
Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks - franze
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/400/mac-os-x-hidden-features-and-nice-tips-trickS
======
GeneralMaximus
A few I can think of:

\- Open the Apple menu. Now hold Shift. More menu options! Now try holding
Opt. Even more menu options! This works for several Apple applications.

\- Hold Opt when clicking on a menubar icon for extra information. For
example, holding Opt and clicking the WiFi icon in the menubar brings up the
signal strength, IP address and other useful information. Likewise for the
rest of the icons.

\- In Spotlight, select an entry in the search results and hit Cmd+Return to
go to its parent folder. Opt+Return opens results in a Finder window.

\- You know you can drop files on dock icons? Did you know you can also drop
them on the icons in the app switcher (the thing that comes up when you hit
Cmd+Tab)?

\- This one is a bitch to describe, but very useful. You know you can hit
Cmd+M to iconify ("minimize" in Windows-speak) applications to the Dock. But
how do you get them back? Just do this: Cmd+Tab to the application, but don't
release Cmd yet. Without releasing Cmd, press Opt. Now release Cmd. Done! This
is equivalent to clicking the application's icon in the Dock, which means it
has more uses than the one I described.

~~~
bonaldi
That fifth trick is superb. Apps that don't reopen their closed main window
when cmd-tabbed to drive me nuts (Mail especially, as there's no shortcut to
open the message viewer).

~~~
mirkules
This has been one of my main sticking points of OS X window management for a
very long time. At least there's a workaround, thanks!

------
mrspeaker
I couldn't see it in that list, but my favourite can't-live-without shortcut
is CMD + ~ to switch between windows of the same app (for example, if you have
10 textmate windows open it will flip between them). CMD + SHFT + ~ to go the
other way.

~~~
xinsight
I use this frequently. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Photoshop.

~~~
hboon
The reverse does. cmd+shift+~

------
nikcub
The big one that I went through recently was killing startup items. You tend
to hoard them over time, especially with a dev machine.

Look in, and clear out in /Library/StartupItems and
/System/Library/StartupItems

Like any good UNIX, there are a dozen other ways that applications can launch
themselves in OS X, so run a ps and find processes that you don't need and
figure out where they are being started.

I alias everything in bash to run the scripts manually when I need them (eg.
'apu' starts apache, 'ngu' starts nginx, 'vbx' sets up virtualbox). Saves a
ton of memory and gets boot time down to seconds rather than minutes.

~~~
experimental
I trust you know what you are doing. I'd like to warn others to be careful of
what is removed, especially if you didn't put it there. The price is
stability.

~~~
experimental
Can somebody explain how this doesn't contribute to the discussion? I was
trying not to tell nikcub something they may already know, and trying to be
helpful for anyone else while not making assumptions on the knowledge of
anyone else.

~~~
nikcub
I have no idea, I thought it was a valid point and probably something I should
have mentioned

------
emehrkay
The first two are part of the reason why I hate using Windows at work.

The fact that you cannot drag files to their icons and have that file opened
in the application seems like something out of the past.

To scroll a window in Windows, the window needs to have focus. To scroll a
scroll pane in an active window, that pane needs to have focus -- it is
maddening especially when hover events work for non-focused windows and panes.

I could go on and on, but this isn't a Windows hatefest.

~~~
emehrkay
I use spotlight for all kinds of math (12 / 4) * (44 + 35) etc

Command + c will copy the highlighted spotlight result.

Expose (show all windows) and drag and drop files to that window (i grab the
file, while dragging show all windows by either a keybord key or hot corner
and drop it to the new window)

Hold down command to move around background windows without giving it focus.

Ctrl + (arrows or numbers) to go to certain spaces.

While in spaces expose, hold down ctrl to move all of the windows of a certain
application to another space.

Hold down a window's titlebar while switching spaces to move that window to
the new space.

Drag folders that you frequent into the left side of finder. I have
/private/etc in mine

Hold down command while clicking or pressing enter on a spotlight result will
open its containing folder.

How did I forget about keyboard modifiers by holding down the alt key.

