
Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS? - hooda
For me, it was finding that I can use &quot;Stacks&quot; in Finder to clear desktop. For years, I was irritated with screenshots lying all over my desktop screen but didn&#x27;t have the energy to sort them manually. When I found out Stacks, I was like ...
======
jiripospisil
Smart Folders (Finder -> File -> New Smart Folder). It's not exactly hidden
but I never paid too much attention to it. It's essentially a way to create a
folder whose content is dynamically updated based on your search conditions.

For example, you can create a smart folder that contains all PDF files
matching a certain name pattern within a given directory (or the whole disk)
[0]. You can get really advanced, there's a ton of different parameters you
can use [1], and you can even create more complicated conditions by holding
Option and clicking the plus sign (now changed to just three dots). And of
course you can drag these folders into the sidebar's Favourites section.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/lD2zaSd.png](https://i.imgur.com/lD2zaSd.png)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/SKsQRnQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/SKsQRnQ.png)

~~~
donatj
I’ve been sad since they were introduced that they don’t work at the file
system level, hence not in CLI applications. Support for them in desktop apps
that open directories is also spotty.

I would LOVE them if they were reimplemented as a fuse style file system
instead of a userland macOS trick.

~~~
egypturnash
I wonder if there is a list somewhere around Apple of "Annoying Edge Cases
We'd Have To Support If Smart Folders Worked At The Filesystem Level", and how
long it is.

Like, you're in a smart folder that contains files whose name includes "foo",
and you try to create a file whose name does _not_ include "foo", what
happens? Do you get an existing filesystem error? Do you get a new "can't
create new files in smart folders" error?

Interestingly enough I just discovered that if you drag a file into the Tags
section of the Finder window's sidebar, it will remain where it is - but if
you create a smart folder whose criteria is "tag:tagname" it won't let you
drag anything into it, even though it shows the exact same set of files.

~~~
DrJokepu
Also, duplicate filenames due to two files in two different locations both
getting picked up by the smart folder.

~~~
IgorPartola
You can easily tack on a random ID to the file name in that case and since it
would just be a symlink it wouldn’t matter.

~~~
DrJokepu
That's not the point. I have no doubt that the people at Apple are able to
solve these issues. I think a lot of people on HN are able to propose
solutions to many of these issues.

The point OP was making is that they have probably did their due diligence and
subsequently decided that it ain't worth doing.

~~~
IgorPartola
Oh for sure. I also imagine it depends on which team proposed it. If it’s the
Finder team it might not occur to them to offload it to the file system team
because it’s a fancy add on, not a system level thing. I have never used this
feature but might give it a go. Having all the PDF files in one place could
actually be fairly useful. Could also be nice to combine this with my Dropbox
photography workflow.

------
aunty_helen
Cmd-space to bring up spotlight

Type whatever you want.

Cmd-b

Your default web browser with your default search engine will now open and
perform your query. I can't stress this enough how much I use this workflow
when writing code.

Another thing for the OPs issue with the screenshots, (there's a few steps via
terminal so maybe try the above shortcut to search for an article on how to do
it) you can have all your screenshots redirect to a folder.

For example all of my screenshots end up in $HOME/screenshots

Also, another cool and sometimes useful shortcut, holding option while
clicking is a big thing in osx. Try click the wifi icon in the top right
corner whilst holding the option key. It will give you a bunch more details :)

~~~
mi_lk
I tried Cmd-b search in spotlight but it went with Firefox+Google when my
default is Firefox+Duckduckgo, any chance someone knows how to fix it?

~~~
aunty_helen
So, I've been messing around with this for about 30 minutes now. I don't like
giving bad advice!

Set safari as your default, set the search engine you want in the safari
preferences, change your browser back to what you prefer.

~~~
IgorPartola
Props for the follow up!

------
awinder
I’ve been using windows more recently since my personal Mac bit the dust and
I’m trying to decide if there’s really that much reason to own a personal Mac.

So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for
years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have
imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in
windowsland where the quality of font rendering is not just a total and utter
failure. So this is my new top Mac feature.

~~~
Jakobeha
I remember watching a speech from Steve Jobs where he specifically said he
learned about calligraphy or typefacing (I don’t remember the specific terms)
to implement proper font rendering on macs. This was also before OSX came out.

It was interesting because I realized how subtly difficult font rendering is.
Unless you’re using a monospaced font all of the characters have different
widths, you have to figure out how to split text into lines, or how much to
space text if the alignment is set to justify. In some of the fancier fonts on
macOS, the characters actually change slightly if there are other characters
nearby.

~~~
sircastor
I don’t think it was specifically for the Mac. I think this might be from the
speech he gave at Stanford where he talked about dropping his required classes
and going to ones that he just was interested in. He later applied what he
learned though.

[1]
[https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/](https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/)

~~~
Jakobeha
Yes that was the speech

------
zenexer
\- Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 will let you take a screenshot of a region of your
screen and copy it to the clipboard. It can then be pasted directly into most
applications, from email clients to chat clients. No random screenshots
sitting around. If you want to capture a whole window, press Space after the
initial shortcut, then click the window.

\- While a menu is open, hold Option; if you're lucky, you'll get some
additional options. This works after right-clicking an item in Finder, for
example, or after right-clicking an icon in the Dock.

\- Magnet for window management. This is a third-party application, but you'll
wonder how you lived without it. If you've used Spectacle, Magnet is similar,
but I find Magnet to be a bit more graceful.

\- Sidecar and AirPlay. Want a second screen? Got an iPad or Apple TV? You can
effortless treat it as a second screen with very low latency. It "just works."

\- Cmd + Space to open Spotlight. Most power users are already familiar with
this; if you're not, try it.

\- Cmd + Shift + G in Finder to go to a folder by path. You can also use it to
copy the path to the current folder.

\- Return/Enter to rename the currently-selected file in Finder. If you're
coming from Windows/Linux and are accustomed to pressing F2, you might not
know about this one.

\- Similarly, to open the currently selected item in Finder, press Cmd + O. To
navigate up a directory, press Cmd + Up.

\- Ever installed a new drive in your Mac? You don't need to manually download
macOS installation media beforehand; with the right key combination at boot,
you can install it via the internet. There are a few different related
combinations with differing functionality; it's worth looking them up and
choosing the right one for your situation: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201255](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255)

~~~
noman-land
After you press Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 and start dragging a region, if you
hold the space bar, you can move this region around the screen so you're not
trapped with where you originally started dragging.

~~~
shadowfacts
In addition to pressing space to move the selected region, you can also press:

\- Option, to move all four corners symmetrically around the region's center

\- Shift, to constrain expansion to a single axis

\- Option + Shift, to move the edges on a single axis symmetrically around the
center

\- Space + Shift, to move the entire region along a single axis

------
Vincenttermini
Marking a file as "Stationary Pad" will create and open a copy every time you
open the original. Good for templates or any other file you don't want to
accidentally save changes to.

\- Get Info on file. \- Check Stationary Pad box.

~~~
jasonv
That's a strange name/label for an awesome feature.

~~~
ntauthority
It'd make sense if the label were actually "Stationery", which is practically
a paper template.

~~~
simondw
Fortunately, that is how it's spelled.

------
jlturner
This has been around for a long time but most people don’t know about it:

Dragging and dropping files from the finder into an file selector window (ie.
Open File in most programs) will navigate to that file and select it. As
others mentioned this works in terminal as well to give you a path, but
actually this generally works in any text box (unless it specifically handles
paths being drag ‘n dropped). This also works with multiple files / multi file
selection, and in the case of inserting the path as text, they are space
delimited and auto quoted (convenient for shell use).

Edit: This icon can include the one at the top of a finder window (the window
title). That’s actually interactable and can be dragged and dropped for the
directory itself.

~~~
bonestamp2
> this works in terminal as well to give you a path

I'll add that if you want the path of a file and the destination application
doesn't support drag 'n' drop, right click on a file in finder, then hold the
Option key and you'll see the copy command changes from "Copy" to "Copy as
Pathname".

~~~
Sirened
Oh my god this is so useful! I've known about the 'drag into your terminal'
thing for ages but not needing to use the mouse and just doing command-
option-c is so much nicer!

------
tln
Mouse keys -- as an anti-feature. (press option 5 times)

My daughter enabled it while I wasn't at the computer and then thought my
keyboard had died. Even took it in to get repaired, and got a new keyboard.

There is no permanent indicator that it's enabled, and it persists after
reboots (once logged in)... when I figured out my brand new keyboard still had
several broken keys I started looking for S/W level issues. Hard facepalm. It
didn't help diagnosis that I did have some physically affected keys too.

At least I got a new keyboard out of it...

