when you use minimized windows with Spaces (Apple’s tool to create virtual desktops). In OS X 10.5, when releasing (unminimizing just sounds so…wrong) a minimized window from the Dock, it would spring back into whatever Space it started on, switching to that Space as it activated the newly-released window.
While this may be desired behavior most of the time, it could be jarring if you’d gotten involved in another Space, and suddenly found yourself looking at your released window in a totally different Space.
In 10.6, it seems that things still work as they did in 10.5, at least when you click on a minimized window’s Dock icon. Note that this tip only applies if you have not implemented Snow Leopard’s new “minimize into application icon” feature–that is, your minimized windows still show up on the right-hand side of the Dock.
Here’s the trick: Command-click on a minimized window in the Dock, and it will be released into the current Space instead of into its originating Space. Snow Leopard makes both behaviors available, hopefully satisfying the needs of anyone who minimizes windows to the right-hand side of the Dock. I’m not aware, though, of any way to toggle the behavior of click and Command-click, so that you could release a minimized window into the current Space with a single click.
Thanks to Mac OS X Hints contributor rab777hp for today’s tip.