Command W

I wonder if you might be talking about the Application frame. Try toggling it from the Window menu and see if that's what you are thinking of.

~ Jane

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@Earth Oliver wrote:

close the application window without quitting? Do you mean hide the application?

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Cmd+W is the Mac shortcut to close a document in every Mac application. Cmd+H is hide — in Photoshop you get a choice the first time you use Cmd+H to hide the application or to use the PS shortcut.

~ Jane

I am probably not explaining well. Command w closes an open image window but leaves blank photoshop window in place. Have to click the red close button to close it. For years I would hit command w/command w to close image and close PS window. Now, when I just open photoshop (not from an image, just clicking on application in dock) and look at file drop down, command w is grayed out so I can't just close the window. It seems small but so many years of muscle memory doing it the other way. Also when that stays open it covers up things below on the desktop so going back and forth between a folder contents and when opening and closing a bunch of files, it's tedious. Thanks for the response!