Drag a file/folder to terminal to get the path to that file printed in
terminal. so I often type "cd " and then drag folder to get there

While switching apps via command+tab you can let tab go and either hide the
application by pressing h or quit it by pressing q (I wish that you could
minimize it by pressing m). You can also cycle backwards by pressing tilde
(this only works if youre already command+tabbing) or shift+tab

* Gone from snow leopard, but i miss it* there used to be a keyboard shortcut (command, option, ctrl space) that opened a list of your last accessed files (i mistakenly found a bunch of porn website cookies on an intern's laptop once). This used to be useful to see which files you needed to upload /ftp.

~~~
kaylarose
IMO Spotlight is _the_ best example of minimalist software design.

In a single universal field you have instant: app launcher, calculator,
dictionary, file search, email search, contact search.

My single best tip for Mac power-users: learn what you can do with Spotlight.

Edit: grammar

~~~
redacted
Spotlight also has keywords -

kind:pdf

date:yesterday

author:short_name

from:contact_name

And the boolean relations AND, OR, NOT work as you might expect.

There's a _lot_ of cool stuff hidden in Spotlight. Try

    
    
        man mdfind 
    

to play around with command-line Spotlight.

~~~
redacted
Here is a particularly good resource on this aspect of Spotlight:

<http://hints.macworld.com/dlfiles/spotlight_cmds.txt>

------
iaskwhy
"I love the fact that OS X will scroll the window that the mouse is hovering
over, even if another application has focus. That way I can scroll an example
that I am coding in TextMate without having to lose keyboard control on TM"

This also happens on Windows (at least on Chrome) but Windows goes even
further: you can click through a link or button on a non-focused window. On OS
X, in order to follow a link or click a button on some non-focused window, you
need to activate it by clicking and then click again on the desired
link/button. This drives me nuts as I found out I use this all the time on
Windows. I call this feature "smart focus".

~~~
anon1385
Command click on buttons in background windows to click them without bringing
the window to the front. Works for most things (at least anything using
standard cocoa controls), although clicking links in Safari is a notable
exception since it still seems to bring the window to the front.

You can also command+click and drag background title bars to move those
windows without bringing them to the front.

~~~
iaskwhy
It's a good workaround I guess. I'm still not sure which way is the best. OS X
kinda prevents the user from misclicking outside the window while Windows
doesn't but if you're in need of some speed (and fewer clicks/keys) then you
might prefer the Windows way.

------
melling
Shouldn't people sign up and put their answers on StackExchange? They have
pretty good search built into it. Search: [haskell] mysql

This will return all questions tagged haskell that mention mysql.

I'd love a HN article search by title, comment, author, or my saved stories.

------
navs
My absolute favorite is cmd+shift+/ which brings up the Help Menu search box.
With this I can type any menu item string and execute the item rather than
having to remember each shortcut.

~~~
riobard
To be fair, the shortcut should really read "cmd+?". Much easier to remember!

------
jws
Bring up "About this Mac…" from the apple menu, then click on the OS version
number and it will cycle through some extra information including the serial
number so you don't have to try to read the 2 point tall, minimal contrast
serial number printed on the case.

------
gurraman
I did not read the entire list, but my favorite "trick":

    
    
        CMD + SHIFT + g
    

... in Finder (or an open-file-dialog) opens up a "Go to folder"-dialog in
which you can tab-complete your way to the desired destination. It's not
perfect, but makes fs-navigation bearable in Finder.

~~~
stricken
Oh, wow, I didn't realise you could tab-complete as well. Thanks!

------
bbsabelli
Don't post tips here, post them on apple.stackexchange.com so others can find
them...

------
vault_
The coolest hidden feature of OS X is probably the text input system.

<http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html>

------
xtacy
What's even better is that many of the keyboard shortcuts are consistent
across many applications. For e.g., Cmd-, opens Application Preferences.

~~~
zacharypinter
Agreed. I miss that shortcut every time I use Windows or Linux.

