Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You can take simple screen shots on your Mac by learning just a few easy keyboard shortcuts. You can grab the whole screen, just a section, or just a window. You can also create a file with the screen shot, or copy it to the clipboard to use in another app.

Sick of always having to change your Finder searches from the current folder to search your entire Mac? You can set this default in Finder, Preferences, Advanced. You can choose Search this Mac or Use the Previous Search Scope instead of Search the Current Folder. You can still change it for individual searches after you set the default.

You can set a file to be Locked or to be a Stationery Pad, but it can be hard to understand what these settings do. Locked files are not protected or encrypted in any way. Instead, they are simply harder to accidentally change or delete. Stationery Pads are files that act like simple templates.

Siri keeps getting better and better. Here are some things that you may now know Siri can help you with. For instance, you can get random numbers, create and populate lists, get baseball statistics, set recurring events and more.

When you add bookmarks in Safari to the Favorites folder, Safari automatically assigns keyboard shorts to them. The first one will be Option+Command+1, the second Option+Command+2, and so on. Check it out in the Bookmarks, Favorites menu to see them all.

You can set events to repeat weekly, monthly or annually in Mac Calendar. You can highly customize these settings to do things like having an event repeat the second Tuesday of every month, or every Monday and Thursday. See all of the options available.

Most computer users get accustomed to how they use their computers. But OS X includes many customizable settings that you may like better. Look at how you can use a vertical dock, full screen apps, tap-to-click and sticky keys to alter your Mac user experience.

A very exciting new feature of the Photos app in macOS Sierra is the ability to search your Photos library for objects. For instance, you can search for 'boat' and it will show you pictures in your library that have a boat. Take a look at how this feature works.

Take a look at 10 Finder tricks that will help you get the most from your Mac. Learn how to batch rename files, move files with copy and paste, skip the Trash and much more.

While Apple Music is a streaming music service, you can store music locally to listen to when you are offline. In the Music app on iOS, look for the cloud download button (looks like a cloud with a down arrow) when you are viewing a playlist or album. Tap that button to download and keep those songs for offline listening. The button will change to a iPhone/iPad icon with a checkmark inside it when the download is complete.

You probably know that you can use Command+Tab to switch between apps. But you can also easily switch between multiple windows in the current app. Instead of the Tab key, use the one above it. Command+` (AKA the ~ or tilde key) will switch between windows in the app you are using.

Instead of using a bulky flatbed scanner you can use your iPhone's camera for most document scanning today. Apps will allow you to quickly capture pages, straighten them and organize them. You can even do optical character recognition with some apps.

With Mac Mail you can view individual messages or group them together in conversations. Which you use is a personal preference. With conversations you can view all of the messages sent back and forth between two or more people about a single subject. This makes following responses easier.

The new Messages app in iOS 10 adds a ton of new features that should be fun to use. You can animate text bubbles in a number of ways. You can also send full-screen animations. You can send animated drawings and videos. You can attach stickers from developer-supplied packs. There is an easy way to send a quick response to a text and you can also insert emoji without searching for them.

Here's a preview of what Siri on the Mac will look like. The latest beta of macOS Sierra lets you use Siri for most things that you can do on iOS. In addition, you can search your files, photos, the Web and System Preferences. You can send messages and post to social media. You can save Siri answers to Notifications Center and multitask while Siri is on the screen.

If you are connecting your Mac to a second screen, like you may do before a presentation, you may get into a situation where the System Preferences, Displays controls can’t be altered on the second screen because the second screen is off or not working yet. Click the Gather Windows button to bring all the displays’ settings to your main screen so you can change them while that second screen is not visible.

While browsing the web in Safari you may occasionally get a page that doesn’t fully load or shows some errors. When this happens, the first thing to try is to simply refresh the page. You can do this by pressing on the circle-arrow button at the right side of the address field at the top of the Safari window. Or, you can use View, Reload Page or the keyboard shortcut Command+R.

You can add a magnifying loupe to an image or PDF in Preview. These loupes can help you point out something in an image or enhance the effect of an image that you plan to share. You can also use loupes to annotate images and PDFs during collaborations.

If you want to silence your iPhone at night or while in meetings, you can use the Do Not Disturb mode to temporarily disable audible alerts. You can turn this on manually, or set a daily start and stop time.

If you need to quickly see the hidden files when trying to open a file from an app, use the keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+period (AKA greater-than key). This reveals all hidden files and folders in the standard Open File dialog boxes in apps. Use it a second time to toggle this setting off.