10 Underused Features Of 10 Different Mac Apps

With so many features in so many apps, it is easy to overlook some very useful functions in apps you use every day. Learn about rarely-used features of Pages, Reminders, Calendar, the Finder and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten underused features of ten different Mac Apps. 
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So most Mac users use a variety of different apps throughout the day. These apps are packed full of features. Here are ten features you could be overlooking in the apps that you use all the time. 
First let's start off in Safari. The most underused feature in Safari, I think, is Reader View. So you're looking at an article like this and there are ads and navigation elements and all sorts of things. If you want to focus on the content you can turn on Reader View either by clicking on this icon here or you could also go to View and you have Show and Hide Reader View here. Shift Command R is the keyboard shortcut. Now look at how nice this is to read. Not only can you focus on the actual content of the article but you have controls right here to increase or decrease the size, to change the background color, and the font. 
So next we've got the Messages App. The feature I love to use in the Messages App that many people don't is the Tap Back. So you get a message like this and you might respond OK or maybe a thumbs up emoji or something like that. But if you Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad you can select Tap Back. Then you can select one of these. Watch what happens when I choose the thumbs up. Instead of a new message being sent a little thumbs up icon appears right here over the message. That's what the other person sees as well. So instead of cluttering up the conversation with little OK's and Sure's and Yes's and No's, you can just use these little Tap Back icons. 
In Pages an often unused feature is Character Styles. Now a lot of people may know about paragraph styles. That's when you take an entire paragraph like this. You change something about it, like a larger font size. Then you can create a New Style based on that or redefine the current style by updating and it updates all the rest of the text as well. Character Styles work the same way but they don't affect entire paragraphs. Just any character you have selected. So if you select some text like this and say let's go and make that Bold and Underline and also change the color to something else like that. You can use that as a character style by clicking here, adding a character style, calling it whatever you want like that, and then you can use it for other things as well. Just select it. Go to Character Styles and choose it. The best part about it is you can then change it, let's change it to a different color like this, and now when I go into Character Styles here I can Update this character style with what is selected and notice what happens to the other times I've used it. They all update as well. So imagine having a thousand different things set to that character style and being able to change the color or font or something else instantly for all one thousand items throughout your document. 
In the Reminders App an unused feature is Indenting or Sublists. So, for instance, I could add some items to this To Do List right here and they could meant to be part of a  single task, like Clean out work closet. So you can have some subtasks like this and I could take these four items here. I'm going to Click to select and then Shift Click to Select All of them. Then I'm going to drag them underneath this and then I'm going to go to Edit and Indent or use Command and the right square bracket. This will indent all of these under this one item which now gets bolded because it has a list of its own. 
Watch what happens when I check the main item. It checks off all of the subitems as well. 
Now the Calendar App is extremely useful of course. But what makes it so much more useful to me is Sharing a Calendar. So you can take a calendar like this one. I'm going to click right here and then Share it with other members of my family. We can all add items to the same calendar and see what's on it. So instead of having to tell everybody about certain events happening you just put them on the calendar. Everybody even gets notifications about new events added and changes made. You could do the same thing with a work group, with a group of friends, a softball team. However you want to use it. 
Now in the Contacts App there's also a very underused feature and that is not actually in the Contacts App. It's the ability to actually access all of the information you put in here in other places. So, for instance, here I am in the Mail App. I can add new people in the To or Cc field by simply clicking the little Plus button here. It brings up a little mini version of the Contacts App. I can select someone here. It will list their email addresses and I can easily add them there. The same thing in Messages. I can go New Message and then click right here and there's that little mini version of the Contacts App again. Knowing that you've got such easy access to your contacts give you incentive to actually go through your contacts, clean them up, make sure all the important people that you need to be in touch with through different apps are listed there and you can easily find them. 
Now I've got to include the Finder here as well. The Finder, of course, gives you a window that allows you to manage your files and folders. All too often I see people going and creating multiple Finder windows like this and then maybe using them to drag and drop files back and forth or just look at one location in one window, one location in another window. But what I like to use instead is Tabs. You can create a new Tab in an existing Finder window with Command T like that. Then you can have two different locations right here easily accessible. You could also go to Window and then Merge All Windows or in a window with only one Tab like that you can actually enable Tabs by using Show Tab Bar like that. Now you've got the Tab Bar. I can actually  drag the Tab from one window to another. So I like to use the Finder like this. If you think that makes dragging and dropping from one location to another hard, it doesn't really. You can go grab a file like this. Drag to the Tab. Wait and the Tab opens and you can drop it in there. 
An underused feature of the Maps App is the Look Around. Now for years Goggle has had Street View in Goggle Maps. But Apple Maps didn't have that originally. So even today a lot of people don't realize it's there. It's mostly in cities and it's not everywhere yet but it's in more and more places every year. So to use it I'm going to Click and Hold here until this Pin appears. Then you could see here I've got this little Look Around window. You can see the little binoculars there. Click there and then you go into it. You can move around like that. You can click on the ground to move forward. It's great for really getting the lay of the land before you head to a location. You can click here to shrink it and actually have it in a little window. Then you see the binoculars here and you can actually drag the map around and go to a new location like that. 
Preview is a great app that does a whole variety of different things with images and PDF's. One underused feature is the ability to quickly Copy and Paste to create a new PDF that just has the information you want. So say you got a newsletter like this and you just want to clip out a portion of it. You could go to the Markup Tools by clicking here. Use the Selection Tool. Select an area like this and then a quick Copy, Command C, and then File New From Clipboard. Now you have a new PDF that just has that one little thing you need. So you don't have to save some huge PDF just for one tiny little article or maybe if you get a multipage PDF that has a ticket on it and you just want the little spot that actually has the ticket, not the ads and other information, you can create your own PDF like this. After you create it just Save it and it will be this separate file.
Finally, we've got the Dictionary App which you may not use very often. It is handy for looking up the definitions of words. But what writers will use it for a lot more than that is the Thesaurus. Click there and you get a full Thesaurus. It's right there on your Mac. Plus you can just quickly click on something and it will jump to another entry. So you can jump around to find the exact right word for whatever it is you're writing. 
Let me know what you think are some underused features of your favorite Mac Apps in the Comments below. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 12 Responses to “10 Underused Features Of 10 Different Mac Apps”