~~~
MaxBarraclough
What happened? What does _mouse keys_ do?

~~~
wila
See [1]

In short, it makes the keys on a numerical keypad allow you to control the
mouse (move up/down/left/right and click)

[1] [https://etc.usf.edu/techease/4all/input-devices/what-are-
mou...](https://etc.usf.edu/techease/4all/input-devices/what-are-mouse-keys/)

------
cmehdy
Three-finger drag is the one thing I just can't live without.[0]

Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete)

Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search

Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick
toggles

Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of
various European languages are usually made by using Option+[key] for the
accent, and Option+[key]+letter for the proper letter. The [key] maps are e ->
´, `` -> `` (I'm messing up the rendering of the quotes here despite my best
efforts), i -> ˆ, u -> ¨ and some keys Option+[key] directly give a character
when it's unique, such as Option+a=å and Option+o=ø, and Option+1=¡ (because
it's the key for ! otherwise, which makes sense - and can help with Spanish)

For the longer examples, Option+e+e = é, Option+e+a = á, Option+`+a = à,
Option+u+u = ü, Option+i+u = û, Option+n+n = ñ, etc.

Holding Option in menus also shows extra options and their shortcuts (although
this is less and less the case outside of the Apple apps themselves). An
example using Finder -> Edit and pressing/releasing the Option key[1]

Oh and one more: the app "Stickies", which allows you to have "post-it notes"
with color coding and collapsing the note by double-clicking on the title,
saving to file, etc. I use it to take quick notes or set casual reminders.

Last but not least, not an Apple app but a very helpful tool I've used to make
the gif in this post: Kap is incredibly convenient to records bits of the
screen and save to various formats, and it's been improving a lot since its
early releases[2] (I have no stake in this, I'm just thankful for such a cool
piece of free software)

[0] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204609)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/feRhErF.gif](https://i.imgur.com/feRhErF.gif)

[2] [https://getkap.co/](https://getkap.co/)

~~~
tgv
> all the accents and letters

Nowadays, holding down a key will show a pop-up with all the accent options,
which you can then select by mouse or by typing the number under it, much like
on iOS. The option route is my preferred one, as it's faster, but the new one
is much more accessible to people without keyboard prowess.

~~~
chaboud
Is there a way to shut off the long press functionality? Sometimes I just want
to type “byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”, and I have already made the effort to learn
accent key combos.

~~~
cmehdy
Pretty much this: [https://www.howtogeek.com/267463/how-to-enable-key-
repeating...](https://www.howtogeek.com/267463/how-to-enable-key-repeating-in-
macos/)

------
hamiltont
Show hidden files (dotfiles) inside any finder window or file open dialog: Cmd
+ Shift + .

Discovered after ~10 years

~~~
duncans
Why would they not put this in the View menu? I can even imagine someone
invoking it by mistake and not working out how to undo it.

~~~
bhj
Exactly, it's also a needless pain point for those switching from Windows,
where the checkbox is relatively accessible, if a few clicks away.

------
throwaway333444
Setting most (but not all) system preference using the terminal. It made doing
clean installs every year so much easier.
[https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos)

~~~
TaqPolymerase
Do you have a good way of discovering these keys / syncing them with the UI? I
like to do the same thing but sometimes change a setting in the UI and don’t
know what to update in my script without diffing the entire prefs directory
before and after the change.

~~~
niteshade
AFAIK diffing is the only way, I'd love to hear if anyone has a better
technique

------
shrumm
my favourite feature is how the title bar icon in any app that’s editing a
file (textmate/ word etc) is a pointer to the actual file unlike windows.

\- you can drag that file anywhere to move it.

\- CMD click it to see a breadcrumb menu showing where it is and navigate to
the folder

on a similar vein, dragging a file into an open file modal box makes it browse
to the containing folder. In windows, dragging a file would move the file into
that folder.

I combine the above two quite a bit. Editing a file in app A, need to upload
it somewhere via browser. Drag file from title bar into open dialog box, done.

~~~
robertoandred
I hate hate hate that they're hiding proxy icons in Big Sur.

~~~
djxfade
Damn, what a bummer. Is there any way to re-enable it?

~~~
Sirened
It appears almost instantly when you mouse over where it used to be. I've been
living on it for the past few weeks and haven't changed my muscle memory at
all.

------
GolDDranks
Cmd-R (R for "reveal") in the open/save file dialog opens the present
directory in Finder. This is useful as I commonly want to do some additional
janitory tasks in the directory.

~~~
mikehollinger
A complimentary feature: when you want to “open” a file from some file open
dialog box, instead of navigating through the dialog, go find the file some
other way and drag-n-drop it onto the dialog. The file won’t open, BUT it’ll
pop over to the directory and select the file for you to then open in the
context of the application.

I use this all the time when I either have something handy in Finder or can
find it more quickly with alfred.

------
pcr910303
While this isn't a generic feature, I want to say that everyone should try
embracing the non-keyboard nature of macOS (as it always has been done), not
just complaining that some of the elements are not reachable in the
keyboard.[0] Try using the mouse, trackpad (which is top-quality), and the
Touch Bar (which I guess will be the most controversial?).

Especially drag-n-drop. I'm not sure if it's already mentioned, but the proxy
icon (the icon in the title bar) is super-useful in situations when you need
to find (e.g. upload/attach the file in Safari, opening the file with another
app) the file somewhere else. Just drag the proxy icon and drop it to the
destination, and it usually will do what you want.

Also the Touch Bar. Everybody complains about it while not even trying to take
advantage of it...[1] Customize your Touch Bar so that the buttons are in a
consistent way, e.g. I always put the new tab button (if it exists) in the far
right, where I can reach without looking, and I put the most useful actions
(like getting information, trashing files in Finder, tab switching in Safari,
text suggestion, etc...) in the middle, and put the less-useful but somewhat
frequent actions (like toggling the sidebar, emojis, etc..) in the left. If
you consciously try using them for a week or two, you realize you're much
productive using the Touch Bar than using obscure shortcuts or moving the
mouse.

[0]: BTW, good news for people who were complaining - macOS Big Sur greatly
increases the amount of controls reachable with the keyboard, although I
dislike the fact that I have to bang more tabs to reach some button.

[1]: There's definitely Apple's fault here too, if you're using a Touch Bar
equipped Mac, 'brew cask install haptickey' so that you get haptic feedback on
your Touch Bar touches.

~~~
wildrhythms
Isn't the touchbar explicitly a "keyboard nature" type of interaction? You
mentioned Mac OS having a non-keyboard nature, and then tout the touchbar?

~~~
1penny42cents
I know what they meant here. The touch bar seems like a keyboard but it's not,
because of the sliders and customization.

My original touch bar layout mirrored the pre-touch bar layout out of
familiarity. Recently I've learned how to use it as intended (sliders instead
of up and down buttons, using application-custom buttons). I realized that I
was just being an old man about the touch bar before.

~~~
aloknnikhil
I think one of the key advantages of a non-keyboard interaction is that you
don't have to look at the pointing device to see what you're doing. Touch-bar
precisely needs that, especially given that there is no tactile feedback. And
it's the main reason why I think the Touch-bar destroys productivity.

------
baryphonic
Batch renaming files in Finder.[1] It's quite useful and one of the few GUI-
based looping operations that takes me less time than fat-fingering the shell
incantation.

[1] [https://osxdaily.com/2015/05/28/batch-rename-files-mac-
os-x-...](https://osxdaily.com/2015/05/28/batch-rename-files-mac-os-x-finder/)

~~~
Sirened
What in the world, that's been here the entire time? I've been looking up how
to do it in bash every time I've needed to do it. It's so strange how macOS
has this appearance of simplicity but just below the surface you have stuff
like this

~~~
K7PJP
No, it was added in OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Before that you needed to either use
Terminal or "A Better Finder Rename" which still offers more options than
Finder, including the use of metadata to rename your files.

------
tptacek
You can assign a folder full of images to the background of Terminal.app, and
it will choose background images at random, so a folder full of dark solid
colors gives you random dark backgrounds, enabling you to tell your terminal
windows apart easily.

~~~
dividedbyzero
This does not seem to be supported in iTerm, if anyone else is wondering.

~~~
tptacek
In fairness, it's barely supported in Terminal.app --- in that I had to make a
bunch of solid-colored images to make it work! It should be a first-class
feature of all terminal applications. I had no idea how much I want this
feature day-to-day until I got fed up with a 27" monitor display crammed with
overlapping identical-looking tcpdump windows a few weeks ago.

------
nicoburns
Wait until you find out you can change which directory screenshots save to. I
have a dedicated "screenshots" directory in my home directory. And then a
stack in the Dock for it similar to the one for the Downloads folder.

