The 4 Basic Techniques Every Mac User Needs To Master

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you the four techniques that every Mac user should master.

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So if you want to master your Mac there are four basic techniques that you need to know inside and out. First is the Menu Bar. The Menu Bar is the key to unlocking all of the different commands and functions of any app you're using. So, for instance, here I'm in Pages and you'll notice that the second menu item is always the name of the app that you are currently using. Pages. The first one is the Apple Menu. Each one of these menus contains different commands that allows you to do almost all of the functions of that app. So if there's something that you need to do in an app look through these menus to find it. For instance in Pages you would often want to format text. While a lot of that is available in the Sidebar here you could find it all, also, under Format in the menu and submenus there. The Apple Menu is always the same and contains items pertaining to your entire Mac not just the app that you're using. 

One of the ways experts like me know how to do all these different things in apps is that we spend the time to look through all of the Menus and Submenus to see what's there. If we don't know what something is we try it out. If you're using something in the menu often you may want to use the keyboard shortcut instead. The key to finding keyboard shortcuts is looking in the Menus themselves and you'll find the keyboard shortcuts over to the right. Once you learn the shortcut you know longer have to go all the way up to the Menu Bar and find that item. You could just use the shortcut. 

Now menus can get pretty deep here. You can go into Menus with submenus and sometimes there are sub-submenus. But you can always use the Help menu to find things. The Help menu has got Search at the top and you may think that that allows you to search documentation, and it does. But it also gives you Menu Commands. So, for instance, to find Subscript in Pages all I need to do is type that in Help and you'll see it appear under Menu Items. You move your Pointer over it and it will even show you where it is so you can go directly to it next time. 

The next basic technique is Drag and Drop. You probably use Drag and Drop for some things but it can be used for almost anything. For instance here in the Finder, of course you can use Drag and Drop to take a file and move it into a folder. The common technique is to open a second Finder window and then Drag and Drop a file from one window to a folder in another to move it around. But you can also use Drag and Drop for so many other things especially going between apps. Let's say you want to export a photo from the Photos App. You can do that with a Menu Command, sure. But you could also Drag and Drop. So just drag the photo from the Photos App to the Finder and it will export it. Likewise you could also drag into Photos. You can also use Drag and Drop to bring objects into apps. For instance if I want to bring this photo into my Pages document here, sure I could click Media, Photos, and then go and find that photo. But if it's sitting right here in the Finder I could just Drag and Drop it into Pages. You can go from one app to the other. So to get a photo from the Photos App into Pages I can go directly from one app to the other using Drag and Drop. You can also use Drag and Drop to open up a file in a specific app using the Dock. So I can drag this photo here into the Dock and then drop it onto an app to open it up in that app. Sometimes it will work with apps you don't even expect. Like, for instance I could drag a photo into Mail. What would happen then is it would start a new message with that photo as an attachment. Or you can just use Drag and Drop to take the image from the Finder into a message that you're already writing. 

Drag and Drop is often the answer when users aren't sure how to do a certain task. For instance a classic example is in System Preferences if you go to Desktop & Screen Saver and then to Desktop you want to make a photo your Desktop background. Well one way to do that is to simply drag a photo to this area here. This is called a Drop Zone. When you do that it changes the Desktop background to that image. You're able to do the with Drag and Drop even though there was no button or obvious indicator that Drag and Drop would work in that situation.

The next technique you need to master is the Context Menu. So this is different than the Menu Bar at the top. Context Menu Appears with the object that you're trying to act on. So, for instance, here is a file. If I bring up the Context Menu by holding the Control key and then clicking you can see a menu appears right there at that spot. The actions in this Menu pertain to the item that I clicked on. So these are all things that I could do with that Image File. Now there are three ways to bring up the Context Menu. You can hold the Control key down and click. If you've got a trackpad you can use two fingers on the trackpad and click. If you're using a mouse you can right click to bring up the Context Menu. The last two are options in System Preferences. If you go to Trackpad, System Preferences, go to Point & Click. This is called the secondary click. You can set how to bring up the secondary click. The same thing for using the mouse. The Secondary Click has two different options here. So if one of those isn't working for you make sure it's checked and make sure you know the option that you're using. The Context Menu comes up just about anywhere. So here I am in Photos. I can Control Click on a photo to see what I can do with that photo. I can click on the Desktop itself not even a file that's there and bring up options for the Desktop or I can click on the background of a Finder window to bring up options for that. I can go to the Dock and bring up the Context Menu for anything there. I'll see different options for each app and sometimes documents that have been recently opened in that app or are currently opened. Even on a webpage I can select text, I can bring up the Context Menu for that text. I can bring up the Context Menu for an image that I see there. Get different options for that specific object. The same thing in Pages. If I want to control an object I can bring up the Context Menu for it to see different options that have to do with that specific type of object.

Now the last technique you need to master is Copy and Paste which is definitely one of the most basic techniques of any type of computing device. But there's more to it than just Copy and Pasting text. I mean sure you can use it to copy text using Edit, Copy and then paste that text somewhere else. But you could also use it for things that aren't text. Any object, like this image here, you can copy and I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut Command C, and then paste, I'm going to use Command V and I get another copy of that object. But you can also Copy and Paste to go between apps. So I could select an image here in Photos, Command C to copy, then i could go to Pages here and Command V to paste that photo in. Sometimes Copy can actually mean different things depending upon what it is you want to copy. You can use the Context Menu to see all the different variations. So for instance here on a webpage if I bring up a Context Menu for this image you could see several different ways to copy. There's Copy Link. There's Copy Image Address, and there's Copy the Image. So I can copy the image here and then I can switch to another app, like Pages, and I could Paste here. You can see I've copied the image from the webpage and pasted it into this document. 

Sometimes copying and pasting is easier to do than Drag and Drop because you can't always see the origin and destination for the object at the same time on the screen. So you can copy when you see the original object. Then go over to another window and paste in that object. Something that's difficult to do with Drag and Drop if you can't see the origin and destination at the same time. You can even do this with files. So I could select a file here, Command C to copy, and then I could go to another location and Command V to paste. I've pasted a copy of that file in that location. If I wanted to move that file instead I start with the copy, just like before. Go to the destination. Now if I look under Edit there's Paste Item. But if I hold the Option key down you'll see Paste Item changes to Move Item here. So instead of Command V, Option Command V will move a file. So Option, Command V the file is there. If I go back to the original location you could see it's not there anymore. It's been moved instead of copied.

So there are four techniques that every Mac user needs to master. If I would include a fifth technique it would be Undo. Undo could be used to take away the last action in almost any situation. So, of course, if you make a mistake you can use Undo which is always Command Z. Because of Undo you can try things, experiment, test things out. Undo if something doesn't work. Use Undo multiple times to go back multiple steps and this is how you get to be a master of using the Mac. 

I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.