MacMost: Archives

Have you every wanted to print only a portion of a web page, such as an airline ticket? Or, have you ever wanted to print or share a small portion of a Pages or Numbers document? You can do this easily by using the print function to send the document as a PDF to Preview. Then in preview you can crop out everything you don't need before printing or sharing it. A few clicks can save a lot of ink.

A new feature of Siri in iOS 11.2.5 is the ability to listen to short news podcasts with a simple command. You can use "play" or "tell" to trigger these podcasts even if you don't subscribe to them. You can also get business and sports news. This feature should come to the Mac soon, and is most likely being added now in preparation for the release of the HomePod.

You can use JXA in the Script Editor or Automator to set the location of a window to an exact location and size. It is easy to set up the one-line script and reuse it by simply changing the application name and size numbers. You can also create an Automator service to repeat a setting you use often.

When you try to save or print a document, you sometimes end up with a very small dialog box with a limited set of options. By knowing where to look, you can expand the Save and Print dialogs to reveal more options and make it easier to save and print your document.

The Desktop folder is just a regular folder with the special property of existing over your desktop background as well as in Finder windows. Items on your Desktop are the same items as the ones you see in the Desktop folder in your Home user folder. The Desktop can be useful for quick or frequent access to files and folders, although many prefer to keep the Desktop clean and empty or use it for temporary storage of new files only.

The SUMIF function is one of the most useful functions in Numbers. You can use it to calculate the total for each category when you have a list of numbers and categories. The best way to use it is to create a second table and use one column in that table as the comparison value.

A common problem people have when trying to use custom Finder icons is that they try to set the icon to a file, instead of the image in a file's contents. Instead of the icon image they want, they get a default image JPG or PNG icon. You can use a custom icon by copying the contents of an image, from an app like Preview.

The Selective Color tool allows you to adjust all of the pixels that are a similar color in a photo. You have six slots to make up to six color adjustments. You can use this to change a color in a photo, make colors stand out more, or desaturate colors to change the emphasis objects.

There is a quick and easy way to see your document or selected word count in Pages. In TextEdit, there is a simple trick you can use to reveal the document word count. You can also write a simple two-line AppleScript service in Automator to count the words in selected text in almost any application on your Mac.

You can easily preview the contents of a file before opening it. Take a look at four methods of previewing files such as images, PDFs or text documents. You can enlarge Finder icons to use as previews, look at the preview pane in column view, use cover flow view, or use the handy Quick Look function on your Mac.

You can do more than simply decline a phone call with no explanation on your iPhone. With only one more tap on your screen, you can decline and send a message to the caller to let them know why. You can edit three presets for this message, or type a custom one. You can also decline a call and set a reminder to call the person back later on.

If you are in the habit of putting a blank line between paragraphs in Pages, you should learn to use paragraph spacing instead. You can also manage the spacing between lines with a variety of options. Paragraph and line spacing can be set on a per-paragraph basis.

If you want to prevent yourself from going to a website you can manually block a domain using the Terminal. To do so, you must edit your hosts file and redirect a domain to your local address. This could be useful to help you resist distractions while getting work done.

The Finder seems to be designed to require the use of your mouse or trackpad. But you can get around and do everything using only the keyboard. For some, this may be even more efficient than clicking and dragging. You can use arrow keys to select files, shortcuts to move into and out of folders, and even type the names of folders to jump to them.

Typical Mac users never need to shut down their Macs on a daily basis. It is better to let your Mac go to sleep so it can handle maintenance tasks while you aren't using it. This will make your Mac faster when you are using it, and also allow you to avoid any delay while it starts up. A sleeping Mac uses very little power.

You may already know how you can print and then use Save As PDF to save a PDF of almost anything on your Mac. But you can also add to that menu, creating convenient locations to save PDFs without needing to search for folders. You can also indicate applications that handle PDFs to send a PDF version of your document directly to that app.

There is no built-in sort function in Pages, but you can easily sort cells in tables. To sort a list of text, you can copy and paste the list into a table, sort it, and then copy it back out. The trick is to merge the data into a single cell before copying back out of the table.

The main Photo library view in Mac Photos doesn't let you choose a sort order. But you can easily view your photos sorted by time or title by creating a Smart Album and using that to view your photos instead. You can also sort your list of Photo albums by viewing all of the albums and choosing a sort option, or manually dragging and dropping the albums.

Apple Music and Spotify Shared Playlists are great ways to access selections of music from movies, books or represent a genre. You can find more complete movie soundtracks in Shared Playlists and also collections and "mixtapes" mentioned in movies and books.