~~~
etimberg
Any idea if there is a way to remove the preview that shows up in the bottom
right corner? OSX doesn't write the screenshot until after that disappears
which is annoying

~~~
jdub
Shift + Command + 5… click "Options" in the bar down the bottom of the screen.

(Also, try hitting space a couple of times in that mode.)

~~~
moralestapia
Wait ... you can RECORD !

~~~
roryokane
While recording your screen, you can also record your microphone by choosing
it in the Options menu. However, there is no way to record audio that is
output to your speakers unless you first create a custom audio source using
Soundflower
([https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower](https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower))
or Loopback
([https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/](https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/)).

------
ractive
I recently discovered some nice helpers to resize windows:

\- Hold down the option key while resizing a windows (with the mouse) to also
resize the opposite side. This also works when resizing the window on a corner
to resize all edges at once.

\- Double click a window border to enlarge this side of the window up to the
edge of the scereen. Hold down the option key to enlarge also the opposite
site.

\- Double-click the title bar of a window to maximize it

~~~
ocbyc
Try divvy. Works for both Mac and Windows.

It's the first app I install on any fresh box.

~~~
bredren
Here are some divvy shortcut ideas for the XDR Pro display:
[https://i.imgur.com/Tf4c6yo.png](https://i.imgur.com/Tf4c6yo.png)

------
frereubu
Three-finger dragging on laptops with touchpads:
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204609) It says it's for dragging windows, but it works for all dragging,
including files in Finder etc. Couldn't do without it now.

Increase Contrast, which I prefer not just for aesthetic reasons (it gives a
slightly old-school feel to the interface), but because it delineates areas of
windows / apps more clearly: Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Increase
Contrast. This will automatically turn on Reduce Transparency, but I used that
setting anyway, to reduce distracting detail.

~~~
IggleSniggle
You can also get this behavior with “double tap to grab”, which allows you to
pick up your finger and put it back down repeatedly as you are dragging
something around. Same idea, different (turned-off by default) gesture.

------
NateEag
Focusing the menubar with Control-F2.

You can then navigate by arrow keys or typing. Space bar activates the
highlighted menu/submenu.

It makes life so much better.

Control-F2 itself was slightly broken in 10.14 (IIRC), so I hacked up a dumb
workaround in my Hammerspoon config:

[https://github.com/NateEag/dotfiles/blob/99f6b641151f85f6f78...](https://github.com/NateEag/dotfiles/blob/99f6b641151f85f6f781df3a17c15c5c4b4bba51/src/.hammerspoon/init.lua#L44)

~~~
donatj
Command-Shift-? is the better version of this imho, directly opens the help
menu and you can just type the name of the menu item and hit enter. Way
quicker than navigating to it.

~~~
hobs
Yep this is what I came to say - OSX's help menu automatically searches all
menu commands and if you hover over them it will open up the menu, show you
the location, and if you hit enter just use it for you.

This is also something you can generally call from Applescript as well, if you
want to automate application behaviors.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Mind sharing an example AppleScript of that? Every time I’ve dug in there,
it’s never had quite what I wanted. But this seems like an especially
leverage-able idea.

~~~
hobs
It's been about 10 years since I touched that code, so apologies if these are
all things you know.

I am pretty sure most of the work was just extending the documentation in
[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/La...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/AutomatetheUserInterface.html)
with looking up application "dictionaries" (iirc, a box of supported commands)
and all menu items being accessible by default.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ap...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptLangGuide/conceptual/ASLR_about_handlers.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000983-CH206-SW1)

------
DamnInteresting
I have long used Shift-Command-4 to take screenshots, but I only recently
discovered Shift-Command-5, which provides finer control (and it's much easier
to use when I'm working at my treadmill desk).

Also, Command-K to clear out a terminal window (also often works in similar
places, such as the MAMP error log viewer).

~~~
atombender
My favourite hidden function: Pressing space after Shift-Cmd-4 toggles window
mode. In window mode, only the window you select will be captured.

~~~
donarb
Note also that menus are treated like windows, so you can screenshot a menu as
well.

------
randomdata
That you can hold down certain keys, like i and o, to access a list of similar
characters that aren't found on the keyboard.

My 1 year old taught me that one.

~~~
frereubu
I actually turn that off - [https://osxdaily.com/2011/08/04/enable-key-repeat-
mac-os-x-l...](https://osxdaily.com/2011/08/04/enable-key-repeat-mac-os-x-
lion/) \- so it's easier to write things like
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

~~~
jooize
May not produce the same feel, but there is:

    
    
      defaults write -g NSRepeatCountBinding -string "^u"
    

> This default controls the numeric argument binding. The default is for
> numeric arguments not to be supported. If you provide a binding for this
> default you enable the feature. This allows you to repeat a keyboard command
> a given number of times. For instance “Control-U 10 Control-F” means move
> forward ten characters.

—
[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/EventOverview/TextDefaultsBindings/TextDefaultsBindings.html)

------
johnwalkr
I found these after years, although it's been years since I found it. Preview
is pretty good for merging PDFs, deleting pages from PDFs, and adding
annotations. Whenever I have to do these things on a windows machine, I
struggle to find software to do it. Most importantly, preview can add your
signature via trackpad, or by holding up your signature to a webcam.

~~~
hanche
I have seen pdf files swell to ~ ten times the original size when I edit them
with Preview. Apparently, Preview will reencode images upon saving, often
choosing a less efficient encoding than original. The most extreme cases I
encountered would be files scanned in black and white, with Fax or JBIG2
encoding. Since I use such files a lot, I use pdfpen instead for all my pdf
editing tasks.

~~~
crazygringo
I've only ever seen that happen when re-exporting using Quartz filters, where
the whole point is to re-encode, and saving an e.g. 300-page PDF will take
several minutes, with a progress bar.

If you're just using Preview to rearrange/combine/etc. pages, no re-encoding
happens and file size stays the same.

Believe me, I do a _lot_ of PDF management in Preview. Even to the point of
creating my own Quartz filters in the ColorSync Utility precisely so that I
can intentionally re-encode images when I want to. (Because the Apple-provided
Quartz filters are hard-coded to abusrdly high or absurdly low resoltions.)

~~~
hanche
It’s been years since I stopped using Preview for PDF files, generally using
Skim for reading and pdfpen for editing them. Perhaps something changed since
then? That is good news, if so.

~~~
hanche
I should have tried it before replying, but did not have easy access to my
laptop. Now I redid the experiment. Starting with a 24 page scanned pdf, I
deleted the first page using Preview, then saved and closed the file. It
swelled from 2 MB to 6.7 MB. Looking into the file, I see that all the images
in the original are encoded with CCITTFaxDecode, while the images in the
edited file are encoded using FlateDecode. I cannot see anything relevant to
the issue in the preferences.

------
kristjansson
Does an app have shortcut you don't like? Go to System Preferences > Keyboard
> Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and click the plus. As prompted, enter the exact
title of menu action you want trigger and the new shortcut. I use the on all
my machines to rebind Quit Safari / Chrome / Firefox /Mail to Cmd + Option + Q
to avoid killing the application when I fat-finger Cmd + Q instead of Cmd + W.

Others already mentioned:

\- three-finger drag is indispensable. Anytime I touch someone else's laptop I
turn it on and blow their minds

\- hold Cmd in Spotlight to reavel the path containing the selected item, Cmd
+ Enter opens that folder in Finder.

\- readline keys work in basically every text input on the machine. Want to
delete a line? C-a C-k. Delete the word preceding the cursor? M-Backspace.

\- Cmd + Down opens the selected item in finder, Cmd + Up jumps one level up
the folder hierarchy Cmd + Left/Right expand/collapse

~~~
jdm2212
That's a really neat trick!

Worth noting: Chrome actually no longer dies when you fat-finger cmd-w. It
shows a "hold cmd-q to quit" overlay and only dies if you keep holding the
keys down.

~~~
tbodt
That's a setting you enable in the app menu, not the default

~~~
jdm2212
Is it? Oh man, must've been a long time since I enabled it. They should make
it the default.

~~~
aheckler
Not built into macOS, but you can use this app to get the Chrome-style quit
delay for every app:

[https://commandqapp.com/](https://commandqapp.com/)

------
nthState
You can hover/long press on the green traffic light item to tile your screen.

~~~
throwaway413
literally just discovered this yesterday myself for the first time - still
prefer Spectacle, but nice that it’s there.

~~~
delgaudm
Spectacle is no longer being maintained. Rectangle [0] offers the same
functionally and is OSS

[0][https://rectangleapp.com/](https://rectangleapp.com/)

~~~
throwaway413
Oh nice, it looks good! Gonna try it out.

