In addition to the brightness controls on modern Mac keyboards, you can also control the contrast with keyboard shortcuts. Use Control+Option+Command+(period) to increase your screen increase contrast, and Control+Option+Command+(comma) to decrease it.
So it is easy enough to drag the bottom of a column in the Finder’s column view to change the width of that column. But, did you know you could hold down the Option key and it will resize all columns in all windows? And, better still, it will remember that new column width as the default. Also, Control+click on the bottom of a column to get more resizing options.
Ever wanted to quit an application without switching to it first? You can, using the Dock. Just right click or Control+click on an icon in the dock and you can select “Quit” from the pop-up menu. This will quit a running application without ever showing the application if it is hidden. An exception is if you have an open document and the application decides to ask you if you want to save it first.
So in Apple Mail you can compose messages and “Notes.” A note is like a message that stays in your mailbox. A message to yourself, in a way. Did you know that you can also call out lines in Notes as To Do items? Just choose File, New Note. Then after you write down some things, select a line and press the To Do button at the top of that window. The line will not only get a checkbox next to it, but it will also be added to your To Do list that you can access in Mail and in iCal.
Not all entries in your Address Book need to be people. If you want to add the phone number for your doctor’s office, bank, insurance company, mechanic or any other general office or service number, simply check the “Company” checkbox right under the Last, First name entries when creating a new contact. This will put the company name as the primary identifier for the contact, rather than a person’s name. You can still enter a name if you want, but it is optional.
Do you use Apple Mail as an RSS reader? If not, then you might want to take away the RSS feeds from Mail, as it takes up time and bandwidth keeping those up-to-date. You can do this by right clicking or control+clicking the RSS feeds in the left sidebar and deleting them. You can also go to Mail preferences and look for the RSS tab. Set the “Check for updates” to “manually.”
You know how you can customize the Finder toolbar? You can do the same with the toolbar in Preview. Choose View, Customize Toolbar. You can add all sorts of interesting toolbar buttons and fields: an editable page number, an Inspector button, a Zoom to Fit button, Print button, Rotate button, and so on. You just drag and drop elements into your Preview toolbar to add them. Try it out.
Bookmarking a Web page is easy. But getting to that bookmark again can be tough if you have filed it away inside a bookmark subfolder. You need to choose Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, and then go find it. You can make them more accessible by creating subfolders in your Bookmarks Bar. There are many ways to do this, but one is to right+click or Ctrl+click on the bookmarks bar, and then select New Folder. These folder then act like pull-down menus in Safari, giving you easy access to the bookmarks stored within.
Have an unusual speaker setup for you Mac? Sometimes you may need to switch left and right speakers without physically changing the location of the boxes. You can do this by running Audio MIDI Setup on your Mac, and then choosing your output device, and then choosing Configure Speakers. You can then set channel 2 to left and channel 1 to right to reverse your speakers. You can also switch from Stereo to Multichannel for even more control if you have a surround sound system.
If you want to automatically have your most recent photos on your iPhone or iPod Touch, there are several ways to do it. The easiest is to select your iPhone in iTunes when it is connected, and then click on the Photos tab. You can choose to sync all of your photos, or specific albums. When you choose the later, you can also add all events, some of the most recent events, or events that have occurred within a period of time. With that setting, you don’t even need to mess around with albums in iPhoto. It is all done from iTunes.
When you’ve got 67 windows open on your desktop, like I often do, it can be hard to find one even with Expose. But you can use the Dock to find a window by name. Just Ctrl+click or right+click on an icon in the Dock, like the Finder or Safari, and you will get a list of opened windows by name. Select a window to bring it to the front.
Ever search for a file on your Mac, then find it, but realize you want to see everything in the folder, not just that one file. You can do this by right clicking or Ctrl+clicking the file in the search results, and then choosing “Open Enclosing Folder.” You can also select the file and press Command+R, which is “Reveal in Finder” and produces the same result. If you are searching using the Spotlight menu, then you can Command+click the file to open its folder instead.
Ever find something in your Downloads folder and forget what it is and where you got it? Select the file and press Command+I to bring up the information window. For downloaded files, you’ll find lots of things listed under More Info, including the “Where from” URL of the download. At least, it is usually there. The information provided depends a bit on the server it was downloaded from. But as an added bonus, if you go to Safari’s Downloads window and press the magnifying glass next to each item, it will find the downloaded file even if you have moved it out of the Downloads folder or saved it elsewhere.
If you are sick of having a document open with the wrong application, hopefully you already know that you can Ctrl+click or right click on a document and select “Open With.” In the pop-up that appears you can select “Other” and then choose an application, checking off “Always Open With.” Then the next time you double-click on the document, it will open in the proper application. But did you also know that you can Ctrl+click or right click on a document, go to the Open With submenu, and hold down the Option key before making a selection? Holding down Option will mark that application as the “Always Open With” application for that document.
iTunes is smart enough that when you sort your library by artist, it knows to put The Beatles under B. But sometimes exceptions can be more complex than just a ‘the.’ You can set an artist, album or song name to sort with in iTunes by selecting a song or songs, pressing Command+I to bring up the info window, and selecting the Sorting tab. Then you can set a name to sort by that will be different than the name selected.
Do you travel with your MacBook often? You can set your Mac to automatically change its time zone according to your location. Select this option in System Preferences, Date & Time, Time Zone. This new feature of Snow Leopard will look at nearby WiFi hotspots and figure out which time zone you are in.
Want to quickly see how big a hard drive is and how much space is available? Select the drive on your desktop or in a Finder window. Press Command+I to bring up the Info window. You’ll see the drive’s format, capacity, available space and used space. If it is your main drive, you will also see the version of Mac OS X installed.
Sick of jumping back and forth between your music library and the iTunes store? You can view both at the same time by opening them up in new windows. Just right+click or ctrl+click on an item in the left sidebar of iTunes and you get the option to open it in a new window. So you can have your music library in one window and the iTunes store in another. You can also open up different parts of your library in different windows, such as music, movies and podcasts each in its own window.
One of the strangest and marginally useful text editing tips on the Mac is to use the F5 key (fn+F5 depending on your keyboard preferences) to autocomplete a word. “Autocomplete” is sort of a misnomer, as it brings up a list of words that all start with the same letters you have typed so far. So it doesn’t really help your typing speed much, but it will help you spell words. And if, by chance, the letters you have typed can only match one word, it will, in fact, autocomplete.
If your mail folders are getting a bit full with old email, you can quickly and easily archive messages into separate files. Select the mailbox folder from the left sidebar in Apple Mail and choose Mailbox, Archive Mailbox. This will create an mbox folder. You can then delete the mailbox folder from Mail. You can always use File, Import Mailboxes to bring the folder back into Mail. You can also open up the created mbox folder to reveal a “mbox” file which you can open in any text editor, even TextEdit, for a quick search of the messages. A good way to use this is to create a new folder, like “Archive 2008” and drag old messages to it. Then archive and delete that folder.
