Things You May Not Know the Mac Calculator Can Do

The Mac Calculator app seems simple at first, but it includes some pretty advanced features. It has a scientific and programmer mode, paper tape, a library of conversions and much more.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten things you may not know you can do with the Calculator app on your Mac. 
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Now the Calculator app on your Mac seems pretty simple at first. But there's a lot of advanced functionality built-in. I'm going to launch it here using Spotlight. So Command Space and then search for Calculator and then launch it. But to have easy access to it in the future I'm going to go down into the Dock and drag it from the right side of the Dock to the left somewhere in here so now I can just launch it with the Dock in the future. So it looks like a normal calculator. But the first thing I'm going to show you is something that no normal calculator does. That is to allow you to delete the last number you pressed. So I'm going to type a number here and let's say I make a mistake and I want to clear that last digit. On a normal calculator you would Clear and start over again. But you could just use the Delete key on your keyboard and delete the last number. You could go all the way back to the beginning. 
Another thing you could do, since you're on a Mac, is you could use Copy and Paste. So I can do something here, get a result, and if I simply use Edit, Copy or Command C I can now go into another app, Command V or Edit, Paste and paste the result. You can even paste into Calculator. So I could type a number in another app, select it, Command C to Copy, go to Calculator here and Command V, or Edit Paste, and it will paste that number in. So I can perform a calculation without typing any numbers. So I'll multiply and then select this number, Command C to copy, Command V to paste in here, equals and I get the result from the numbers I copied from a document or webpage. 
Now sometimes when you get a result like this you need to go and type it in somewhere else. So if the number is long you end up glancing between here and whatever you're typing into. But you could go to Speech and have it Speak Result if you want. Now whenever I do a calculation like this it will speak it. You could also have it speak everything that you press on the calculator. (1,2,3,+ 9 132) 
Another thing you could do is show the result larger and in the middle of the screen. So I'll put a number in here and now you have to two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse on the number here. It doesn't work if you Control Click to bring up this Context Menu. For some reason that doesn't work in Calculator. But I'm going to use two-fingers on a trackpad and you could see I get large type. Select that and now it puts it large in the middle of the screen. 
Now while this calculator looks really simple you actually have three calculators in one in the Calculator app. You can switch to one of the other calculators by going to View and you could see Basic, then Scientific, and Programmer. So let's switch to Scientific, the keyboard shortcut is Command 2. Now you get a scientific calculator. So this might be more what you're used to if you have an advanced calculator. You even have more functions than this because if you hold the Shift key down you can see some of them change to alternative functions.
Then you can go to Programmer Calculator and you could see a different set of functions here. Ones that would be useful if you're a coder. You can even switch between Bases, 8, 10, 16. You can Show or Hide the Binary version of the number that's here. You can show the ASCII code or Unit code of whatever the value is. You can use a bunch of common logic functions here. You can also switch between the Basic Calculator and the Scientific Calculator by hitting the green button here which works a little different in Calculator than in other apps. So it just switches between Basic and Scientific. If you want to go to Programmer Calculator you have to use Command 3 or View, Programmer. 
Now when you have a calculator like this you may not know what everything does. Instead of having to look it up in Help or anything like that you could simply move your cursor over it and wait. You'll get Help Text that shows you. This works for some but not for others. It does work, it seems, in just about everyone of the commands here in the Scientific Calculator. There's also a pretty good Help Document. If you go up to Help, Calculator Help that explains a lot of the functionality of the calculator. It's worth a read.
Now one thing this Calculator app does that almost no regular calculator will do is do Conversions. So you can enter in a number and then you can Convert using all these different types of measurements. So, for instance, if I wanted to convert length I could convert from feet to meters and it will do the conversion for me. You could see there are a lot of different types of conversions here. Most notably there's Currency. So, you could convert from one currency to another and it will actually call out to the internet and get the current rates. So let's convert dollars to Japanese Yen and you could see here the last updated value and where the data is coming from. Convert and you get your conversion. The Convert Menu also has recent conversions here at the top. So you don't have to keep looking for a conversion that you're doing all the time.
Now a really cool thing that the Calculator app does is Paper Tape. So go to Window, Show Paper Tape or Command T and you get this little window here. Everything that you do will appear here in the paper tape. So you have, kind of, this running record of all of your calculations. You can go in and select things to copy and paste results into documents or back here into the calculator. You can even go and Print Tape and print this out or Save it as a PDF. But if you want to use this in another document one thing you could do is Click in here to Select and then Command A to select All and Command C to Copy and now you can paste it anywhere you want.
Now Calculator also does something called Reverse Polish Notation (RPN). So you may have learned this in college. If you go to View and turn on RPN mode it will now give you this stack here. You can keep adding numbers to it. So if you're not familiar with Reverse Polish Notation it allows you to do things where you can control the order of operations a little bit more. So, for instance, if I wanted to do 2+4x5 I could do it where I do 2 enter, 4 enter, 5 and then I have those numbers there in the stack. I could multiply the last two, 4x5 with multiplication to get 20 and then add 2. 
Now the last thing I want to show you is there are some keyboard shortcuts that can come in handy. If you go to Help, Calculator Help, we looked at this before. But here we've also got a lot of keyboard shortcuts at the bottom. So these will work even if you're not in the right mode for them. For instance you can use the Caret key, which is Shift 6 on a US keyboard, to bring something to a power. So you would normally do this in the Scientific Calculator. Say if you wanted to do 5 to the 3rd power you would do x to y 3 equals and you get that. But you could use the keyboard shortcut of caret to do it. So, we'll clear that out and we'll do 5 and then Shift6 and then 3 equals 125. The cool thing is that I could go back to the regular calculator and use that same keyboard shortcut. So 5 and Shift6 3 equals. So I can access some functions even if I'm not in the right calculator mode. You could see if I do Shift E I'll switch to exponential notation. If I want to calculate the natural log it's the E key and that will work even though I'm not in the Scientific Calculator mode. Even P will give me Pi. That last one isn't even listed here in the Help but if you go to the Scientific Calculator, move your cursor over Pi it will show you you can press P.
So while a lot of us, including myself, like to use Spotlight to do calculations or even Siri there are still a few things that the Calculator app is handy for especially if you like using a calculator and you like doing calculations in that kind of app. You'll find the Calculator App that comes with your Mac is actually pretty powerful and capable of doing just about anything that you need.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Things You May Not Know the Mac Calculator Can Do”

Harry McCullough

3 years ago

Gary,
Thank you for you excellent tutorial on the Mac Calculator and its accompanying Paper Tape. After the latest update for Big Sur the Paper Tape is no longer recording the calculations. Is this programming bug in the latest update or have is there something that needs to be done to reactivate the recording. The Paper Tape is displayed but as stated no calculations are being shown. Would appreciate your help on this.
Regards
Harry

Gary Rosenzweig

Harry: Paper tape works fine for me. And the Calculator app is the same. Are you sure you completed a calculation? Try it again.

Bob Smailes

Fantastic insight.

Comments Closed.

Things You May Not Know the Mac Calculator Can Do

Comments: 3 Responses to “Things You May Not Know the Mac Calculator Can Do”

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