While typing in almost any app on your Mac, press Control+Command+Space and you’ll get a special menu that allows you to select special characters like symbols and emoji. This is a variation of the Character Viewer. If you get the Character Viewer as a separate window instead, click the button on it at the top right to switch to this smaller insertion menu. It will shrink and appear properly the next time you use it.
In addition to being able to record your iOS screen using your Mac, you can use QuickTime Player to simply view it live. Just connect your device with a cable, run QuickTime Player and choose File, New Movie Recording. Then choose your iOS device from the pull-down menu next to the record button. Even if you never hit the record button, you can see your iOS screen on your Mac. Could come in useful in situations where you want to see the contents of your screen in a larger format.
In Safari in Yosemite you’ll only see the domain name in the address bar when viewing a web page. If you’d rather see the full URL of the page you are viewing, you can set that in Safari’s preferences. Go to Safari, Preferences, Advanced and check Show full website address.
Need to send someone a map with some annotations on it? Start with the Apple Maps app on your Mac and position it to include everything you want. Then use Edit, Copy to grab a bitmap image just as you see it. In Preview, choose File, New from Clipboard to put this into a new Preview document. You can then use Preview’s annotation tool to add lines, circles, text, and so on. Use the Share button to attach it to an email. Strangely enough, if you try to paste into Mail instead of Preview, you just get a link to show those coordinates in the Maps app.
On your iPhone or iPad you can quickly get to an app’s settings using Siri. From inside an app, just hold down the Home button to activate Siri. Then say “Settings.” The Settings app will open and take you right to the settings from that app.
The Music app in iOS 8 features a few buttons across the bottom of the app: Radio, Genius, Artists, etc. You can customize this toolbar by tapping the More button at the bottom right, then the Edit button at the top. Now you can drag buttons in and out so the ones you really want are there.
When you search using Spotlight Search, you’ll get a list of results on the left and a preview of the selected result on the right. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move between results on the left. If you select a folder on the left instead of a file, you’ll see a list of folder contents on the right. Use the Tab key to move the selection over there to select a file inside the folder.
In Yosemite, you can drag a tag from the left sidebar of a finder window onto the right side of the Dock to create a Stack for that tag. This gives you quick and easy access to files when you apply that tag to them.
You can move the Dock from the bottom of your Mac’s screen to the sides by holding down the Shift key and dragging from the divider bar in the Dock. Just drag it from the bottom to the side and it moves there. You could do this in previous versions of OS X before Yosemite, but this new shortcut makes it easier to move the Dock when it is in the way of something else you are doing.
In OS X Yosemite, the green button at the top left now takes an app full-screen. In Mavericks and before, it would perform a “maximize” function where it enlarged the window to fill more of the screen depending on the content of the window. You can still do that in Yosemite. Just double-click on an empty portion of the title bar . Double-click again to revert to the previous window dimensions.
Safari in Yosemite masks the full URL in the address field of the toolbar, just showing you the domain name. If you prefer to see the whole URL, you can just click on the field. Or, you can go to Safari, Preferences, Advanced and check “Show full website address.”
Yosemite has a dark side. Well, a dark mode anyway. Go to System Preferences, General and check “Use dark many bar and dock.” This changes the menu bar and dock to a dark background that some may prefer.
Don’t you hate it when you go to a web site and get a mobile version of the site instead of the real thing? This is especially annoying on the iPad where there is plenty of screen space. With Safari in iOS 8, you can tell the site you want to view the desktop version by tapping once in the address field at the top. A list of favorites and frequently visited site icons appears. Tap and drag down in this list and two options appear at the top: Add to Favorites and Request Desktop Site. The latter will request the web page again, but this time telling the web site that it is an OS X version of Safari, not a mobile app.
You can use the address/search field at the top of Safari on your iPad or iPhone to search inside a website. To set this up, first turn on Quick Website Search in Settings, Safari. Then go to a site, like MacMost.com. Use the search field at the top of the web page to search for something on the site. Not the address field in Safari, but the search field on the page itself. After you have done this kind of search once, you can now type “macmost [search term]” in the Safari address bar and you’ll see a shortcut appear to search just that site. Works great for sites like Craigslist or IMDB.
There is finally a way to quickly mark all of your email as read in iOS 8. While viewing a Mailbox list in Mail, tap Edit at the top, and then Mark All at the bottom. Then select Mask as Read. If all messages are marked as read, you can instead mark them all as unread.
With iOS 8, you can talk to Siri without pressing the Home button at all. Turn this on by going to Settings, General, Siri and switching on “Hey Siri.” Now you can simply speak things aloud starting with the words “Hey Siri.” For instance, you could say “Hey Siri, tell me a joke.” and Siri will respond. You never have to touch your device. The catch is that you need to have your device plugged in, presumably because this feature would drain the battery pretty quickly.
When you get to a web form that asks you to enter your credit card in Safari on your iPhone or iPad, you can now use a Scan Credit Card option to let your device use your card to read your card and then fills in the number and other information. Most likely the web page needs to be built properly for Safari to recognize that it is asking for a credit card.
If you are using an external monitor with your Mac, then you may have the option to rotate the display to show vertically or even upside down. Go to System Preferences, Displays, Display and you’ll see an option for Rotation if it is possible with your configuration.
You can use the Spotlight Menu keyboard shortcuts to quickly search the web. Type Command+Space to bring up the Spotlight Menu. Type your search term. Then use Command+B to immediately open your browser and search for that term. Use Command+K to search the Dictionary app (Mavericks) or Wikipedia’s web site (Yosemite).
If you are viewing a long page in Safari or document in some other app and want to quickly get to the top, use Command+Up Arrow to get there without scrolling. Likewise, Command+Down Arrow gets you to the bottom in one step. In Mac Mail, you can quickly jump to the top of the list of messages by clicking next to the “Sort By” at the top of the list.
