OS X Leopard Bug Fixes: Spaces Stops Working with the Dock

Leopard's new Spaces does wonders for my work - allowing me to have less clutter in the background as I multi-task through my day.

It's really nice but it breaks. There are a number of bugs and the one I'm going to suggest fixes for is when Spaces seems to stop responding to attempts to switch spaces using the Dock.

Normally when you click on an application icon in the Dock, and that application is living in a separate space, Spaces is supposed to whisk the current spaces' windows out of the way and whisk in the windows for the space you are moving to. Sometimes, and for reasons I've yet to fathom, it just stops doing this. I'll click on,say Mail, expecting Safari to whisk away and I'll just get the Mail menu items along the top but no Mail windows. The Spaces menu icon will not change numbers to the Mail space.

If this happens to you as well, you are not alone (this was so irritating that my wife quickly shut off Spaces altogether).

I have some suggestions (thanks to www.macoshints.com):

To regain Dock/Spaces Navigation try these steps:

1. Use Control <- arrow -> to move flip between all your spaces. This usually wakes up Spaces in my experience.

2. If that does not work make sure you have all the windows of an application in one space/or the space you want it to be. Hit the Spaces shortcut key (usually F8) and Control drag the window of an offending application into a new space.

If these two things don't work then you might try these steps I've seen suggested (but not needed to try them yet):

3. Log out and Log back in (really works, but who wants the hassle).

4. Hide the offending application. Use the Spaces navigation menu icon to move to the space where it should show and click in the Dock to bring it up again.

Good luck!