Do you like to have the Dock visible all the time, but find that sometimes it gets in the way? You can quickly hide the Dock with Command+Option+D. This turns “hiding” on so you can access items under the Dock, though the Dock still pops up after a second if you leave the mouse there.
Scroll bars are everyone in Mac OS X and applications. There are two things that can happen when you click in the scroll bar, above or below the marker. The first is the window can move up or down one page. The second is the window can jump to a position in the document relative to the spot you clicked in the scroll bar. Switch between these two options in System Preferences, Appearance. Look for the “Click in the scroll bar to” option.
Did you know you can change the order in which columns appear when viewing your iTunes library in List, Album List or Cover Flow views? Just drag and drop the column headings left or right to move them around. So, for instance, you can have the artist name show in the leftmost column and the track name in the second column. You can also go o View, View Options to choose which columns are present.
You can search the new Mac App Store by document extension to find applications that will handle a certain document type. For instance, type “extension:doc” in the search field at the upper right corner of the Mac App Store and you will get a list of all applications that can handle .doc files.
You can get a quick dictionary definition of any word in just about any Mac OS X in application. Just position your cursor over the word and press Control+Command+D. This handy little window appears with a definition and some controls. Click elsewhere to make it go away.
There are three sets of keyboard shortcuts for moving between tabs in Safari. You can use Command+Shift and the left and right arrows. You can also use Command+Shift and the square bracket keys. In addition, you can use Control+Tab to cycle forward and Control+Shift+Tab to cycle backward.
If you have a large collection of videos and want an easy way to preview them, try putting them in a folder and setting the folder to icon view. Then choose View, Show View Options and set the icon size to 64×64 or higher. Now you get a play button at the center of each icon and can play the video inside the icon. You can also do this in Cover Flow view, which gives you a list at the bottom and playable cover flow icons at the top.
When you press Command+F to search in the Finder, the search starts with a default search location. It can either be the entire Mac, the current folder, or the last place you performed a search. To set this preference, go to the Finder and choose Finder, Preferences, then Advanced. Look for the “When performing a search” setting.
In Address Book you can add a web address for any contact. In Safari, you can make those contacts available in the bookmarks bar by going to Safari Preferences, Bookmarks, Bookmarks bar and choosing Include Address Book. This puts a drop-down menu in your bookmarks bar that includes all web addresses from your contacts.
Quick Look is when you select a file in the Finder and press the spacebar to view its contents in a window. You can also view the contents full screen by holding the option key when pressing the spacebar. This is a shortcut for the full screen button that appears at the bottom when you just press the spacebar. You can’t use this option key shortcut in other Quick Look situations, like open/save dialogs, but you usually still do get the full screen button at the bottom.
While it seems like iTunes is a one-window application, you can in fact have multiple windows open. For instance, if you want to have your music library in one window and the iTunes Store in another, just Control+Click or Right+Click on iTunes Store in the left sidebar and choose Open in New Window. You can do this for most things in the left sidebar. New windows will be lacking this left sidebar as it only remains in your primary iTunes window.
Need to perform a quick calculation? Instead of launching Calculator, or going to the Dashboard, just go to the Spotlight Menu at the top right corner of your screen and type. For instance, typing 2+2 gives you the answer. You can get more complex than that, of course. The keyboard shortcut of Command+Space works as well. So Command+Space 2+2 gets you the answer quickly, no matter what application you are running at the time.
In System Preferences, Dock, switch on Minimize windows into application icon. Then when you click on the yellow minimize button at the top of any window, it won’t appear on the right side of the Dock. Instead, you can bring it back by control+clicking on the application and selecting the window. Or, click and hold the Dock icon to bring up an Expose-like view of the applications’s windows.
You can copy files with drag and drop, but did you know you can also use copy and paste? Just select a file in one folder, choose Edit, Copy or Command+C. Then go to another folder and choose Edit, Paste or Command+V. This is very handy when you don’t want to have both folders on the screen at the same time.
The keys at the top of your Mac keyboard are both function keys (F1 to F12 or F19) and special feature keys: brightness, expose, volume, etc. You can decide what they do by default in System Preferences, Keyboard. Check or uncheck “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.” Then, look for the “fn” key on your keyboard. This toggles those keys the other way. So if you choose to use them as F-keys, then holding “fn” will make them work as special feature keys. The main reason to use these as F-keys is if you use software that utilizes them, like many Adobe applications do.
Say you have an image file on your desktop or in a Finder window and you want to add it to iPhoto. You can select it and press the spacebar to view the image in Quick Look. Then, at the bottom, there is an icon to add the image to iPhoto. One click and it is done. This can come in handy when using Quick Look to browse through a folder full of images. You can easily add one or two to iPhoto as you browse.
The iPhone’s spotlight search screen can be a very useful tool, but the amount of results can be overwhelming. Specify what shows up by going to Settings, General, Spotlight Search. You can also change the order of results. Narrow it down to only Applications, for instance, and you have a great way to launch apps.
Ever scroll down a very long web page on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, then need to get back to the address and search bar quickly? Just tap the top of the screen — the status and time bar — and the page will zip back up to the top and bring back the address and search fields.
You know that volume control in your menu bar at the upper right? Try Option+clicking on it. This gives you access to sound controls including switching between input devices and output devices. On newer MacBooks you can also choose how to use your single audio port. If you don’t have the volume control in your menu bar, you can add it by going to System Preferences, Sound and checking off “Show volume in menu bar.”
When viewing Safari 5’s Top Sites page, you can click on any page shown to go to the page. But if you Command+click on a page, it will open the page in a new tab or window. Go to Safari, Preferences, Tabs to change whether Command+click will open from Top Site (or any link) in a new Tab or Window. You can also set Safari to automatically switch to the new tab, while leaving the Top Sites tab still available.
