10 Mac Features That Will Save You Time

Here are 10 features of macOS that will save you time if you use them. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts, Hot Corners, autocomplete, dictation, Recents and more.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten features on your Mac that can save you time. 
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So there are a lot of features built into macOS that can save you time if you learn how to use them. Let's start with the most obvious one. Keyboard Shortcuts. Most of the things you need to do in most apps can be found in the Commands in the Menu Bar at the top. Many of these have keyboard shortcuts. If you look through the menus you'll see the keyboard shortcuts here to the right of each command. The key to using shortcuts effectively is when you notice yourself using a command over and over again note what the keyboard shortcut is. Then the next time you find yourself going to the Menu don't use the Menu. Look at the keyboard shortcut, release the Menu and then use the keyboard shortcut. After forcing yourself to do that a few times you'll quickly learn that keyboard shortcut and save time from that point on. You could also go into System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts and here you can set custom shortcuts by going to App Shortcuts and defining a custom shortcut using the exact name of the menu command that you want. So even if there is no keyboard shortcut for that item right now you could add one. 
Now another problem with Menu commands is sometimes you don't remember where something is. So you end up searching for it and wasting a lot of time doing that. For instance in Pages if I wanted to make something superscript I would have to look around for that. It's hidden down in Format, Font, Baseline, and there's Superscript. But an easier way to get to that would be to click on the Help Menu and then I could just search for it. As soon as I type three characters I could see where it is and I can actually trigger it from here or learn its location by looking at where it's indicated. But better yet a keyboard shortcut will get me there. I never have to lift my fingers off the keyboard. Command, Shift, and Question Mark will bring up the Help menu and then I just type. Then I can use Down Arrow to go to it and hit Return to select. It even remembers the last search. So if I go there again the Command is there. So if I need to use it two or three times in a row I can just go to the Help Menu instead of digging down to find the Command. 
You can do some shortcuts without even using the keyboard though. If you go into System Preferences and then Mission Control click on the Hot Corners button and you can assign a shortcut to each of the four corners of the screen. So, for instance, if I wanted to assign something to the bottom right I could click here and assign one of these shortcuts to it. So I can instantly have Launchpad come up, for instance, when I go there. Or put the display to sleep. If you hold down one of the modifier keys, like Command, you see I can change it. So I have to hold the Command key down when I go to the corner which makes it harder to trigger by accident.
Another time saving feature is the App Switcher. Most of the time when you're going to a different app you're going to an app that you already have running. macOS memory management is very good. There's usually no reason to quit an app unless you're not going to be using it for a long while. So you can leave things like Safari and Mail running all the time. Then to get to it instead of having to go to the Dock or Spotlight to launch the app again you could just use Command Tab. Continue to hold the Command key down while you tab to the app that you want and then release the Command key to jump to the app. Then the only time you ever need to use the Dock, Spotlight, or Launchpad to launch an app is when you want to go to an app that you don't currently have running. 
So there are a lot of built-in features that help you type faster. If you're not good at typing you may want to look into using Dictation. There are two types of Dictation built into macOS. The simple type you can find in System Preferences under Keyboard and then Dictation. Turn that on and now you can use the keyboard shortcut, in this case Press Control key twice to activate it. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog period. More advanced dictation is available in System Preferences and then Accessibility, and then go to Voice Control. Then if you enable Voice Control you can do even more with dictation including including custom vocabulary and lots of different commands. 
Your Mac also has something called QuickType, which is kind of like Auto Complete. You type part of a word and then you use either Option Escape or F5 and it brings up the suggestion. Use the arrow keys to go through them and Return to select one. If you want to use F5 you may need to use the fn key in addition to F5 depending upon your keyboard settings. Then, of course, there are Text Replacements. They're under System Preferences, Keyboard, and then go to Text and here you can suggest a word that you type and then something to replace it with. It could be something quite long. So, for instance, if you find yourself typing the same thing over and over again you can set something up like this. Now all you need to do is type these three letters followed by like a space or return and I get the phrase. 
So how about in the Finder. Here's some things that make using the Finder a little faster. One is Favorites here on the left. A lot of people just leave these at the default. But if you have folders that you're going to all the time you're going to want to add them here to Favorites. For instance let me add this folder here. I'll just drag it over and I'll put it where I want. Now to go to that folder in any Finder window all I need to do is click on that and it goes to it. Also if I want to drag and drop something into that folder I can drag it into the Sidebar. Not only that but the Favorites appear in an Open or Saved dialogue in an app. You can see it here. So I can jump right to that folder when opening or saving a file.
Also there are two Recents functions that you should know about. One is to have Recents here in Favorites. Most of the time when you want to open up a file it was a file you were just working with in the last day or so. So going to Recents will give you a list sorted by Date Last Opened. Most of the time you can find the file that you want right there. There's no need to remember where it is you saved it. If you can't see Recents under Favorites go to Finder Preferences and then under Sidebar make sure Recents is checked. 
There are also Recent functions in other places. Like in the Apple Menu you can see Recent Items and it will show you Recent Applications and Documents. You can easily open those files. In Apps you go to File there will be Open Recent and it will show you the most recently accessed files. 
Here's a feature that should be obvious to most but a lot of people go and use Spotlight, Command Space, to search for files. But Spotlight actually gives you results for all sorts of things. Applications, emails, fonts, tons of stuff and it makes it a little bit slow. If you know you want to find a file instead of using Command Space do Command Option Space and that will open up a new Finder window or tab and allow you to start searching just for files. Since it's not looking for other things like Spotlight is it could be a lot faster. 
Here's some bonus ones. The Finder has a batch rename feature which could save you a lot of time. Like suppose I wanted to change all of the files with the word Notes in it to say stuff instead of Notes. I can select these and then if I go to File, Rename it will actually bring up a Batch Rename tool. This only appears if you've got more than one file selected. So now, for instance, I could say Replace text and find Notes and replace with stuff. It gives me an example there. I Rename and you could see how it renamed all those files at once.
Here's one last one and I may do a tutorial on just this in the future. But Siri can save you a lot of time. Like, for instance, say I wanted to add a reminder. I could go to the Reminders app, have that launch. Then I could go to the Reminders list I want. Then hit the Plus button and then type a reminder. Then I would have to go and add date and add something to it, maybe add a time. A lot of steps to do it. But Siri can do it with just one voice command. Remind me to check my statistics today at 3:00 p.m. Done. So you can see how it created the reminder, put it in my default list, and set a time for it all in one go. You can add calendar events. You could start an email. Send an email to Joe. what's the subject of your email. Our meeting today. What would you like your email to say. Looking forward to seeing you today. Here's your message to Joe. So you can see how I was definitely able to make that email and send it faster than if I would have typed it out. 
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
10 Mac Features That Will Save You Time

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