To quickly view an image full screen from the Finder, select it and press Option+Command. Better yet, you can select multiple images, then press Option+Command, and then use the arrow keys to flip between them. This also works with other kinds of files, such as word processing documents, if a preview is available.
There is a setting in Finder, Preferences, that allows you to change what appear in new Finder windows. You can choose any drive, your home folder, Documents folder or Desktop. Or, you can select a specific folder of your choosing. You can also use the special All My Files view. Consider changing this if you often open new Finder windows and they are always in the wrong folder.
If you are watching videos using the QuickTime Player, you can increase the speed by clicking the double forward arrow button in the controls. Click once for 2X, again for 4x, again for 8x. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command+Right Arrow. Use Command+Option+Right Arrow to increase the speed by 0.1x. Use the double rewind arrow button or Command+Left Arrow to play the video in reverse.
You can change the size of text and icons in the Finder sidebar with a setting in System Preferences. Go to General preferences and look for “Sidebar icon size.” You only get to choose small, medium and large. The change no only affects the Finder, but also Mail.
When using Preview to edit an image, it can sometimes be useful to select from a center point rather then from upper left to lower right. Hold down the Option key and click and drag. This is useful for copying or cropping from the center of a face or object. Hold down the Shift key at the same time and you get a perfectly square selection, make it quick and easy to select a face for use as a social media profile picture.
You can copy and move files using drag and drop in the Finder, of course. But you can also use standard copy and paste keyboard commands to do it. Select a file in the Finder and use Command+C. Then go to another folder and use Command+V to place a copy of that file there. Use Command+Option+V and it will move the file instead.
Sometimes when you search on the web you end up at a long page with lots of information. Search inside that page to find what you are looking for by pressing Command+F and then typing your search term.
Quick Look allows you to select a file in the Finder and preview it with just a tap of the spacebar. You can also use Quick Look elsewhere, including Open and Save dialog boxes, and the Print Queue. When you print a document and it is waiting in the queue, you can select it and press the spacebar to view the document.
On the Mac, in both the iTunes store and the Mac App Store you can redeem gift codes without typing. Look for the Use Camera button and then simply hold the gift card up to the built-in camera on your Mac. As long as the card is one with a boxed-in code, the camera should be able to read it and enter the code for you.
If you search for a file using he Spotlight Menu at the top right corner of your Mac’s screen, you can drag and drop files directly from the resulting list. A drag will result in a copy of the item instead of simply moving the file to a new location. But it does save you the extra step of having to open the enclosing folder and copying from there. If you want to do that, you can Command+Click on the item in the search results to open the folder.
You can add applications to your Mac’s Dock by simply dragging and dropping the icon in Launchpad to the Dock.
You may already know that you can use the volume up button on your iPhone as the shutter release button to take a picture when using the Camera app. But you can also use the volume up button the iPhone’s Earbud or EarPod cable, or any compatible headphones with a volume up button. This allows you to take pictures while standing further away from the camera, or while it is resting on a surface or tripod.
Say you are traveling with your MacBook and find yourself using a very slow connection, but you need to get some information from a web page. You can disable image loading in Safari by going to Safari, Preferences, Advanced and turning on “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” Then use the Develop menu and choose Disable Images. Cached images will still show, but Safari will temporarily stop loading new ones.
Most Dock icons are just plain icons. But try running Activity Monitor, and app found in your Applications/Utilities folder. The Dock icon can show you graphs and charts relating to the activity on your Mac. Control+click on the icon and choose an option under Dock Icon to change what information is pictured. You must keep Activity Monitor running for the icon to update, but you can hide it.
Say you have an email address example@icloud.com. You can append a tag to that with a + symbol. For instance, you could use example+something@icloud.com. You can use this when signing up for email newsletters or web sites. Mail sent to this tagged address will come into your regular inbox, but the “to” field will show the full address including the + tag. You can use this to filter your messages in Mail.
If you use Safari’s Bookmarks Bar you may not realize that you are also setting up keyboard shortcuts. The first nine bookmarks in the bar, not including bookmark folders, are mapped to Command+1 to Command+9. This makes it even easier to get to your favorite sites.
If you are using a MacBook or have a Magic Trackpad, then the handy three-finger swipe upward gesture may be the best way to switch between apps. Do this and you can quickly see all of the apps you have running and click one to jump to it. You can even pick the specific window you want to jump to.
If you are in the Open dialog of an application you can select a file or folder and then jump to that location in the Finder by pressing Command+R. This is useful if you are searching for a file and decide to continue the search in the Finder instead. You can do the opposite, placing a Finder location in an Open dialog by dragging and dropping a file or folder into the dialog.
Often you come across poorly-designed web pages that have download links that don’t quite work. You can get around these problems by Control+clicking on a link to a file and choosing Download Linked File or Download Linked File As. The second one will let you choose a specific location for the file, instead of just using the default Download folder.
Ever accidentally hit the Caps Lock key and only realize it after typing a few lines of text? You can quickly change all those letters to lower case in most apps by selecting the text and choosing Edit, Transformations, Make Lower Case.
