Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

If you choose the Apple Menu, then Recent Items, you get a list of recently used applications and files. If you hold the Command key down while viewing this list, each item changes to “Show X,” allowing you to go to that item in the Finder instead of launching or opening it.

While a lot of people are talking about major new additions to macOS Sierra, there are some minor new features as well. Take a look at some tiny features that may make a huge difference to some users.

The Guide to macOS Sierra is a complete course with more than 50 video tutorials, more than 4 hours of video instruction. It begins by showing you the basics of the desktop and then goes into detail about using the Finder, Safari, Mail, TextEdit, Preview and other basic apps. This course includes lots of tips, tricks and techniques. 

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users. There are Mission Control shortcuts, Finder shortcuts, system shortcuts, application shortcuts and more. Many you can find by just looking through the menu bar for that application. You can find system ones by looking in the System Preferences under Keyboard.

A new feature in macOS Sierra and iOS 10 is the ability to collaborate with more than one person in the Notes app. You can create a note and then add other Apple IDs to share the note with. Each person can add and edit the note in real time, or as an ongoing collaboration.

Thanks. I’ve added your email address to the list. I’ll send out an email when the course is ready. I’m hoping for September 20.

A new feature in iOS 10 lets you remove stock apps like Weather, Maps, Reminders and even Mail. All of these are now available as free downloads in the iOS app store, so you can add them back easily if you delete them accidentally. So if you don’t care about the stock market, you can finally get rid of that Stocks app on your iPhone now.

The iOS 10 Lock Screen gives you access to the camera and to a new Widgets screen. On this widgets screen you can place various widgets from apps installed on your device, such as the Calendar, Mail, Music, Siri, and so on. You can edit the widgets on the screen and reorder them. Many third-party apps include widgets as well, and some have more than one widget you can add.

iOS 10's Home app allows you to control devices like lamps, lights, thermostats, locks and other things. Setup is very easy if you are using a device that conforms to Apple's HomeKit standard. Your iOS device will quickly recognize the device without any configuration in advance. Then you can even set up schedules and actions for your devices.

With macOS Sierra you can use Tabs in more apps than just the Finder and Safari. Most Apple apps such as Pages, TextEdit, Keynote and Numbers support tabs, so you can have several documents open in the same window. Some third-party apps already support tabs. Others will most likely add compatibility in the future.

With macOS Sierra you can easily put your Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud Drive. This makes these folders available to all of your Macs and iOS devices. It syncs them effortlessly, so you essentially have the same Desktop and Documents folders on all of your Macs.

When editing in TextEdit, you can use Edit, Find, Select Line to select a line by number. The keyboard shortcut is simply Command+L. Better still, you can use a range like 9-15 to select a range of lines.

If you use the default Finder tags, like Red, Orange, Blue, etc, and want to name them something that is more helpful, go to Finder, Preferences, Tags. Then Control+Click on a tag and choose Rename. Not only will the tag names show up in file information, but you can search for them in the Finder by tag name, or tag:name to only see files with that tag.

If you need to log into two different accounts at the same website at the same time, you can use Safari's Private windows. Each private window acts like a separate browser so the two accounts won't interfere with each other. This is useful for managing multiple social media accounts, checking multiple bank statements or web-based email accounts at the same time, and other uses.

If Siri mispronounces your name, you can teach it the proper pronunciation easily. You can also teach Siri how to pronounce other names in your contacts. Soon, with macOS Sierra, you can do the same on your Mac.

If your hands are on the keyboard and you quickly want to go to a folder in the Finder, you can use Shift+Command+G to open up a “Go to the folder” dialog, then type the path to the folder, and then press Return to go. But this may not seem like much of a shortcut if you have to start by typing /users/username at the start of each path. You can skip that by using the ~/ shortcut. So type ~/documents and you go to the Documents folder. Notice also that you do not need to worry about case.

The Color Picker is a standard tool window that you will find in a variety of apps like TextEdit, Preview, Pages, and many third-party apps as well. You can select any color using a variety of methods in the Color Picker. You can also save your favorite colors for reuse, even across apps.

It is easy to get confused between iMovie Projects and Events. Events can be used to store video clips which can then be used in multiple Projects. Clips can also be stored directly in a project.

Old computer keyboards used to have a separate delete key that allowed you to take a character away from in front of the cursor instead of behind it. You can still do this on Macs today by using fn+delete. It even works in conjunction with other modifier keys. So you can use fn+option+delete to delete the whole word in front of the cursor.

If you are new to the Mac and have been using Windows, you may be wondering how you Right-Click on a Mac? Right-Clicking on Windows brings up context menus and you can do the same on your Mac by using either the Control key on your keyboard when you click, or by configuring your trackpad or mouse to recognize a secondary click.