I’ve never had even a single issue with Spectacle so not really a big deal to
me that it’s no longer maintained. It Just Works, from my experience - with
that said who knows for how long, I guess.

------
jiripospisil
You can tell Finder to show actual folder sizes instead of just "\--". Right
click in a folder -> Show View Options -> Calculate all sizes. I'm not sure
why it's not the default, it's not like Finder needs to traverse the folders
hierarchy to calculate the size (I hope!).

~~~
oneplane
It does have to traverse the complete filesystem to calculate the sizes. That
is how most filesystems work (files have sizes, folders do not - so a folder
size doesn't exist and is just a sum of whatever it contains)

~~~
jiripospisil
Interesting, I thought it uses the Spotlight index to get this information and
that the index already contains these aggregates, but you're probably right
considering that it works even in folders that I've explicitly excluded (I
wonder how many millions of node_modules folders are indexed for no reason).

------
GavinAnderegg
Cmd-Ctrl-Space (⌘⌃␣) for the character/emoji picker. Also, under Keyboard in
preferences, check the "Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar" option to
get it as a menu-bar icon. This also includes the keyboard viewer, which is
handy to figure certain Shift-Opt-Whaterver combos for seldom-used characters.

EDIT: Updated with the actual default command.

~~~
JadeNB
> Ctrl-Opt-Space for the character/emoji picker.

I think this may not be the default; it doesn't work for me.

While speaking of the character picker, does anyone know a way to get less
broken search in the picker? For example, I frequently find myself looking for
math italic characters in Unicode. Despite the description being, say,
"MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL A", it doesn't come up when I search for 'small'.
In this case searching for 'mathematical' or 'italic' works, but there are
other cases where I just have to guess search terms randomly (or go look up
Unicode tables elsewhere).

~~~
GavinAnderegg
Oops! Sorry! I meant Cmd-Opt-Space here. Also, yeah, the search is pretty
janky in my usage as well.

~~~
JadeNB
> Oops! Sorry! I meant Cmd-Opt-Space here. Also, yeah, the search is pretty
> janky in my usage as well.

Indeed, I thought that might be what you meant … but that opens the Finder
search window for me, so I think that that shortcut also is not universal.
Probably some of these differ depending on whether you've got a fresh install
or an updated system that may carry along shortcuts from an older release.

EDIT: adsche
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24092377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24092377))
suggests ⌘⌃␣, and that works for me.

~~~
elliekelly
If you go to the Edit menu in finder (or any application) all the way at the
bottom of the dropdown menu you’ll see “Emoji & Symbols” and to the right it
should tell you the shortcut keys.

------
iaml
You can use image capture app to copy pictures when you connect camera via
usb.

If you create a "Developer" folder in your ~ it's gonna have a different icon
and is canonical place to put all your code in mac world.

Clicking wifi tray icon while holding option is going to give you a lot more
info and some hidden tools.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Damn that option-click one is HUGE. Thank you. Where are these things
enumerated? Everything in this thread is such tribal knowledge. I’ve gone
looking for this information in the actual help docs and it frequently isn’t
there. Is there a canonical source for Apple shortcuts/gestures in any of
their ecosystems? Many of these things make life so much better.

------
rrwright
The `say` command line tool. It will cause a synthesized voice to speak out
loud whatever follows that command via text-to-speech.

This is especially useful for pranking your loved ones for whom you have
remote shell access. ssh in and cause the other person’s computer to start
talking to them... by name... asking for help... to be let out of the small
metal box they’ve been trapped in for SO long...

This has been available in Mac OS for at least 15 years, and probably longer.

~~~
dividedbyzero
This incredibly useful to get alerted to some long-running job finishing or
the like, e.g.

    
    
      ./some-lengthy-job | say Done
    

Back when I did lots of Apache Spark on a underpowered cluster, I had a script
to lower Spotify volume, tell me the outcome (success, failure), then set
Spotify back to original volume.

I still use this as a kitchen timer all the time when cooking while on my
Macbook with utimer, which is basically a count-down timer for the shell
(available via brew install utimer), e.g.

    
    
      utimer -c 10m | say Pasta is done

~~~
juancn
That redirects the output to say's stdin. You probably want '&&' and '||'.

    
    
        ./some-lengthy-job && say Done || say Failed

------
juancn
I think one of the most magical moments was when I sent a job to print to one
printer that was out of paper at the office, and it failed. I just used
spotlight to open another printer and dragged the job from one printer to the
other and it just worked!

------
evaneykelen
I once discovered a way to restore a minimized window without using the mouse.
It requires a bit of practice:

1\. Press Command-Tab to show your running apps. Keep holding Command.

2\. Press Tab until you've selected the minimized app.

3\. Press the Option key, and let go of the Command key. You must release the
Command key after pressing the Option key! The minimized app is now
unminimized.

Note that this only works for an app with all of its windows minimized. If
there is already a visible window of the app you won't be able to get to the
minimized one with this trick.

I posted it once to Super User where it’s still getting attention after 9
years: [https://superuser.com/questions/196141/keyboard-shortcut-
to-...](https://superuser.com/questions/196141/keyboard-shortcut-to-unhide-or-
unminimize-a-window-in-os-x)

~~~
roryokane
Another way to restore a minimized wondow would be to use Ctrl+F3 to focus the
dock (Ctrl+F1 to enable that shortcut), press Up repeatedly until the
minimized window is selected, then press Return to open it.

------
nshntarora
Option + Click

And

Command + Option + Shift + Click

Works on most default OS things you can click on. Reveals a whole new set of
amazing functionality.

Example: Doing so on the bluetooth icon on your menu bar, gives you the debug
option for you to reset / restart bluetooth module.

~~~
ja27
Yes. My newest find is that you can option-click on the scaling options in
Display prefs and sometimes get more choices.

------
eddyg
Using the Touch Bar to adjust volume, brightness, etc. doesn’t _have_ to be a
two-step process... no need to tap, lift and re-position your finger to the
slider that appears. Instead, just touch-and-hold the icon of the thing you
want to adjust, and slide from there.

~~~
roryokane
Be warned, though, that if you slide your finger before the slider finishes
animating in, that movement is ignored. Too many times I tried a quick
adjustment like that only for the volume to remain the same after my movement.
It’s why I added separate volume buttons to my Touch Bar and switched to using
those primarily.

The sad thing is there’s no good reason for the slider to ignore your input
during the animation. I think Apple just didn’t care enough to test it
thoroughly. They only tested the Touch Bar with computer newbies who press
every key slowly.

------
arein2
Every time you do a screen recordin with quicktime, encode it to h264 to save
a LOT of space and make it playable on any device.

To do that use Handbrake, whick is open source and the go-to app for any
encoding.

~~~
Sirened
ffmpeg -i <original> -o out.mp4 also a super easy way to do this too since
it'll get re-encoded. I don't know why screen recordings aren't handled this
way automatically

------
fedorareis
I learned recently that in any terminal you can option click to move the
cursor to a specific location in a command. It’s really great when you want to
reuse a command but with a small change.

~~~
hobos_delight
In zsh you can C-x, C-e and it will open whatever is on the command line in
$EDITOR.

When you save it the changes will be on the command line.

------
yarsanich
Creating one-file pdf from large pdf file with simple page drag to the home
screen using Preview.

~~~
clairity
yes, and you can compose all sorts of decks by showing the sidebar and
dragging images/pages between window sidebars.

i sometimes compose quick-and-dirty UX flows from mockups this way.

------
monokh
Mac has a storage explorer called "Storage management app". I found it great
for making space as it can sort by categories and file size. Before realising
this, it was a pain to find decent software for the MacOS.

I imagine this was added recently.

~~~
donarb
The Omni Group has had a free storage space app on the Mac for a long time
called OmniDiskSweeper.

[https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omnidisksweeper-
catalina](https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omnidisksweeper-catalina)

------
donatj
You can drag the folder icon from the top of a finder window into an apps
open/save dialog and the dialog will navigate right to it. This also works
with files.

------
gentryb
Cmd + Shift + ? = Easy way to access menus via keyboard

~~~
tgv
For me, it just opens the application's "Help".

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
From there, you can use the arrow keys to navigate to the menu option you'd
like.

~~~
tgv
No, it opens the actual help window or link. The menu doesn't get selected.

------
tiborsaas
If you are taking a partial screenshot but you want to change the position of
the selection then press and hold space to pan the selected area.

------
eddyg
If you run:

    
    
        defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture yes
    

then when you hold _ctrl-opt-cmd_ (the three keys to the left of the space
bar, so easy to remember) you can click-and-drag a window from _anywhere_ ,
not just the title bar. (Note: need to restart app first)

~~~
mattalbie
My goodness, I could kiss you. I never wanted to run a separate app just for
this but have always loved it. Had no idea it was available system-wide.

