Top 10 Things Users Don’t Know They Can Do On Their Mac

Here are the most common Mac tips and tricks that even some long-time Mac users don't know about.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten things that a lot of people don't know that you can do on your Mac. 
So I often include various tips in my tutorials and often I get comments from people that say that they didn't realize that they can do that particular thing on their Mac. I keep track of these and here are the ones where I hear that the most. 
First you can Copy & Paste to move files on your Mac. I hear this a lot from windows users who do it with simple control c, control v. On the Mac it doesn't appear that you can do that at first. You've got to know the trick! So you can select a file, like this, in a folder. You can use Edit, Copy or Command C to start. Then you go somewhere else, like this. Now if you want to move it here it doesn't look like you can do it. You go to Edit and if you Paste it actually will make a copy of the item here. So the original is still in the other folder. Well all you need to do is hold the Option Key and this changes to Move Item here. So it is not Command V, it is Option Command V to move. 
Now sometimes when you copy text, like this text here on a webpage, and then you go to paste it into another app, like Mail or Pages or somewhere else, you'll get all of the formatting with the text. You can see this is bold here and there is coloring and all of that. It even takes the font and the size. But if you want to Paste without that styling you can do it. Just look in the Edit Menu. You'll usually see here Paste and Match Style. This is the equivalent to making the text plain text and then pasting it. So you can see here there is usually a keyboard shortcut, often it is Option Shift Command V, sometimes it is something different so you want to check depending on the app. When I paste in here it retains the style that I was using here in this app and it gets rid of all the other formatting.
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Now years ago the common thing to do when you were working with a document was to use Save As to save a copy out as a different file name and continue working on that file. But years ago Apple got rid of that. If you go to the File Menu there is no save as. A substitute for that is Duplicate. You can certainly use Duplicate to do this but it works a little differently leaving both documents open. However, most people don't know that you can simply hold the Option Key down and in almost all apps Duplicate changes to Save As. You can use the old Save As command if you prefer that. 
I often hear from people that say that it is hard to preview an image in the Finder on the Mac before opening a file. That if they want to find an image the icon if often too small and it is cumbersome to open up an image, close it, and continue to do that. But you can use Quick Look to quickly preview images. All you need to do is select the image and hit the Spacebar and you get this Quick Look window here that gives you a preview. Press the Spacebar again and it goes away. There's lots of functionality in here including the ability to resize it and you don't have to dismiss it. You can select another image and it will show that in the Quick Look window. As a matter of fact you can use the Arrow Keys to navigate around and quickly look through a whole bunch of different images. 
Another option, by the way, is using View and then Show Preview. Then you get a larger preview here on the right side of the Finder window. You can Hide it the same way. 
Here's one, that every time I mention it there is some people that didn't realize that they can do this on their Mac. You can sign PDF's. If you double click PDF it opens up in Preview by default which is on your Mac. You don't need to download additional software. If there is an area to sign here you can sign it using the Markup Tools. So you could click here. You could also use this form filling Toolbar as well. Both of them have this little Signature Button here. Click that and you can create a new signature or use one you have already created. Then you click there and it puts your signature there. You can move it to where you want, resize it, and place it and then you can Save this and then send it along to whoever wanted the signature. You can also, of course, fill out the form by clicking on fields that are there and if the field, for some reason isn't there, if there is no way to fill it in you can still use Markup Tools. Click here to add text and then resize this text to make it the appropriate size and color and place it where you want. 
If you need to often type the same thing over and over again you can make a shortcut for it. So let's say you need to type this and you're sick and tired of having to type this two and three times a say. So I'm going to Copy it here and then go to System Settings. Then look for Keyboard on the left. Then look for the button called Text Replacements. Here you can add text replacements to replace something you typed with something else. So I'm going to click the Plus Button to add something. It is useful to always use something you would never accidentally type. So, for instance, I'm going to do exclamation point and later. Then With you can type anything you want here or paste in that text that I had before. Click Add and now if I want to type this I don't need to type the whole thing out. I just type the replacement and then either space or return and it inserts the entire thing. You can put in tons of text in the With area or just something simple like a quick emoji and then you just type this to get to that emoji instead of having to find it each time. 
