20 Useful OS X Tips
Because we are all different, operating system developers always put more than one way of doing things in their systems. One example is there’s often keyboard shortcuts, menus and toolbars in applications for doing the same thing. Consequently, it’s very easy to get into the habit of doing things a particular way without ever learning other ways.
Hopefully for the average user there might be at least one tip here that you weren’t aware of and that will be useful to you. Otherwise, I officially re-title this article: “20 Useful OS X Tips for Beginners and Switchers”.
By the way, if you have a single button mouse, where it says “right click”, substitute with “control-click” .
1. Pressing Esc while typing in most applications pops up a list of suggested completions of the word you’re typing. (Does anyone know if there’s a way to toggle the permanent display of this?)
2. Image Capture lets you manage photos on your camera before you download them (as explained in last week’s article).
3. Right click on an open PDF in Safari to get the a context menu which includes the option to open the PDF in Preview.
4. Pressing the Tab key in Exposé cycles through open applications.
5. Press the ` key in Exposé to cycle backwards as per the previous tip. ( ‘ is the key Tab and left of the 1 key).
6. Press Command-Q to close applications when command-tabbing. This is possibly the fastest way you’ll find to close several applications in quick succession.
7. Macs with remote controls can be put to sleep by holding down the play button on the remote. (I use my Mac as a reading light so find this quite handy. Maybe Apple could include a clapper for me in Leopard.
)
8. Triple click selects a whole paragraph of text.
9. To select a block of text, click the start position, then Shift-click the end position. Significant;y, this doesn’t just work in editing applications like Word (where you might be already doing it anyway), but it also works with non-editable text, such as a webpage in Safari. Where has this been all my life? The number of times I’ve selected pages and pages of text by click and drag, when this is so much quicker. (My Hackmeister friend knew this one of course - but never had told me. )
10. In TextEdit, Option-click & drag selects a rectangle of text. (When you need it, selecting a rectangle of text is really useful, so if anyone knows other applications that have this functionality, let us know.)
11. We all know Command-shift-4 to capture a selection of the screen, but don’t forget pressing the Spacebar will toggle between selection mode and select whole window mode.
12. Command click the jelly bean found in the top right corner of some applications to cycle through toolbars.
13. In Safari, Command-Shift-click a link opens it in a new tab and immediately displays the page. (If anyone knows a way in Safari to force a page to open in the same window, do tell.)
The Option key is a hidden treasure trove. Experiment with it often. Here’s a few:
14. Hold the Option key will clicking the Zoom button (green button, rightmost of three in the top left corner of windows) switches the zoom state of all windows in the selected application.
15. Option-click the minimize button minimizes all windows in the application - and makes for a really cool animation (hold the shift key too if you want to slow it down to see it more easily).
16. Option-click on a minimized window will restore all windows for that application.
17. Option-click on a running application in the Dock hides the front-most application and brings the clicked application to the front (unless it already was).
18. Option-click on the close tab icon in Safari, closes all other tabs. Handle this one with care - there’s no warning dialog.
19. Option-arrow moves cursor by word. One for the Windows switchers who are used to using ctrl-arrow.
20. When menus are selected, press the option key to reveal alternative functions. Eg In the File menu of Finder, the Get Info item becomes Show Inspector which is like a context sensitive info pane.
Now, if you are like “The Hackmeister of OS X”, rather than scoffing, let us know a few of your favorite lesser known tips.
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One other I forgot. On PowerBooks (and I presume MacBooks), the F12 key is the Eject. Except Apple in their wisdom also made it the Dashboard shortcut.
To separate them, go into Keyboard preferences and tick the box that says “Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features”.
F12 will now only bring up Dashboard.
Then use Fn+F12 for Eject. All the other controls like brightness and contrast will need the Fn key combo to work too.
Thanks Johnc! Great idea. I think that’s the best alternative until Apple include an override key.
I notice in Firefox that pages that are told to open in a new Window, open in a new tab.
“(If anyone knows a way in Safari to force a page to open in the same window, do tell)”
go to pimpmysafari.com and get the top 3, they’re awesome in general and one of them has options for always opening all links in new tabs, so you never have more than 1 window (the way it should be!)
Thanks, yahhr. Great site! Here’s a clickable link: http://pimpmysafari.com Check it out, Safari users.
