You probably know that you can use Command+Space and then type the first few letters of an app’s name, then Return to launch it when it appears as the top hit. But you can also use the initials of multi-word app names. So qp for QuickTime Player, fm for Find My and mw for Microsoft Word. It even works with gb for GarageBand, recognizing the capital B in the name.
When playing a video in Safari on your Mac, you can Control+click on it and select Enter Picture In Picture. But this doesn’t seem to work on YouTube videos. When you click on a YouTube video, you get a special context menu from YouTube instead of the default macOS one. The trick is to leave this context menu there without selecting anything, and then Control+click the video a second time to get the macOS context menu with the Enter Picture In Picture option.
If you want to help someone with a Mac issue, you can easily take over their screen from afar. They must have Screen Sharing enabled in System Preferences, Sharing. They must also be signed into iCloud with their Apple ID. You can then use Spotlight to launch the Screen Sharing app on your Mac, and enter their Apple ID. If all goes well, they will get a prompt to allow their screen to be seen and controlled by you. You can even talk to each other over audio.
If you are having trouble with iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV or any other Apple online service, one thing to do before troubleshooting is to see if Apple is having an issue on their end. Just go to https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ and see if anything is marked as not available. However, this just checks Apple’s servers and it could still be possible that your Internet provider is having trouble.
You can go into Safari, Preferences to switch which search engine is used by the address field. But a quicker way to do it is to simply press the spacebar when the search field is completely empty. This brings up a list of the search engines that you can arrow-down to and press Return to select. This is very useful if you need to switch between search engines often.
In the Music app, share the playlist and choose Copy Link. Paste it into Safari. Then swap https:// at the start for music://. Then try it in Safari. You’ll get something that works, but asks permission first. Then drag and drop this music:// link from the Safari address bar to the Finder (Desktop, a folder, or wherever) and you’ll get a shortcut link. Double-clicking on that will take you directly to the playlist in Music.
One of the most overlooked keyboard shortcuts is to use Command+L in Safari. That selects the URL in the web address field at the top. You can then type a new web address, or use Command+C to copy. A quick Command+L, Command+C is the fastest way to copy the current page’s URL to paste into a message or document.
If you are using List View in the Finder, you an Control+click on any column heading and see a list of columns with checkmarks. You can use this to remove or add a column. But if you do this in the Movies or Pictures folders in your home folder, you will get some extra column names, like Dimensions, Resolution, Duration or Title. If you create your own folder somewhere and name it “Movies” or “Pictures” you also get these columns as options.
You don’t need to go to a web page or even use the Stocks app for a quick look at a price. Just use Command+space to open Spotlight and type the symbol, like AAPL. You’ll get the current price, a chart, and other information. You can also use the company name and the word “stock,” which comes in handy for symbols that are too basic to be recognized as stocks, like “AT&T stock,” or when you don’t know the symbol. Click on the result and you go to the Stocks app. Works more or less the same way on iOS in search too.
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 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.
If you have old Pages or Keynote documents with images in them, but have lost the original image files, you can extract them. The trick is to select the image or shape with an image in it, then go to the Format sidebar, then Image. Then drag and drop the small icon under File Info to the Desktop or a Finder window.
If you want to fill out web forms using just the keyboard, it is easier if you first turn on one setting. In System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts, look at the bottom for a checkbox marked Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls. Then you can use the tab key to move between elements in web forms, even buttons. Use Shift+tab to go backwards.
You can share your card from the Contacts app, but maybe you don’t want to share all of it. Go to Contacts, Preferences, vCard and enable private me card. Then use Card, Go to My Card. Then click the Edit button. Now you’ll see checkboxes on the right and can uncheck things you don’t want to export when sharing your card.
If you are wearing a face mask and Face ID isn’t working, you don’t need to wait to enter your passcode. Just swipe up and immediately tap the words Face ID in the middle of the screen to bring up the keypad.
You probably know that some keyboard shortcuts are the same from app-to-app: Command+C, Command+Q, Command+A, and so on. But one common shortcut that most people don’t know is that Command+, (comma) is almost always the shortcut for the current app’s preferences.
You don’t have to settle for the default icon and a random color for each Reminders list in Catalina. Control+click on a list in the left sidebar and choose Get Info. Then you can click on the icon to choose a new color and graphic.
In Safari you should probably not have so many tabs open that you can’t find the one you want. But if you do end up with a lot of tabs and want to organize them, you can choose Window, Arrange Tabs By and sort them alphabetically. You can choose to use the domain name of the site, or the title of the page to sort.
When you use Command+Tab to switch apps, you can press tab while still holding down the Command key until you get to the app you want. While doing that, you may know that you can also press Q to quit the currently selected app. You can also press H to hide or unhide that app.
If you are getting too many notifications from an app on your Mac and you would rather turn those off, you can do it on a per-app basis in System Preferences. Just go to System Preferences, Notifications and then look for the app in the list. You can turn off all notifications from the app, or just switch the News Alert Style to None.