------
ivan_ah
macOS has a very good built-in text-to-speech engine with real voices that
sound good (i.e. not annoying to read).

It's part of the Accessibility > Speech menu in Settings.

I wrote up a little info doc for how to enable keyboard shortcut for it so you
can use with any text you can select:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit)

Use cases: \- read blog posts and news articles while doing dishes (basically
turn anything into an podcast at the press of a button) \- read hacker news
comments \- proofreading text (you can _hear_ the typos much easier than you
can see them in a text you have written)

~~~
mindfulhack
I'm even creating my own audiobooks from ebook text, as a way to consume books
not officially available in audiobook!

I haven't tested it much yet but the 'Samantha' voice actually seems
listenable and intelligible for long periods.

~~~
rmrfstar
Do you think there will come a time when audiobooks are generated via sequence
model using celebrity voices?

I gave it a go with LSTM's.

Each sentence is intelligible, but it feels so dry without the emotion of a
human voice actor.

------
mindfulhack
I have a meta tip for everybody.

I only recently discovered the Youtube channel 'MacMost':

[https://www.youtube.com/user/macmostvideo](https://www.youtube.com/user/macmostvideo)

As a long-time macOS user, I am astounded at the things I'm currently learning
from this guy, they're not just 'cool' things, they're seriously productivity-
boosting things! They're small but sometimes impactful.

This is the best tip I can give anyone here.

------
raverbashing
pbcopy / pbpaste (command line tool to access the clipboard)

Not builtin on macOS but iTerm2 is a must (together with oh-my-ZSH it's been a
game changer)

The "time machine" on apps has been useful as well, rolling back to a previous
version of a doc is great.

Some "unexpected feature" I found the other day. I accidentally dropped my MBP
(and it seems it is engineered to close itself on drops but I knew that
already _ahem_ so it fell shut and upside down) and it started making a siren-
like noise, as I began to get worried, I opened the screen and it was showing
only glitches and it restarted (well sh1t). But then it restarted just fine
and crisis averted.

------
msftie
"Reduce Motion" in Settings > Accessibility.

At some point in the last 8 years, Apple changed the animation for how a
window becomes full screen. The default behavior is to expand while
simultaneously shifting the window to the right, or conversely expand while
the desktop shifts to the left.

Enabling "Reduce Motion" eliminates that behavior, and the full screen window
fades in and out instead, which personally I prefer.

------
sgt
I wonder how someone can read this thread and NOT realize that macOS is
probably the most advanced desktop operating system out there.

~~~
asveikau
Uhh... By hiding a bunch of functionality in obscure keyboard shortcuts that
professional users don't discover after years, sometimes decades of use?

I have thought Macs were pretty cool since I first used system 7. But I would
not apply such blinders. This thread could also be taken as criticism even if
nobody intends it to be so.

------
polyrand
After doing cmd + c a file, you can use option + cmd + V to move/cut it
instead of copying.

~~~
m463
I think you can hold cmd or option when dragging and dropping a file to do
something similar.

using option will duplicate

using cmd will move

So the default for dragging on the same disk is move. option+drag will make a
copy.

The default for dragging to a different disk is copy. cmd+drag will move
instead.

------
Solstinox
Double click text to select a word. Triple click text to select the whole
paragraph.

For decades I assumed that there’s some weird fluky behavior when trying to
select a word and accidentally selecting the paragraph.

~~~
danthewireman
You can also double click a word, keep the mouse button down, and drag. This
will select whole words. I use this a lot.

~~~
Solstinox
I didn’t know that either, thank you! It works with triple-click paragraphs
too.

------
PascLeRasc
For anyone who hasn't already rebound Caps Lock to Ctrl - try to accidentally
hit Caps Lock really quickly, and it won't activate. Press it normally and it
will activate.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Psh. Caps Lock is to be mapped to Esc.

~~~
dividedbyzero
It's also a great fn key on external keyboards that lack it.

------
WiseWeasel
Re-enable the boot chime on the latest Macs with the following command in
terminal:

    
    
      sudo nvram StartupMute=%00
    

To turn it back off:

    
    
      sudo nvram StartupMute=%01

------
samelawrence
After searching for an item in Spotlight, hitting `Return` will open the file,
but hitting `Cmd` + `Return` will open a Finder window to the directory where
that file lives.

~~~
mattalbie
Command + R also does this.

------
elg75
Smart Folders + Tags = you move a file between folders by (un)tagging it.

Very handy i. e. for project management (Kanban…)

------
maxioatic
Cmd + tab to _quit_ applications

Instead of releasing cmd to switch to the application, you can press q to quit
it.

~~~
27182818284
Command+q is the standard to quit in all well-behaving macOS apps. No need for
tab.

~~~
maxioatic
Obviously. This lets you quit an app without switching to it or right clicking
it on the dock -> quit.

------
muli_d
You can delete files immediately (i.e., skip moving to the trash) in Finder by
holding the Option key in addition to Command + Delete (or Backspace).

------
jw1224
A little late to the party, but hopefully these are useful if anyone sees
them:

\- If you need to make a quick screen recording video, open QuickTime Player.
There’s an option to record the screen in the menu.

\- (This one’s been extremely useful to me, and hardly anyone seems to know
about it!) — If you need to provide tech support to another macOS user, open
iMessage on your Mac, and start a conversation with the other person’s Apple
ID. Click the dropdown caret beside their name in the recipient list, and
click “Ask to share screen”. A VNC request will be sent straight to their Mac
(with built-in microphone audio, so you can chat to them), plus options to
control their computer remotely.

~~~
m-p-3
I found out lately that you can even record the screen of a brand new iOS
device using QuickTime when plugged via USB.

You can easily record the initial setup that way, which helped immensely with
users working from home getting phone upgrades during the pandemic.

~~~
jw1224
I didn’t know about that, thanks for the tip!

------
polymonster
Command + double click a search item in spotlight to open the containing
folder in finder.

~~~
kristjansson
Cmd + Enter opens the containing folder too - no clicking required!

------
rahimnathwani
Not a Mac built-in feature, but life-changing nonetheless: Amethyst window
manager. You can install it with brew cask install amethyst.

It's a tiling window manager. If you've used tmux, i3 or awesomewm you'll feel
right at home.

------
corytheboyd
The keyboard shortcut in finder to take you to your home directory, cmd +
shift + h if I recall correctly. Makes it trivial to keyboard navigate to
anything when you can easily start from the same place every time!

~~~
house9-2
cmd + shift + h = home directory

cmd + shift + a = applications directory

cmd + shift + d = desktop directory

Semi-related, type `open .` in terminal to open that directory in Finder

~~~
haddr
And when you are in terminal and want to change dir to some different path,
just drag and drop it from finder (either a file or just a icon from the title
bar)

~~~
donarb
If you cmd-drop a file icon into Terminal, it will automatically cd into the
parent directory, it prefixes the path with cd and appends ; at the end and
executes it. If the icon is a folder, it will automatically cd into that
directory.

If you shift-drop a file icon into Terminal, it will paste the file path to
the command line without escaping spaces.

------
astoilkov
⌘⌃⇧4 – for screenshots that go directly into your clipboard

⌘O – open file/folder in Finder

⌘J in Finder, Set as Defaults — sets default view options for all folders
(struggled a lot with Finder inconsistencies before finding this out)

~~~
sgt
I use the first one so often. So super-convenient to compose emails or Keynote
presentations with some additional graphics plopped in directly from another
window through the clipboard.

------
bredren
Has anyone found a way to name desktop spaces anything other than Desktop 1,
Desktop 2 etc?

~~~
house9-2
Not a built in feature:

[https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/211954/how-can-
i-n...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/211954/how-can-i-name-
desktops-spaces-in-el-capitan)

Some people on this post are using ‘Stickies’ app to put a label on each one?

Otherwise, there are 3rd party apps that do it.

~~~
bredren
Thanks for this. I did look into this a while back and both Total Spaces and
the github project require at least temporary disabling SIP.

I may go for that commercial app anyway because it really is costly to lose
context built up in a space. Especially when you have a lot of completely
unrelated projects you want to task switch between.

I’d go so far as to say lack of Spaces feature polish in MacOS is impacting my
ability to efficiently maintain open source code. Because those projects only
get special extra time from me these days.

Apple should make more spaces API open to developers if Apple won’t improve
this important macOS feature.