For Desktops:
Command + Option + Eject/F12 = Sleep
Command + Option + Control + Eject/F12 = Shut Down Nicely
Command + Control + Eject/F12 = Restart Nicely
(For Laptops Substitute the Power button for Eject/F12)
For Cocoa Apps:
Command + Control + D while hovering over a word pops up the definition of it.
OK here’s the best tip of all:
Hold CONTROL on your keyboard while scrolling your mouse’s scroll wheel (or scroll ball, or sliding two fingers down the sides of your trackpad) up or down and see what happens.
Wow, these are great. I’ve only just recently started to use Expose a bit more. I HATE the way “minimize” works in OS X, combined with the fact that I now hide my Dock to get more screen real estate, makes Expose a lot more useful.
Cmd + Ctrl + D is so cool!
The fact that it then has the option of choosing thesaurus is even better. AND, if you change the preferred order in Dictionary, then thesaurus becomes the default.
No more copy & paste into the dictionary widget…
#21 while cmd-tabbing between apps, keep cmd pressed and pick the app of choice simply by clicking on it.
#22 cycle through opened windows within an app with cmd-< and cmd-> (requires universal acces to be on in the system settings).
#23 open the dictionary app and change its settings so that ctrl-clicking any word in any (cocoa-) app gives the ability to look it up in a nice dictionary panel without having the entire dictionary app to be brought up. (that is, you don’t need to remember cmd-ctrl-d anymore)!
#24 hold the option key down to open a contextual floating get info-inspector instead of the usual non-floating window.
#25 drag the droplet of your choice to the toolbar of finder windows to make it easy accessible- actually the toolbar works about the same as the sidebar.
#26 hold the option key down and enjoy closing widgets without having to first click the plus sign.
#27 double-click the header divider in iTunes to automatically adjust the width to the contents (and use all fine contextual menu items in iTunes, specifically the ‘play next in party shuffle’ or whatever it is in English).
#28 if you’re the only mac user among your friends, consider to switch the cmd and ctrl keys in the system settings, or at least add a bookmarklet as the second bookmark in safaris row of bookmarks (invoked by cmd-2, which the average windows user think is ctrl-2) that kindly asks the user to use the key with the word ctrl printed on it and not necessarily the key that is situated where the ctrl-key is situated on a windows keyboard - this will prevent them from accidently being directed to some bookmarked page when all they wanted was to type a @ at hotmail..
#29 if you’re a switcher, it may be of interest that the text edit app has got far more power than notes and far more power that it seems at a first glimpse. one may hardly ever need to wait for the rosetta emulated word app to start up just to read a doc-file. (also, if you’ve got a macbook as your first mac, use the fn-key in the bottom left corner of the keyboard and you’ll still have those forward delete, home and end buttons).
#30 the services menu is crowded with crap. download service scrubber and wordservice and live happily.
#31 if you’re on the move and puts fileservers on the desktop now and then, get used to never ever leave a network without ejecting the servers first. finder will roll that stupid beach ball for decades unless.
..and in addition to #9, cmd-select and you’ll be able to do non-continuous selections.
#13) If the preferences are set right, then cmd-shift-click will open new windows behind (cmd-click in Camino). This allows a ton of windows to be opened from a page full of links (like Fark), then viewed one by one and closed with cmd-w without touching the mouse.
Same thing can be done in tabs, but if you have 100 windows open, tabs get a little bothersome…
- gws
Great many tips, guys. I just don’t know how to remember them all especially in my case when I need to float from OSX, Windows, then Linux - all in a day’s work!
Oh is it “ifconfig” or “ipconfig” kind of conundrums and the dreaded: cmd-C or CTRL-C brain-tweezers…
Thanks for the many tips!
As for me lazy bum, I use xCuts widget below
so I have a handy ref when I don’t feel like memorizin’ shortcuts.
G’day!
Is this one well known?
... to delete a file in finder, select the file then click Command-Delete. (NOT the “del” key, the “delete” key)
… to delete a file in finder, select the file then click Command-Delete. (NOT the “del” key, the “delete” key)
I actually don’t know of any OTHER way of deleting a file in Finder, other than going to the menu. This was actually quite frustrating at first. Not particularly intuitive.
Great widget, Robo.
Beeb, I suspect that’s a security feature to prevent accidental deletion of files.
That little “jelly bean” in the top right of Finder windows (and other apps of course), is especially useful when you get a dmg that doesn’t provide a shortcut to the applications folder. Click the jelly bean, and the toolbar and sidebar will appear for the dmg’s window.
Then you can easily drag and drop the app to the applications folder.