You can access recently-closed tabs in Safari in the History menu. But a quicker way is to click and hold the + button to the right of the tabs at the top of the window. This brings up the list there, which is a more natural place to access it.
It can be difficult to find special financial data in the Apple Stocks app, but it is there. You just need to figure out the right symbol. For instance, it seems precious metals can be found using X followed by the two-letter element symbol, followed by USD=X. So for gold, silver and platinum, it is XAUUSD=X, XAGUSD, and XPTUSD=X. For futures it doesn’t follow the same system: GC=F, SI=F and PL=F.
If you have an app with multiple windows open and want to switch to a particular window, click down hard with a modern Mac trackpad on the icon and it will bring up a view of all windows. Then you can click on the window you wish to come to the front.
If you have a ton of Finder windows open, you can merge them all into one window with multiple tabs by using Window, Merge All Windows. Then you can keep them around or use that as a starting point for closing those tabs using Command+w. You can do the same with Safari and most other apps.
If you use Command+Shift+5 and Capture Selected Portion, and have it set to save to a file, you’ll need to switch that to save to Clipboard if you want to copy the selected area to the clipboard. But you can also use Command+C after you select the area to save to clipboard without needing to switch the setting.
If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can use Spotlight to search for and start songs. Hit Command+Space and search for a song. Look for it under Music in the results. Then you can select it and play it, which will launch iTunes. Make sure you haven’t turned off Music results in System Preferences, Spotlight.
If you are using an external display, you can see many more resolution options in System Preferences if you know how to reveal them. In System Preferences, Displays, Display, hold the option key and click the “Scaled” selection. This changes what is shown. Option+click it again to switch back. Depending on your screen you may also see a checkbox for Show low resolution modes for more options. On MacBooks and iMacs when you are using the built-in display, this doesn’t reveal anything, however.
If you use Desktop Stacks in Mojave, you can click on the stack to reveal the contents. But you can also hover the cursor over the stack and use two fingers on the Trackpad or mouse to scroll through the files in the stack and double-click when you see the file you want to open.
Don’t like the sound your Mac plays when there is an error or alert? The default alert sound can be changed in System Preferences, Sound, Sound Effects. You can also adjust the volume of the alert. Not all apps will use this alert sound.
You can select a file in the Finder and press the spacebar to preview the file in Quick Look. There is a button at the top of the window then to take you into full screen Quick Look mode. But you can hold the Option key down and press the spacebar to jump right into full screen Quick Look.
On your iPhone and iPad, if you have a Draft email you haven’t sent yet, you can quickly get to it to complete and send by tapping and holding the compose new message button at the bottom of the Mail app. Tapping it will start a new message, but holding it will bring up a screen with a New Message button and a list of drafts. You can tap a draft to open it, or swipe right to left to delete it.
If you want to quickly text someone your location from your iPhone, start the message out with the words I’m at. Then after hitting the spacebar, a Current Location suggestion will appear in the Quick Type space above the keyboard. Tap that and your location is sent to the recipient. You can also tap the person’s icon at the top of the screen, the i button, and then tap Send My Current Location.
If you have a lot of apps open, and want to quickly hide everything except one app, you can hold Command+Option and click the icon of that app in the Dock. This only works if the app is already open. Using just the Option key hides the app if it is the one currently at the front, or hides the frontmost app otherwise and brings the clicked app to the front.
When you compose an email in the iOS Mail app, you get a little bell icon next to the subject. Tap that to activate a special feature where you will get an iOS notification when someone replies to that message. Unfortunately, this only works on iOS, not Mac.
Ever close a window or tab in Safari and then wish you could get back to it a few minutes later. History, Last Closed Tab will work in some cases, but if you closed a few tabs you can still find older ones in History. Recently Closed.
If you find you always use the left Shift key, or the right one, for that matter, and never the other Shift key, you use that large unused key as a Mission Control shortcut. Go to System Preferences, Mission Control. In any of the keyboard shortcuts you can change the option to the left or right Shift keys. You can also use any Option, Control or Command key too.
Sometimes when you go to print out a mostly-text article from the web, you instead get a mess of browser navigation buttons, banners and ads. But if you switch to Reader View using View, Show Reader, and then print, you’ll just get what you see in the Reader View. Then you can save as a PDF, open in Preview to select and copy the text, or, of course, print it.
If you are typing one of those hard-to-spell words on your Mac, you can start typing the beginning of the word and then use fn+F5 (or just F5 depending on your keyboard settings) to see a list of words that start with those letters and choose one. For instance, type “maint” and then fn+F5 and then you can select maintenance.
When you try to open a file from inside an app, you can single-click and select files just like in the Finder. You can also press the spacebar to view the file contents in a Quick Look window. This can help you figure out which file you want when the file name isn’t enough.
It is easy to adjust the volume on your Mac by clicking on the speaker icon in the menu bar. But setting it to something exact is impossible with this slider control. You can ask Siri to simply “Set volume to 37 percent” to set it to an exact amount. If you are at a setting you like now, you can ask “What is my volume?” to get that amount so you know what to use later. You can also say things like “Turn down the volume 3 percent.”