~~~
egypturnash
This may or may not work for you: each space dedicated to a project has a
desktop image related to the project - a logo, an important visual asset, etc.
It mostly works for me. Wish you could name the damn things out of the box
though.

~~~
bredren
This is a good idea. I started testing this previously by just choosing
different wallpapers, but didn't take a step further to photoshop in some
text.

I may yet in addition to the space naming. It feels like it would be helpful
to see on the wallpaper using expose, and also from the three finger swipe up.

Really, Apple should allow this meta to be overlayed on a wallpaper instead of
having to photoshop it in. I'm perplexed on why Spaces has gotten zero
improvements for so long.

~~~
egypturnash
I never bother adding in text. It's just a matter of choosing images that are
obviously-related for me.

Working on the graphic novel? Go to the desktop with a model sheet of one of
the characters/props. Working on the Mastodon instance? It's the desktop with
the image I drew for the front of the site. Drawing furry porn commissions?
Hello, desktop with an endless rotation of Doug Winger's work.

------
fnord77
Fn-Fn turns on speech dictation (if you have it enabled in settings). It is
pretty accurate.

Ability to remap the Caps Lock key to Control

Shift+control+command+4 = screen capture to clipboard

------
blaesus
Preview can modify images. There's a button with a pencil icon that toggles a
toolbar for simple image editing, such as adding lines, shapes, or texts.

~~~
snowwrestler
There’s a little prism icon too which opens a panel for Lightroom-type
modifications like exposure, shadows, highlights, levels, sharpness, etc.

~~~
crazygringo
I mean I thought I was a Preview power user, but had never clicked that little
toolbar button.

Blows me away I can do that stuff in _Preview_. Wow.

------
ed25519FUUU
Change the cursor movement speed (repeat rate) in the terminal. On the CLI you
can go higher than the menu.

    
    
        defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 5
    
    

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4489885/how-can-i-
increa...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4489885/how-can-i-increase-the-
cursor-speed-in-terminal)

------
david422
Hold down the option key when selecting text (in some editors) and it enables
columnar selection. Can be very useful for certain editing tasks.

~~~
nguyenkien
This depend on softwares not OS features. Vscode can do that in all OS

------
aasasd
Forget MacOS, I was practically living on the web for ages before finding out
that you can select link text in browsers if you hold down alt.

------
ninkendo
When you Cmd-Tab to an application with no open windows, press option as you
release Cmd, and it will open that application's default window (as if you
clicked on it on the Dock.)

Useful when you like to leave apps "open" even with all their windows closed
(ie. not using Cmd-Q), but still want to use Cmd-Tab to get to the app instead
having to click something.

------
heyvirgil
System Preferences>Keyboard>Text. I use this to create trigger letter
combinations that auto complete things I type frequently, particularly for
business correspondence- for example if I type "FRA-", in any application, it
prompts me with the option to autocomplete "For routing/assignment" I actually
have someones difficult to spell's name in there too but have omitted it here.
It"s useful to use ALL CAPS as the trigger. You can even stack the triggers, I
have several individuals whom I may send a message to with "FOR
ROUTING/ASSIGNMENT". to and I have them all triggered by the same capital
letter combo, and I am presented with a dropdown list that use the down arrow
to select which I want to use.

------
kjakm
I believe desktop Stacks is only a version old (10.14) so you probably haven't
been missing it for too long fortunately. Another good tip for screenshots is
disabling the floating thumbnail. Just open the screenshot app and disable it
in the options menu.

~~~
dagmx
On the topic of screenshots, one I didn’t know was hitting space before you
take a screenshot will make it capture an entire Window, including the shadow
instead of having to drag a region

~~~
untog
Plus holding option while you click takes a screenshot _without_ the shadow,
which I find vastly preferable. I only found out about that a couple of months
ago, after a long time being annoyed.

~~~
chadlavi
This one is a true pro tip

------
rcarmo
Toggle Do Not Disturb with a single click:

[https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2020/06/11/1915](https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2020/06/11/1915)
(has animated GIF explainer)

------
amacneil
Double clicking the title bar of a window to maximize it (without going into
full screen mode). I used to install Spectacle on every computer, but this was
really the only feature I needed from it.

Somehow it took me 12 years of using macOS to learn how to maximize windows.

~~~
Hamuko
This is settings dependent.

You can choose between "zoom" and "minimise" in System Preferences > Dock >
Double-click a window's title to…

------
jasoneckert
The caffeinate command: [https://brettterpstra.com/2014/02/20/quick-tip-
caffeinate-yo...](https://brettterpstra.com/2014/02/20/quick-tip-caffeinate-
your-terminal/)

------
lordnacho
CMD + UP to up one dir in finder. Maybe I've got messed up settings or
something, I don't know, but when I want to go up a folder I don't see a
button or a an item called ".." that can be clicked. Did this drive anyone
else nuts?

~~~
IggleSniggle
I have generally made the 3-pane view my default for this very reason (which
has obvious left-right semantics for hierarchy traversal). I think maybe you
can also command click the folder-name header? I think I once knew about
CMD+Up but my general workflow is in the terminal these days, so Finder is
mostly only used for selective-file-move/copy operations, and even then,
called from terminal. It’s usually `open path1; open path2` then select and
drag.

------
Roybot
Dictionary word lookup with a single gesture.

[https://media.giphy.com/media/Vg5tebSFuj1DFtHwrd/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/Vg5tebSFuj1DFtHwrd/giphy.gif)

~~~
GolDDranks
Sadly, that used to work better than it does now. From some versions ago, it
was upgraded to be "smarter" and do google searches and link lookups and
whatnot. I'm nowadays struggling to get the dictionary lookup shown. That's a
shame; as a non-native speaker it's a super helpful feature. I've been trying
to disable the other shenanigans, but without much success.

~~~
GolDDranks
Woah, I found a way to fix it! You need to remove the checkbox "Show Spotlight
results in <whatever the feature's name is in English>" in Spotlight settings.
I wouldn't thought that I need to go look for settings elsewhere to fix that.

------
kratom_sandwich
This is a neat hack for reducing PDF file sizes. As you may know, macOS
already has a built-in filter to reduce file size, but for me, it often
results in almost unreadable documents. This stackexchange question shows how
to create a custom filter which delivers way better results, i.e. small files
and very good quality:

[https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/297417/how-to-
decr...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/297417/how-to-decrease-pdf-
size-without-losing-quality)

------
heyvirgil
Using the exposé command to show desktop grab a file from finder then pressing
the exposé command to show all windows of the current application and dropping
the file I grabbed from the finder into the desired window, saves me a TON of
time in photoshop and other design apps, and for attachments in files. I
custom map mine the way they were in 10.4 when tis feature was released, f11
desktop, f12 all windows, f13 current applications windows.

------
kart23
Adjust volume by finer increments: hold option+shift while changing volume.

------
zitterbewegung
I've been using Apple devices for ~25 years now and I think the best feature I
have used was the summarizer service (actually I would think that services in
general in macOS you should look through). What it does is if you select some
text it will summarize it.

While I was in Brazilian jujitsu class they had an MMA brand that needed
"organic content" based on articles from wikipedia and I bartered with them so
that I would receive a Jujitsu Gi for summarizing 150 articles. This allowed
me to accomplish the above task in only a few hours.

------
empyrical
Unmounting/ejecting a drive by dragging its desktop icon to the trash. I know
you did this in really old macs to eject a floppy, but it's cool they keep
that feature around on modern macOS

------
waylandsmithers
Option click on the upper right corner hamburger menu toggles Do Not Disturb
mode without having to open the whole right panel notifications section.
Helpful for presentations and screen sharing.

~~~
m463
I have the system volume in the menubar too.

Option-click the volume icon will allow you to change your sound input and
output devices.

------
cauthon
You can also change the default directory where screenshots are stored, so
they never end up on the desktop in the first place. I have mine set to
~/Pictures/screenshots

------
sheinsheish
The functionality of menu extras hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu
Extras

Also, show files / packages on Logic Pro projects which are packed as a file.

~~~
chadcmulligan
How to use menu extras - I'd never heard of them before
[https://methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/osx-
menuextras/inde...](https://methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/osx-
menuextras/index.shtml)

------
ivanmaeder
OPTION + CMD + V to cut and paste files (found this today here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080378))

Hold down OPTION to vertically select text (works in the terminal at least)

CMD + SHIFT + . in Finder to show/hide hidden files

CMD + CTRL + D on a selected word to open the dictionary

I'll sometimes use the `say` command to let me know when a long-running
command on the terminal finishes (e.g., `say Done`)

------
bluthru
The picture-in-picture window can be precisely placed by holding down the Cmd
key while dragging.

If a web site doesn't have a PiP button, press and hold the speaker icon.