Many of people don't realize that there is a Batch Rename tool built into the Finder. You're not going to find it if you search through the menus looking for Batch Rename. Instead, select all of the files that you want to rename, I use Command A to select everything here, and then go to File Rename, which is what you would use to rename a single file. But with multiple files selected you get this whole tool here. You can replace text in all of the files named. You can add text before or after all the file names. You can format. So you can use something like the name and date and you can specify the name here. Or the name and the counter, name and index. So you can do something like this and let's have the numbers start at 100 and maybe the word photo with a space, like that. You can rename everything like that. If the results aren't what you want you can always use Edit, Undo to change them all back as long as you do it right afterwards. 
So you probably know that you can use an emoji character by using Control Command and Space to bring up the Emoji and Special Character Viewer. You can also use fn and e to bring that up. If you've got a word here that triggers an emoji, like this for instance, using these will actually bring up this first allowing you to choose an emoji based on that last word. But you can simply click here to go to the full view. Now I'm amazed by how many people know that you can do this but then they are browsing for their emoji or special character. Instead use Search here. You can search for a term and it will narrow things down or get to the specific one that you want. Sometimes you have to try various different terms. Like, for instance, smile will produce different results than happy. This works for more than just emoji characters. For instance, you need an arrow, search for arrows and it comes up with all sorts of different arrow characters that you can use. If you want to control exactly what is shown here click here and then use this button that is at the end of this list at the bottom. Then you go into the Character Viewer. Now a Character Viewer you can customize exactly which characters are available. So you can turn on as many as you want. To get back to the Emoji and Special Character Viewer click the same button here, now it is at the top right, and it goes back into this mode. So the next time you bring it up you're back to using it like this. 
One thing that has been around for a long time, but some people still don't know about it, is Hot Corners. It's a good alternative to keyboard shortcuts and gestures. Go to the Apple Menu and then System Settings. Then go to Desktop & Dock. At the bottom it's a button called Hot Corners. Now you assign a special command to any corner of your screen. So let's use the top right corner. You can set it to anyone of these, like Active Mission Control, or Launchpad, or Lock the screen which is very useful. I'll set it to Launchpad and now when I move my pointer to the top right corner it brings up Launchpad. If you find you trigger too easily you can assign one of these while holding a modifier key, like the Command, Option, Control, or Shift key. When you do that you can see it changes to Command Launchpad. Now It won't work by itself. I have to hold the Command Key down and move to the top right corner to trigger it. 
Finally, I'll end with what might be the best one of them all. Universal Clipboard. If you've got a Mac and say an iPhone or iPad or a second Mac you can Copy & Paste between all your devices effortlessly. It just works. There are some requirements. You may want to check those out if it is not working for you. But, for instance, I'm going to copy some text here on my iPhone. Then I'm going to go on my Mac and Paste. You'll see it pastes exactly what I copied. It works the other way as well. It works with images as well. So here I'm going to copy a photo on my iPhone and then I'm going to Paste here on my Mac and you can see it pastes that image. I don't have to mess with transferring the file or anything like that. Just Copy & Paste from one to the other. 
So these are not only things that people are often surprised that they can do on their Mac, but they are all also very useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Top 10 Things Users Don’t Know They Can Do On Their Mac”

Edie

3 months ago

Have been a Mac user for 30+ years and still some of your suggestions are new to me 😆 - here for example the "fn e" method to quickly add an emoji - Thanks much!!!

Néman

Hey Garry, does something have to be set to be able to copy between the iPad and the iMac with the universal clipboard?? Thanks for some information!!!

Gary Rosenzweig

Néman: I put a link to Apple's troubleshooting page right at the 9:00 mark.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Vaman Kale

Very useful. I knew some of them and had accidentally found some of them, but the rest were new. Thanks again, Gary.

GrantS

This is depressingly enlightening... I have been a Mac user for 12+ years and have always struggled with the 'lack' of File Move, and Save As, and clumsiness of previewing files. Arrrgh! thank you Gary

Mo Hammad

These simple but ingenious tips made my day. I have used most Mac models since 1984 yet you always amaze me. Many thanks.

Ton

Very handy, thanks. I have this computer for many years and didn't know...