------
thelibrarian
One I like is Ctrl+Cmd+d while the pointer is over a word will pop up a small
dictionary with a definition of that word. This does not work in every
application (e.g. it doesn't work in Chrome or Firefox), but it should work in
any Cocoa based application.

------
mirkules
I wish there was a way to do these (like you can in windows), maybe someone
knows a way? \- Right click a file, "Send To". The nice thing about it is you
can add items to the Send To folder so you can have a customized list of apps
you can open files with \- Right click on a folder and "open in terminal" \-
Type a path into a finder window and have finder open it

------
experimental
I don't use OS X, but I thought I'd share a few bits of information. Also this
page demonstrates why native local software is so great - no redundancy
(exposing a dictionary to all apps), low memory footprint etc.

\- In 10.6 Snow Leopard, hold Space to zoom in on a window in Exposé.

\- Not a hint exactly, but there exists at least one unnecessary
dissatisfaction people have of Finder. In real life, you cut text and paste it
in a scrapbook, but you don't cut an object like a folder with scissors in
order to move it. You usually use a hand or two. Therefore the inability to
"move" an object using "cut" (Cmd+X) is the correct behavior. Secondly it
prevents you from accidentally pasting a file elsewhere, then needing to
remember if you meant to do that, or undo. Adding visibility in some way is
not enough, and you can still move by dragging the object to the desktop or
wherever else.

Note: Edited for spacing.

------
jackery
A more comprehensive DB of various tips for MacOS:
<http://secrets.blacktree.com/>

------
padmanabhan01
Anyone know how to set a default view option across all folders? Like
overwriting the previously set option for all folders?

------
te_chris
Not a native tip, but using hyperdock has made window management on OSX so
much nicer thanks to it's smart porting of win 7 features like dock window
previews, dragging and window to the top and having it fill the screen. Can't
rave about that little app enough!

------
tristian
Wow, I just saw this nugget in one of the comments: VI mode for the standard
Terminal.

Add "set -o vi" to your profile and you get access to same modality and
commands of VI. Damn, I wish I knew about this option earlier.

~~~
spacemanaki
Note that I think that's a Bash thing, and the default is Emacs-style bindings
(C-a, C-e, C-p, C-n) which include C-r for reverse interactive search of the
history. I use that every day, a dozen or more times.

~~~
graywh
It's actually a Readline thing.

~~~
CountSessine
Something I've always wondered though - did emacs take them from readline or
did readline take them from emacs? How old is readline? Where did all of those
C-a, C-e, etc conventions come from?

~~~
mturmon
They came from emacs. Readline is now around v6, readline v2 seems to have
been from the mid 1990s.

There is a smaller set of standard commands for killing (C-h for char, C-w for
word, C-u for line) which are used in many terminal apps. They are orthogonal
to emacs, and probably about as old (1970s).

~~~
spudlyo
Those emacs style editing commands actually came from TECO in the 70s. Crazy
that those editing commands are hardwired into my brain nearly 40 years later.

------
srik
View a powerpoint presentation: Option (or Option-Space for fullscreen)

My macbook air's measly 64 GB cannot accomodate a seperate powerpoint app, so
I use the builtin preview features. It works great.

------
andrewgleave
Hold Ctrl-Shift while moving your cursor over the Dock to temporarily enable
magnification.

Useful when your Dock is crammed with tiles.

~~~
earl
you can also hold down ctrl and scroll up or down the trackpad with two
fingers to magnify the whole screen. Really helpful for zooming in when your
laptop is hooked up to a projector.

------
rtaycher
Is there a similar one for linux?

~~~
billybob
There are StackExchange sites for Unix & Linux:
<http://unix.stackexchange.com/>

... and for Ubuntu specifically:
<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7716/ubuntu>

You could search there.

------
matthew-wegner
CMD-down will open the selected file in the Finder (same as double-clicking).

~~~
hboon
cmd-o too.

------
_delirium
I like ctrl+opt+cmd+8 to toggle reverse video.

------
BasDirks
Wow I feel ignorant, great stuff!

