If you often have to rename files in such a way that the extension needs to be changed, you are probably sick of that dialog box that appears warning you about changing the file extension. You can turn that off easily by going to Finder, Preferences and then the Advanced section. Uncheck “Show warning before changing an extension.”
If you get a link in an email you can now preview the link right there in Mail if you have Lion. Just put your cursor over the link and look for a small button to appear just to the right of the link. Then click that button to see a quick preview of the page.
In Lion you can easily add Emoji characters (smiley faces, hearts, graphic icons, etc) in text. Bring up the Characters palette with Command+Option+T and then select Emoji. Then select the type and double-click the character to insert it. Works best in rich text editors like TextEdit and Mail, but doesn’t seem to work yet in Pages.
In Lion you can now customize System Preferences so it only shows the preference panes you want to see. Run System Preferences and choose View, Customize. Then you can uncheck any pane you want to hide. Press the Done button at the top of the screen when done. You can still search and find hidden panes.
If you want to log out of your Mac account, you can choose Log Out in the Apple menu. The keyboard shortcut is Shift+Command+Q. But that prompts you before you log out. If you use Shift+Command+Option+Q it logs you out without the prompt.
In Lion you can resize most windows by grabbing any edge and dragging. But if you hold down modifier keys you can make resizing behave in different ways. A regular drag on an edge will move only that edge. Hold down the Shift key and three edges will resize, with the opposite edge remaining steady. Hold down Option and the current edge and opposite edge will move. How down both Option and Shift and all four edges will move, with the center of the window remaining fixed.
When viewing files in the Finder you can quickly move up to the enclosing folder by pressing Command+Up. This will keep the same view type and window location. But holding down Option in addition to Command+Up will use the enclosing folder’s previous view type and window location.
While navigating to different “space” in Mission Control is different than it was with Spaces in Snow Leopard, you can still get to any desktop space with one keyboard command. Just go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts. Then select Mission Control. You can set a variety of shortcuts, including one for every desktop that you have in operation.
While having the Dashboard as a whole “space” in Lion is useful for those that use Dashboard a lot, you can also return to using these widgets over overlays to your desktop like they were previously. Go to Mission Control in System Preferences and turn off “Show Dashboard as a Space.” Now you can still use your shortcut key or the Dashboard Dock icon to access those widgets, but they will just appear on top of your existing screen items.
If you want to select the system sound input or output device you can use System Preferences. But if you have the volume control menu icon you can do it there too. The key in Lion is to hold down option when you click it. Then you can select input and output, and also get quick access to the sound preferences.
New in Lion is the ability to set a custom desktop color without having to first create a solid color graphic image. If you go to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, Desktop you can choose Solid Colors from the list on the left, under the Apple category. There you will see a few sample colors. But you also have the Custom Color button at the lower right. Click that to choose any color from the color picker.
One quick way to find a window on a crowded screen is to use the Dock. You can click and hold on a running application in the dock and the menu that appears will include a list of all window titles. So, for instance, if you have several Finder windows open you can click and holder the Finder icon in the Dock to see a list of Finder windows. Select one and it comes to the front.
You can make your Mac remind you of the time. Go into System Preferences, then Date & Time. Click on the Clock tab. Then select the Announce the time option. You can have your Mac tell you the time on the hour, half hour or quarter hour. You can even select the voice. This comes in handy if you have a particularly busy day and need to keep track of time.
Select an editable piece of text in Safari, Mail, TextEdit or almost anything else. Then Control+click or right+click and look for Transformations. You can make the text all upper case, all lower case, or capitalize each word in the selection. Very useful for when you accidentally type some text in all upper case and want to correct it without typing it all again.
Click on the + button at the top of iCal in Lion, or press Command+N, and you can add events without having to use anything but plain text. For instance, you can say “Meet with Joe at 1 pm Tuesday.” It will add the event and bring up the event editor so you can add an alert or other information. See the iCal help for details of exactly what iCal understands. If yo uphold down the click over the + button, you get to choose a calendar before entering the event text.
In Lion, the user Library is hidden by default. But you can still get there easily if you need to. In Terminal, you can type open ~/Library. Or, you can hold the option key down while selecting the Go menu in the Finder. This adds the Library to that menu and you can select it.
Before Lion, you could drag and drop to move a file, and you could copy and paste a file from one location to another — leaving two copies of the file. But in Lion you can copy a file, and then use Command+Option+V to move the copied item to another location. The result is what you would expect from Cut and Paste, but you make the decision in the final action instead of the first one.
If you’ve got a bunch of tabs open in Safari and you want to quickly switch between them, use Control+Tab. This allows you to cycle through the tabs. You can also use Command+Shift+Left Arrow or Right Arrow, but it doesn’t work if you have a text field selected. Control+Tab seems to always work.
If you take a bunch of pictures in one spot, but only some of them get geo-tagged, you can copy and paste the location from one photo to another. Simply select the photo and use Edit, Copy or Command+C like you were copying the whole photo. Then select the other photo and select Edit, Paste Location to paste just the location of the first photo into the second. You can continue to paste the location to more photos.
If you find something in your System Preferences, Accounts, Login Items list that you can’t identify, then Control+Click on it. Select “Reveal in Finder” and you will be shown the program’s location. Often these items are utility applications that are found inside the package of a larger applications. For instance, iTunes Helper is inside the iTunes application. Doing this will often help you figure out what a Login Item is.