------
DavideNL
1\. Accessibility > Zoom > "Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom" >
Ctrl

So you press "Ctrl" and then scroll down on the trackpad and it will zoom in
_anywhere /on anything_. Use it quite often and love it :)

2\. Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad options > Enable dragging >
Without dragg lock

This one takes some time getting used to but it's awesome once you get the
hang of it

3\. Control–Shift–Power button

To put the display to sleep

~~~
Sirened
Scroll zoom is also great for giving live technical demos! I picked this up
after watching some WWDC videos and it's so much better for drawing focus
during a live demo than using something like a laser pointer.

------
SebastianKra
Menu-bar search.

Press CMD + Shift + / to open a search over all Menubar-actions for the
current app.

If you're used to action-search in IntelliJ or VSCode, this will feel familiar
to you. It's for those countless features that you use often, but not often
enough to remember their proper shortcuts.

There are Launchbar- and Alfred plugins that provide a nicer interface.

(Germans need to reconfigure the shortcut in the settings, because our
keyboards are weird)

------
dtgriscom
If you drag a window's corner, the adjoining edges resize. If you hold down
Option while you do this, all four sizes resize about the center. Even better,
you can press and release Option during a single drag to turn this behavior on
and off incrementally, which means you can arbitrarily adjust a window with
one drag (if you're persistent enough).

------
marosoaie
Drag and drop a file to the terminal to get its path.

~~~
nguyenkien
Right click then hold down option key, no need terminal

------
IgorPartola
Might be mentioned below but:

In the terminal you can use pbcopy and pbpaste to use your clipboard: _cat
my.txt | pbcopy_.

In the terminal you can use the open command to open a file or a folder in
finder: _open ._ and _open foo.pdf_.

Double tap the window frame to maximize it correctly (not to a new screen and
not just on one axis but the way Windows maximize works).

Multiple virtual desktops and swiping between them with gestures.

~~~
Khaveesh
The cat command is unnecessary when all you want to do is copy a file's
contents to clipboard. Just do

    
    
      pbcopy < my.txt

------
Jakobeha
When typing with fancy characters: \- Alt-command-space brings up a window
where you can select arbitrary Unicode characters \- Go to your keyboard
settings in System Preferences and add the “Greek” keyboard. Then you can
press ctrl-command-space to switch your keyboard and quickly type in Greek
symbols (e.g. “a” becomes alpha). Press ctrl-command-space again to switch
back.

------
sneak
Option-clicking the sound menubar item to adjust input/output devices, or
option-clicking the wifi menu to see additional wifi info.

------
mattalbie
I didn't see this one anywhere. You can use modifier keys in combination with
Hot Corners.

Go to [System Preferences > Mission Control > Hot Corners] and when you make
your selection just press the modifier you'd like to use.

I've always found hot corners too easily triggered, for me this strikes the
right balance.

------
jakkals
I usually have multiple Bash tabs open in Terminal, and I needed a quick way
to see what each tab contained. The following bash script will set the Title
of the tab.

    
    
      #!/bin/bash
      # Sets the title of the Terminal Window / Tab.
      # title foo => Sets the title of the Terminal Window / Tab to foo. 
      echo -n -e "\033]0;$1\007"

~~~
dividedbyzero
Should anyone be wondering why this doesn't work in fish, it seems it
overwrites the title back to the default pretty much instantly. So no custom
tab names with fish, it seems!

------
nisachar
That, in terminal you can move cursor to any position in command by holding
Option-key & clicking wherever you want.

------
sonar_un
You can create a screenshots folder and default all of the screenshots
straight into it. That’s been a lifesaver for me.

------
bryceneal
I solved the screenshot on the desktop problem by using a program called
Hazel. It can automatically move and sort files based on any number of
criteria. I set it up to move all screenshots on my desktop to a ~/tmp
directory. This has worked pretty well for keeping my desktop completely empty
which is my preference.

~~~
donatj
You can actually just change where they go in the Command-Shift-5 option menu.

------
nojvek
You can change your MAC address. I always thought this was permanent. Regus
(OG wework) offices have finicky WiFi and one day it refused to connect to my
laptop. Eventually I googled how to change MAC address and there was an
ifconfig command.

Suffice to say I had to change my MAC address every week to fight their shitty
system.

------
niteshade
You can do basic screensharing with Messages on macOS. Open Messages, select a
message thread with an existing contact, then from the menu bar, select
Buddies > Invite to Share My Screen (or Ask to Share Screen).

Doesn't work for groups (last time I tried at least), and hideously
undiscoverable.

------
dawnerd
If you took a screenshot to your clipboard but want it saved as a file you can
open preview and hit cmd N.

------
buzzy_hacker
If you use spotlight and type in a word, you can press command + L, to jump to
the dictionary definition

------
machocam
Some of these are _amazing_. I'm currently a Windows user mostly, I added the
same thread but for windows here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24099633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24099633)

------
darcys22
Cmd + ~ (tilde)

Cycles between the windows of the same app. Similar to cmd + tab.

Saved me so much when reading multiple pdfs in preview

~~~
PostPlummer
Oh this is a live saver that I have been looking for since forever.

Thank you so much.

------
longnguyen
You can move other windows without losing focus by holding command and move
window's title.

~~~
mattalbie
It's not just limited to dragging windows around. The mouse-clicks get passed
to the background app. You can use it with anything. It's called click-through
and has been around for a long time.

I first learned about it here: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=click-
through+site%3Adaringfirebal...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=click-
through+site%3Adaringfireball.net&t=osx&ia=web)

------
logotype
If you’re in Terminal and want to open a Finder window with the current path,
just type “open .”

~~~
chadlavi
`open` is really useful in general. You can also use it to open apps!

`open ./someFile.foo -a App\ Name`

or even just

`open -a App\ Name`

~~~
newtoday
Wow, thank you! I start my day off by launching 10 or more applications and
have always procrastinated on my plans to automate this.

------
johnwalkr
I was about to reply that stacks is a new feature, but I googled it and found
it's been a feature since 2007. I could have sworn it was announced a year or
two ago. Anyone know if there was an improvement announced recently that I
seem to be recalling?

------
jacknews
Hold Option key while clicking to unlock all kinds of more detailed informtion
and options

eg, Option-click the menubar wifi icon and you get all the details of your
wifi connection including BSSID of the router you're actually connected to,
RSSI, your assigned IP, etc.

~~~
frereubu
For those with older Macs, this is the Alt key. There's this symbol on both: ⌥
Always have to think about that one!

------
foofoo4u
command + space launches the spotlight search. In here, not only can you
search, but you can also do some math to use it as a calculator. Real handy if
I need to do a quick calculation. For example, entering in `243*2/4` will spit
out `121.5`.

------
cel1ne
Open a pdf in preview. Select pages, press Copy, then Cmd + N.

You get a new PDF with the pages you copied.

------
cosmincimpoi
Spaces. Including "Displays have separate Spaces". I kinda knew it was there
all the time but never really used it until recently. It fits very nice with
the Chrome "People" feature.

------
polyrand
You can add blank spaces on the dock using:

defaults write [http://com.apple.dock](http://com.apple.dock) persistent-apps
-array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

Very useful for organizing icons.

~~~
IggleSniggle
It has been so very long since I’ve used the Dock that it always comes as a
surprise when it comes up in macOS UX discussion as I forget that it exists.
Can someone explain how it is useful to their workflow?

~~~
polyrand
I have it hidden on the left so it does not take space. Even though I have
shortcuts to open all apps. It is helpful for managing windows when I have
many windows of the same app minimized.

------
WA
Increase Finder window size by dragging (in home directory), then press Cmd +
Shift + E to make Finder open new windows with the new size. Works until a
reboot. Why? Because those stupid windows are too small by default.

~~~
mattalbie
You can also do this by opening a new window, resizing/positioning it how
you'd like, then immediately closing it. Next time you create a new window it
will be exactly the same.

------
dharma1
So many nice things here - and nearly all of them missing from iOS/iPad OS!

------
dhruvparamhans
Using the space bar to quickly look into the contents of any file: pdf,
images, txt files.

And this works also within other apps like spark where I can use the space bar
to quickly verify what attachements are present.

Don’t think windows does this.

------
nikivi
You can write low level code to interject all keystrokes and program keys.

[https://github.com/yqrashawn/GokuRakuJoudo](https://github.com/yqrashawn/GokuRakuJoudo)

------
ftk
When Cmd+Tab'ing press and hold the Option key before letting go of Cmd to
unminimize/create a window for the selected application (assuming it doesn't
already have unminimized windows open).

