10 Useful Mac Features You May Not Know About

There are many very useful Mac features and functions that users don't know about because they atre hard to find. You can batch rename files, dictate text, see a paper tape in Calculator, summarize text and easily remove ads from web articles.

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Video Transcript: Hi! This is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten things you may not know that your Mac can do.
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So here are ten things that I know a lot of Mac users don't know they can do on their Mac. Let's see how many you already know about and what's new to you. 
First is the Character Chooser. Ever want to use an emoji or special symbol but don't know how to find it. Well, it's really easy. When you're typing text anywhere, whether it's in an email, in a web form, a word processor, or even just here in TextEdit all you have to do is press Control Command Space and it brings up the Character Chooser. Here you could see from a huge list of all the emoji and special symbols that you could add in with text. But you don't have to go and search through everything to find what you want. Just use the Search field here at the top. Type something like happy, for instance, and you'll get a bunch of emoji that have to do with happy. If you're looking for some sort of symbol just type something that has to do with that symbol.
Did you know that you can Batch Rename Files in the Finder. Here I have a bunch of image files. I'm going to use Command A to select them all. When I go to File, Rename you can see it has renamed 18 items. So I can select that and then I have a whole variety of different things I can choose. For instance, I can choose to Replace Text. So i can replace that IMG with underscore here with the word Photo followed by a space. Hit Rename and it renames all of those. A quick Command Z to Undo and I can try something else. For instance I can rename them all with a special format. So I can use the word picture with numbers starting at one after the name. Hit Rename and you could see now it renames the whole group.
When using apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote and some third party apps you have something called Versions where can revert to previous versions of a file. So let's say I was working on this file here and I deleted a paragraph. Maybe on purpose or maybe by mistake. Then I saved, Command S. If I go to File, Revert to, I can choose Browse All Versions and it will take me into this interface here that looks a lot like Time Machine. I can go to the previous version of the file and you could see there's that missing paragraph. I can hit Restore to restore it to that version. I could also click in here and select text out of it, Copy, and Paste it somewhere else or into the current version if I want. You can go back more than just one version too. You can go back to previous days, weeks, months and find something that you may have deleted or changed and get it back. 
You may know a lot of keyboard shortcuts and different ways to use your trackpad or mouse but there's also something called Hot Corners where you can assign a function to simply moving your cursor up to the corner of the screen. You can find this by going into System Preferences. Then go to Mission Control. Then in here click on the Hot Corners button. You can see there are four corners here and you can assign a function to each one of them. So, for instance, you can have a Launchpad launch when you go to the upper left hand corner or the bottom right hand corner could instantly lock the screen when you move the cursor there.
You could also add modifier keys. So if you want to use Lock Screen at the bottom right hand corner but only when holding the Command key down, just hold the Command key down when selecting it and you could see now it requires the Command key to be held down when you move your cursor to the bottom right to activate that function.
Now sometimes you'd rather not type but be able to dictate text using the microphone on your Mac. You can do that one of two ways. Let me show you the simplest. You can go to System Preferences and then under Keyboard go to Dictate and make sure Dictation is turned on. Then check your keyboard shortcut. In this case it's pressing the fn key twice. So now to dictate into this TextEdit document I'll just press fn twice and talk. (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog period). 
You can also do the opposite and get your Mac to read text to you. You can select text in a document like this or select text in Safari or an email. Just go to Edit, Speech, Start Speaking. (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog) 
You can setup options for that in System Preferences, Accessibility, Speech. You can change the voice and the speaking rate. 
Another interesting thing you can do is have your Mac summarize text for you. So if you have a large block of text like this you need to read you can try selecting the text and then go to the Application menu here, go to Services and look for Summarize. This brings up a special application hidden on your Mac called Summary. Here you can drag the slider. All the way to the right it's just going to have the text as is. But if you move it to the left more it's going to try to pick out what's important in the text and summarize it for you. So if this is about the length of what you want to read, you can try reading this. It's not perfect. Sometimes it helps you get the important information if you're really limited on time.
Now the Calculator is a handy way to do quick calculations. You can click on these with your cursor or you can actually use the keys on the keyboard and get the answer. But a lot of people don't know there's also a paper tape window. You can get to it with Command T. This gives you a rundown of all your calculations. So as you do more calculations it will keep adding it to the tape. You can select text in here and Copy and Paste it. You can also print the tape, or save the tape as and it will save it as a text document. 
Now if you do use the Calculator app you may be interested to know there's an easier way to perform calculations most of the time. That's to use Spotlight. So you can use Command Space to bring up Spotlight and then type equations, simple things like this, but you could also use parentheses, something you can't really do with a calculator app very easily, and get results like that. There are even functions available like that or that. Now another option, of course, is just to use Siri for calculations.
2874 divided by 3. it's 958.
If you go to news sites and seeing webpages like this with tons of ads and other content on them you can use Reader View in Safari just to see the text and images that have to do with the article. Just look for this icon up here. Click that and it goes into Reader View. You can also use Shift Command R to enter and exit Reader View. Here you can see a much nicer version of an article. You can also click here when in Reader View and adjust it to make it even easier to read. 
So you know when I do lists like this I like to include a bonus one at the end. So you know when you have really small text in a webpage or an email and you want to be able to zoom in to read it. Well, you can do just that. If you go to System Preferences and then Accessibility and then click on Zoom you have your controls for zooming. You can set it anyway you want. I've got it set to use the trackpad to scroll. So two finger on the trackpad with the Option and Command keys held down. I have it set to zoom in picture-in-picture. So if I want to read this text here all I need to do is put my cursor near it. I'm going to hold the Option and Command keys down just like I have specified here and then use two fingers to zoom in with my trackpad. Now you can see I get this box. I don't have to keep holding those keys. I can move this box around now and see different things on the screen. I can Option Command and scroll down until it's gone. I can also set it to zoom full screen or split screen if I want and change tons of different options.
Now if you just want to see the text I can enable Hover Text right here in Catalina and hold the Command key down whenever I'm over text. For instance I can just hold the Command key down here and you can see it brings up the text there in a separate box. It happens anywhere. 
So there are a few other hidden functions in macOS but these are the ones I thought are most useful to most people. But let me know in the comments below if there are other hidden functions in particular that you like and want to share them with others.

Comments: 9 Responses to “10 Useful Mac Features You May Not Know About”

ChrisL

4 years ago

CTRL, CMD, (space) brings up the emoji/symbol viewer in Pages (10.1) but there is no search bar at the top?

Sorry. The symbol window does not necessarily open at the top of the list of symbols. I have to scroll back to the beginning and then the search box is there.

Gary Rosenzweig

ChrisL: You may not be "at the top." Try scrolling inside that.

John

I never knew about the Summarize option under Services! That's the tip of the week!

Shirley

If you search all versions and find an earlier one you want but are not sure, Press the Option key to save a copy of an earlier version and keep the one you are working on.

Lali Raj

Thanks Gary for the great tip how to enter Emoji. It works only one time. If I want to add multiple Emoji is there a way to do it? Please let me know. Thanks.

Lali: Not sure what you mean. You can use it as much as you want.

Bill Nice

GREAT stuff Gary, After selecting dictate it works for 30 - 40 seconds and then shuts off. Is there a way to keep it in place longer? When I hesitate to think of how to say something it shuts down in time for me to loose my train of thought..

Bill: Instead of using the simple method of dictation, switch to the enhanced method. See https://macmost.com/learn-how-to-use-dictation-on-your-mac.html

Comments Closed.

10 Useful Mac Features You May Not Know About

Comments: 9 Responses to “10 Useful Mac Features You May Not Know About”

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