Apple announced a ton of new features for the iPhone, iPad, Macs and other devices coming this fall at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The new macOS will be called Big Sur and it will give Mac software a new look. Apple will be moving away from Intel processors to their own ARM processors starting at the end of the year, giving Macs the ability to run iOS apps as well as current and old Mac apps.
The menu bar is something you use every day in almost every mac app. Here are some shortcuts and productivity tips for using the mac menu bar.
Anyone that uses the Terminal knows the pain of seeing you mistyped something early in a line and needing to backspace or left arrow all the way to the mistake. However, if you hold the Option key and click anywhere in the current line, the cursor instantly jumps to that position, making it much easier to correct mistakes or alter a long command.
You can use Mission Control on your Mac to give yourself multiple virtual desktops. Each desktop can display different app windows to make it seem like you have more than one screen. Other desktops can contain full screen or split view windows.
There are many different ways you can preview files on your mac before opening them. The Finder can show you a preview as you browse files, Quick Look can bring up a larger preview, some apps and the Dock allow you to preview files as well.
There are many ways to take notes with your mac whether it is in a school lecture or at a work meeting. You can use built-in apps like Notes, TextEdit or Pages. You can get third-party apps like OneNote, Noted, Bear or GoodNotes. There are many also ways to record audio while taking notes.
If you want to print or create a PDF with an area of a Mac Numbers spreadsheet you'll find that you can't do it like you can with Microsoft Excel. But there are various strategies you can use to print a selected area in a table or print only specific rows.
Adobe released a new free app called Photoshop Camera that is getting some attention this week. It allows you to apply filters to photos or your live camera shots, but in a much more complex way than other photo filter apps. It separates the background from the subject and lets you replace the background. So you can replace a cloudy sky with a sunny sky, for instance. Here's a walkthrough of the app. At the very least, it is fun to play with. Here's a link to the app: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photoshop-camera/id1274204902" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photoshop-camera/id1274204902</a>. I hear that it is very processor-intensive, so it will run slower or perhaps not at all on older iPhones.
It is easy to turn on page numbering for all pages in a Mac Pages document. But if you need to skip a few pages, start with page 1 after a cover or title page, or not have the page number appear on some pages, you'll need to learn how to use sections and the page numbering options.
In Keynote most transition and animation effects involve whole text boxes and other objects. If you want to emphasize a single word or phrase inside a text box, you need to get creative. Here are some techniques that you can use to draw attention to pieces of text during your presentation.
You can use Command+Space and search for an app name in Spotlight, like Pages, Numbers, TextEdit, and so on. You’ll not only get the app as a result that you can launch right from Spotlight, but also a list on the right of recently opened documents from that app. Click on any to open it, or press Tab, then down arrow, then Return to open with the keyboard.
Voice Control can do more than just activate menu items and buttons. You can also use grids to pick a specific spot on the screen and click it, or even drag from one spot to another. Other commands allow you to add modifier keys or move the cusor by precise amounts.
Let's face it, most of us have mess hard drives with files in all sorts of places. It is time to get organized by coming up with your own system of where files should go. Here are some suggestions to get you thinking about the best way to clean up your Mac.
Here's a handy Quick Action that will allow you to take whatever is selected and send it right to a new Preview document. This makes it even easier to do a technique I'll be showing in a future video on printing from Numbers: <a href="https://archive.org/download/strategies-for-printing-from-mac-numbers-macmost-2199/2199NumbersPrint.mp4" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Strategies For Printing From Mac Numbers</a>. The for the two pieces of JavaScript it is simply: <blockquote>function run(input, parameters) {</blockquote><blockquote> var se = Application('System Events');</blockquote><blockquote> se.keystroke('c', { using: 'command down' });</blockquote><blockquote>}</blockquote>The second one is just using n instead of c. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention in the video! You need to go to System Preferences, Security & Privacy, Privacy, and then look for Accessibility on the left. Unlock by clicking the padlock. Then drag and drop Numbers into the list for Accessibility and make sure it is checked. This gives permission for the Quick Action to send the keystroke. But for some reason you don't seem to need that for Preview. Or at least I don't have Preview in my list and it seems to work fine.
While you can use text replacements to insert reusable blocks of text, it is sometimes necessary to customize the text for various situations. You can build an Automator service to trigger a series of prompts and then create a block of text based on your responses. In this example, we'll build a way to quickly respond to support email messages.
As a Mac user, you'll often have to use the Save Dialog to save documents and contents in applications. With the Save Dialog you can enter a file name and choose a location for the file. But there is a lot of functionality hidden in this simple tool to help you.