nick

3 years ago

Hey Gary, do you think Tags in Finder will eventually disappear? I still have files tagged based on categories I created a while back, but given the other features in Finder, I rarely use the Tags.

Gary Rosenzweig

nick: No. Why would they? They are an important part of how the Finder works and many people use them. Things like tags are being used more and more. Apple just added them to Notes and Reminders, for instance.

JD3

Superb content. Agree about shared calendars. So useful. And rock-solid reliable. In the same way, I wish there was a way to share a "master" Contacts data set that would stay synched across different Apple IDs. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Tom Gonser

Gary -- this is a very creative and well-conceived presentation that focuses on how to get more out of what we already have. Concise and to the point. For those that have not yet done so, also an example of why one can feel good about supporting the Patreon program.

John R

JD3: Personally, I only want one calendar for all my devices. So I merged all calendars w my iCloud Calendar. Then designated iCloud Calendar is the only calendar in all device settings. Or maybe I don’t understand your reply.

Fred

I like the tags you can set up in reminders…probably under used. My example is reminders for my dog — vet appointments, monthly heartworm meds, buy food, etc. By setting up a tag with his name, I can find all in one screen.

Bill

I use tabs in finder quite a bit. It's great if you are downloading a lot of files and want to sort them. I always have a downloads tab open and it's really easy to drag and drop to different windows.

John R: Thanks for your reply/comment. My question was regarding the Contacts app. I want to be able to synch a single set of contacts across two apple IDs (for example, if you and partner have separate Apple IDs but want to share one synched set of contacts).

JD3: The Contacts app doesn't do that, unfortunately.

Basically I like the dictation which can be used in lots of different apps. It’s quick and easy and can be used on the move when the keyboard is not accessible.

Jerry Raphael

So how do you put that thumbs up emogi in messages on an iPhone?

Jerry: Do you mean you want to type a "thumbs up" emoji character? Or are you asking about the "Tapback" feature I talk about in the video? If you want to Tapback the thumbs up, tap and hold the message sent to you. The list of tapback icons will appear. Select the one you want to attach to that message.

Comments Closed.

10 Underused Features Of 10 Different Mac Apps

Comments: 12 Responses to “10 Underused Features Of 10 Different Mac Apps”

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