~~~
kreeble
Not doin anythin for me

~~~
ftk
Make sure you release Cmd _after_ pressing the Option key.

[https://superuser.com/a/325530](https://superuser.com/a/325530)

------
hjuutilainen
Emacs key bindings work in all standard text boxes and views. For example
ctrl-A to go to the beginning of the line and ctrl-E to go to the end.

Also, damn you Microsoft for using non-standard views in your macOS apps.

------
heavyset_go
I was able to use software that I installed without a problem for years, but
now Gatekeeper makes installing software from outside of the Mac App Store a
chore for little to no gain.

~~~
IggleSniggle
I’m curious what this complaint is about, since the only thing I’ve
experienced is an annoying pop up window that you must approve similar to what
one gets in Windows.

~~~
heavyset_go
If the developer didn't pay Apple $99/year and also notarize their software,
you need to jump through settings panes to launch the application "for your
own good".

------
rorykoehler
Mine is not a core os feature but rather a 3rd party add on. A window manager
with keyboard shortcuts. Life changing and perplexing it's not the default
that ships with the os.

~~~
unvs
Would be great with better builtins for this. I use yabai and skhd, but have
to disable SIP to utilize fully. The instant spaces switching with no
animation is so good!

------
mproud
When typing or editing text, Option-arrow to move the cursor one word to the
left or right

Command-arrow to move to the beginning or end of the line

Combine either of these with the shift key to quickly select text.

~~~
soylentgraham
Ive always found it frustrating there aren't quite the same number of tricks
here as windows/visual studio.

Home/ctrl+home (Or end, to jump lines/doc) Ctrl+up (or down, to scroll without
moving cursor)

I forget these others, but I keep trying to use these in osx.

~~~
kreeble
This is exactly how I feel in windows coming from a mac, super-constrained due
to lack of hotkeys to navigate.

Ctrl+A = start of line, ctrl+e = end, ctrl+n = next line, ctrl+v = next page

By default, in macOS, this isn't enabled everywhere, but you can do it easily
[https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/os-x-text-system-
keybind...](https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/os-x-text-system-
keybindings/4929/)

------
Tempest1981
Is there a method to the modifier key "madness"? I'd like to form a mental
model of when to use Shift vs Ctrl vs Option in various shortcuts being
mentioned.

~~~
donarb
In the beginning there was a sort of hierarchy with the addition of modifier
keys, it goes cmd, shift, option, control.

Basic commands use the command key with a letter. Adding the shift key usually
reverses the command, like cmd-Z in Finder is Undo, cmd-shift-Z is Redo.

The addition of the option key is supposed to add an alternative or extension
to the basic command like when you see commands whose text contains an
ellipsis (which means that the command will bring up a dialog for more
information before executing). Adding the option key can remove the ellipse
and just execute the command with the last parameters that were set. In the
Finder, cmd-W closes a window, cmd-option-W closes all windows.

Rarely would you find a command that uses all four modifier keys, it's just
hard to press them all at the same time.

Of course over the years and the proliferation of apps and developers, these
ideas have faded and don't always hold up, but that was the general idea.

------
shantara
Option + Command + Spacebar opens a Finder search window. It is a fast way to
open a new Finder window from anywhere in the system regardless of your
currently active app.

------
jjoonathan
Ctrl+Shift+Esc (hold) to force-quit a locked up fullscreen app.

------
jimnotgym
How easy it is to move between various OS's now. I thought a mac user was mac
user, but I think it is trivial for most users to swap to Linux and Windows
now.

------
cordite
My favorite anti-feature is copying a screenshot from the desktop with cmd+c,
then pasting into gimp gives a high resolution png of the mac mime-type icon
for pngs.

------
scarlac
In any native text field, try a few CTRL-hotkeys you'd type in Terminal:

CTRL + K (delete to end of line)

CTRL + D (delete in place aka delete key (not backspace))

CTRL + A (go to start of line)

CTRL + E (go to end of line)

------
slrainka
[Ctrl] Right/Left arrows

as an alternative to 3 finger swipe, to move across multiple desktop spaces.
Especially helpful when when you have multiple editors and layouts

------
voodooranger
double click the edge of a window to expand it to the edge of the screen. hold
alt while double clicking to get the opposite edge to also expand.

------
rmetzler
My favorite feature is the help menu, where you can search the menu for a
command. I'm not aware of any other OS doing this so consistently.

------
clairity
i posted mine yesterday[0], about being able to alt-tab between windows of all
applications, not just between applications or tabs. i remapped that to opt-
cmd-tab for easier access.

does anyone know how to turn off wifi on startup via scripting?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24085803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24085803)

~~~
IggleSniggle
I found this one annoying enough to install Contexts[0]. The free demo
immediately sold me on their approach.

[0] [https://contexts.co/](https://contexts.co/)

------
samelawrence
Yeah... I haven't been using Stacks this whole time from 2006 until today.
Thanks for the nudge. It really is an improvement.

------
thankminim
Scroll with vim keys in Safari Reader Mode.

~~~
mattalbie
Nice!

------
zeckalpha
Not macOS specific, but it took me too long to find out the tab key changed
the focused text field in a web browser.

------
cawlin
I recently discovered the Bluetooth device debugging menu.

Hold Shift + Option and click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar.

~~~
fedorareis
I don’t believe you need the shift. You just need to Option + click

~~~
cawlin
Shit + Option gives you the extra debug option that option + click does not.

------
phendrenad2
Hopefully I soon discover how to cut/paste files to move them... Surely there
must be a way!

~~~
Gosper
⌘C to Copy then ⌥⌘V to Move Item Here.

If you open menus on macOS and hold down various modifiers and combinations of
modifiers you'll discover tons of hidden gems.

Try it with Finder > Edit then ⌥ Option, ⌃Control, and ⇧Shift.

------
Imagenuity
To open a Finder window from the command line in the current folder type: open
.

------
noman-land
Dragging a file from Finder into the terminal will insert the absolute path of
that file.

------
oweiler
`pbcopy` and `pbpaste` for copying to / pasting from clipboard. Nice time
savers!

~~~
shadowfacts
In a similar vein, I have a shell script (fish, in my case) that combines
these to let me quickly modify the contents of the clipboard:

    
    
      function pbedit
          set tmpfile (mktemp /tmp/pbedit.XXXXX)
          pbpaste > $tmpfile
          if vim -c "set nofixeol" $tmpfile
              pbcopy < $tmpfile
          end
          rm $tmpfile
      end

------
aframe
⌘ + Down for dbl click to open ⌘ + [, ⌘ + ] to go back/forwards in finder
history

~~~
LolWolf
The forwards and backwards in finder history shortcut also works in a large
number of other apps :)

~~~
aframe
Indeed. The only reason I discovered it was because of the muscle memory from
using it with a browser!

~~~
LolWolf
Same here, actually!

------
haddr
Oh, press alt when minimising/maximising a window for an additional surprise.

------
PaulHoule
I find my mac periodically turns off its WiFi and starts spamming the airwaves
on a private channel looking for partners in a protocol nothing else in the
house depends on.

This makes servers running on the mac unreliable (sometimes it's not listening
to the net) and adds interference to other devices.

------
dirtylowprofile
I can do a PIP on Netflix by tapping in volume icon on the Safari search bar.

~~~
mattalbie
Right-clicking worked for me. Also works with YouTube. Lovely tip.

------
michens
Control + two finger swipe/mouse wheel to smoothly zoom in and out.

------
astoilkov
⌘⇧/ — focuses current application help search field, this is gold

------
werber
Going to the key above tab to switch windows within the same program

------
jdxcode
Here is mine:
[https://twitter.com/jdxcode/status/1268208784972951554?s=20](https://twitter.com/jdxcode/status/1268208784972951554?s=20)

~~~
fedorareis
You can also just long press

------
geoffbp
Install Alfred to replace spotlight, such a good utility.

------
jacknews
shift-ctrl-command-4 to crop a section of the screen to the clipboard.

Then "File"->"New From Clipboard" in Preview to be able to save it as a file.

~~~
tgv
Cmd-shift-5 does this even better: it allows you to select a part of the
screen with 4 drag handles, and gives you the option to capture to disk,
clipboard, mail, with a timer, etc.

~~~
jacknews
sounds great but doesn't work for me on 10.12.6

------
sys_64738
Control-shift+power key to turn display off immediately.

~~~
adrianmsmith
Be careful of Control-Command-Power which will immediately reboot the computer
(losing any unsaved changes, potentially creating FS corruption).

------
prh8
Cmd-` inside the Cmd-Tab modal cycles apps in reverse

------
sciencewolf
Digital color meter to get colors from webpages.

------
wila
Right click on Launchpad gives you a start menu.

------
jbergstroem
tmutil and pbcopy (cli utilities)

------
decentralised
cmd + k to clear the terminal

~~~
longnguyen
And cmd + r to just clear the view (keep the current buffer)

------
slrainka
[cmd] `

------
slrainka
open .

