Small things macOS can do most people don't realize

This is an amazing keyboard trick in Mail.app because the “search” field searches in the menu options, and in Mail.app there is a menu option for each mail folder under the “Copy” and “Move” submenus. So this is a quick way to complete a folder name for copy or move without using the mouse.

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Another one I forgot about:
Holding Shift + Dragging an event in Calendar.app let’s you reschedule events to the minute. (in week view)

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This one has the nice benefit of also working on iOS.

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  1. In Column View, double click on the vertical line between columns to make it large enough to show the longest file name in the column.

  2. In the Save As dialogue, if you want to create a name very similar to one of some file that is showing, click on that file and that name will be provided as a starter in the naming area. It can then be modified as appropriate.

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I use both of those, especially the file naming hack.

I am not 100% sure if this fits into this topic (very nice by the way):

When I am printing a PDF from Preview I always have to change the default from “Scale to Fit” to 100% by typing 100% every single time.

There is a terminal command to set the 100% as default:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode 0

Apparently since Yosemite this command is preferred (the one above worked for me, though):

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool false

Via:

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I didn’t know, until this afternoon, that it is possible to bulk rename files using the finder, and with substitutions etc. Limited options but very convenient.

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Don’t know if this is well known or not, but when writing text:

  • Option + Left / Right arrow will move the cursor right or left by word (I use the all the time)

  • Option + Up / Down arrow will move to the beginning or end of the line.

  • Command + Up / Down will move the cursor to the beginning or end of all the text.

  • Command + Left / Right will take you to the beginning or end of the line. Similar to the Option shortcut, but the option shortcut will continue down the text as you keep pressing.

  • Add Shift to any of these to select / unselect text.

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I’ve used option left right for years. Didn’t think to try option up down…. Thanks!

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I think most people don’t realize all the powerful search capabilities in Finder. To see what it can do, in Finder under Help–>macOS Help, search for “Narrow your search results on Mac”.

These are really useful tips, thanks: I couldn’t imagine typing without them.

Just to add to your list:

opt+up/down is actually up/down paragraph (not by line,) each of which of course can take up several lines on the screen. This means that you have more than one option when you’re in the middle of a multi-line paragraph.

  1. cmd-left/right will take you to the beginning or end of the physical line on the screen (i.e. not necessarily to the beginning/end of the paragraph)

  2. opt-left/right will take you to the beginning or end of the whole paragraph. (And repeat presses will walk you up or down the entire document by paragraph.)

As a further option, Ctl-a and Ctl-e work exactly the same way as opt-left/right - beginning/end of paragraph (including the shift variants), but repeat presses don’t walk you up/down the document.

These control commands are really useful if you don’t like reaching for the arrow keys (I don’t…). Other useful control equivalents are:

  • Ctl-n/p (= down/up arrow)
  • Ctl-d (delete next character),
  • Ctl-b/f (back/forward character),
  • Ctl-k (delete to end of paragraph).
  • Ctl-l (that’s ell, not 1 = centre the page around the cursor)
  • Ctl-opt-b/f (backward/forward word)

(Those who know Emacs shortcuts will recognise them all, of course. They’re built into MacOS by default – one of the reasons why changing to Linux/Windows is so frustrating from a purely typing point of view is the latter two don’t have this sensible approach :smiley:)

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Thanks for the clarification!

If you go to your Applications folder and hold Command while dragging an app icon to the Finder toolbar, the icon will be placed into the toolbar. You can then drag Finder items onto that icon to open them in that app.

I mostly use this with Adobe Bridge. I can drag an image onto the Bridge icon, and Bridge will open up to the location of that image.

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If you find yourself having to use Windows, these work there too.

I learned today that I can and should rename the Flagged in Mail.app. It is just another mailbox. Now I don’t have to remember what the heck was orange flag for!

image

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Nothing „hidden“ or spezial probably but this week I (finally :face_with_peeking_eye:) learned I can show all open windows of an app with four-finger swipe down on my Magic Trackpad compared to showing all windows (grouped by app for me) with a four-finger swipe up which I have always used together with three/four-finger swipe left/right - it’s especially handy when I’m dealing with multiple browser windows and multiple browsers.

Again nothing big but makes navigating my Mac much more fluent for me :smiling_face:

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I just learned another thing :blush:

I’m using stacks on my desktop (are they called stacks in English? „Stapel“ in german). At work I do many screenshots throughout the day that I mostly don’t need longer term, so the stack keeps my desktop more clean. When expanding the stack I always found it a bit cumbersome to select all the screenshots I intend to delete at the end of the day as I have to hold shift or command to select multiple rows of files.

But today I found out that when I drag a selection with my mouse of the stacks symbol (an arrow down) it automatically selects all files inside that stack automatically without any other files :star_struck:. I then can much more easily deselect the one/two files I still need and remove the rest …
… finding that rather by accident today made me happy :laughing:

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Yet another one for anyone who uses TextSoap to scrub text everywhere. There’s a companion app that will allow to use all of you cleaners in place (e.g. you can remove extra returns from a paragraph you copied from a PDF into Word without ever leaving the word app).

It’s even more powerful when you pair that with a global shortcut (mine is bound to ⌃⇧⌥T).

It’s a free download, but requires TextSoap 9 which is also included in SetApp.

Something I discovered in Accessibility - Display setting today.
Change your MOUSE pointer color:

image

How’s that for some fun mouse pointer. I am using lime green with black outline.

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