MacMost: Video Podcast

The ability to dictate text instead of typing is built in to macOS. But in order to use dictation effectively, you should know how to use some basic commands for moving the cursor, selecting text, replacing text, and correcting mistakes. You can also use dictation commands to access toolbar and menu bar commands for more advanced changes.

By using the Apple Store app on your iPhone, you can walk into an Apple Store, pick out a product, pay on your iPhone, and walk out without ever needing to speak to an employee. Self-checkout has been around for a while, but few people seem to know about it. Watch as I pay for a new Magic Trackpad using self-checkout and see how the process works.

Although it has been around for many versions of macOS, the Arrange By setting in the Finder continues to confuse users who try to use it to set the sort order in a Finder window. Arrange By is for grouping files by kind, date, size and other criteria. For simple file name sorting, you should have it set to None, and then use the column headings to sort.

You can use the Workflow app to create little programs to automate tasks on your iPhone or iPad. In this example, we'll create a workflow that will send a new email message with the subject, body and from address pre-filled. You can add this as an icon to your Home screen, or to the Today screen for easy access.

The Maps app is a handy way to find a location, get directions, or view satellite imagery on your Mac. You can see traffic conditions and look at a 3D view of buildings and terrain. This can be a tool for finding places or getting directions, or an educational or exploratory tool for learning more about the world.

Since there are no menu bar selections for styles in Pages, you cannot assign standard keyboard shortcuts to them. But there is a special method that can be used to assign F-keys to paragraphs, character and bullet list styles. You access these through the format sidebar in a way that isn't readily obvious.

In the Mac Calendar app, you can view a selection of local holidays using switch in Calendar Preferences. You can see holidays in other countries by temporarily switching your Mac's region and then toggling this preference. You can also subscribe to any publicly-available calendar you wish from the Internet. You can make your own calendars and share those as well.

You can peer into a zip archive and see which files are in there using the zipinfo Terminal command. You can refine the results to show you only the files with fgrep. You can take this same command and use it as a Shell Script in an Automator service for easy access. In this tutorial you'll also learn about using Shell Scripts with files as input arguments in Automator.

Naming your iPhone's Clock app alarms can be extremely useful. You can then use Siri to set alarms by name, distinguishing between the alarms in some way other than just the time. Named alarms can avoid confusion if you have two alarms with the same time, but different sounds and settings.

If you are a new Mac user, you may not know how to type special characters like vowels with accent marks, symbols or emoji. You can easily get accent marks and other letter variations by holding down the key on the keyboard and selecting the variation. For symbols and emoji, a simple keyboard shortcut brings up a searchable list of all available characters.

Power users love the Go To Folder command in the Finder. It allows you to type the path to a folder instead of using mouse clicks to navigate. You can use autocompletion to do this quickly, even if your folders have long names. The Go To Folder command can also be used in application open and save dialogs.

Forwarding email is a quick way to send along an email you received to someone else. But it also means that when that person responds, the response will come to you, not the original sender. You can use Mac Mail's Redirect command to send the message to someone else and retain the sender in the From field so that replies will skip you and go directly back to the original sender. This is useful when you need to send along a question to someone else to answer it.

You can use shapes in Pages to create unusual borders for images. You can get a rounded rectangle border for an images, or even circles, stars and any shape in the Shape tool. You can then use line borders that will conform to the shape to frame the image. This technique can also be used in Keynote and Numbers.

The Zoom feature in the Accessibility functions of your iPhone can help you read a small piece of text. It can easily be turned on or off so you can use it only when you need it. There are any options and ways to trigger the Zoom feature, so take a few minutes to try it out before the next time you need it.

New Mac users who have trackpads may not realize how many gestures there are and how you can customize them. In System Preferences you can not only control which gestures are available, but customize some and see demonstrations of all of them. As a new Mac user you may want to take the time to familiarize yourself with the trackpad gestures to increase your productivity.

If you searching your Mac for a file doesn't return the results you expect, then there are several common culprits. You may simply not notice that the scope of the search is limited to the current folder instead of your entire drive. Or, you may have your Spotlight settings set to not look for some files. If there is a more serious problem, you can try re-indexing your Mac to fix broken search results.

If you wish to represent a number in a cell with leading zeros, such as a zip code that starts with a 0 digit, or an International phone number, then you can do it using the Text cell format which treats the number as a series of characters, rather than a value. You can also use custom cell formatting to display a number with leading zeros, which can help you if you wish to have easy data entry and uniform cell formatting.

You can view and change your Mac's privacy preferences in System Preferences, Security & Privacy. You can see which apps you have installed that requested access to things like Contacts, Photos, Location and other information. You can grant and revoke privacy permissions to these apps. You can also read more about what these apps can access.

While QR codes aren't used as much today as just a few years ago, it is nice to know that when you encounter one you can access the URL using your iPhone's Camera app, without needing to install anything else. If you'd like to create a QR code that links to a specific page on your website, you can use Google's URL shortener as a quick and trustworthy method.

If you are new to Mac you may not yet be taking full advantage of keyboard shortcuts. You can find almost all shortcuts by simply looking at the command in the menu bar. There are symbols that you will find in the menu bar that map to the Shift, Control, Option and Command keys on the Mac keyboard. You can also find shortcuts in System Preferences, and even assign your own to menu commands that have no shortcut. One difficulty that Windows users often have is that the Control key is used as the primary modifier key in Windows, while the Command key is the equivalent on the Mac.