UsingMac.com
Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users
Daily Trick 46. Fast Exposé Shortcut
Whenever you want to open the Exposé view of an application, usually mac users will advice you on using Hot Corner. However, we have a new trick here for you.
- Open 'Application Switcher' with Cmd-Tab
- Press Tabs until the app you want to perform Exposé to is selected
- Hit the arrow key [↓] or [↑] and the Exposé for that app will appear
It's fast, quick, and totally free of mouse actions.
But unfortunately, this trick only works in Snow Leopard.
Categories:
Daily Tricks
Tags:
Shortcut
Assign Shortcuts for Web Bookmarks
Speaking of browser bookmarks, the nearest would be bookmarks menu attached to our browsers. Without accessing external sites for extracting out bookmarks, links to favorite sites can be obtained right from web browser bookmarks menu.
However, blazing fast access speed to bookmarked sites won't be achieved without bits of tweaking to browser settings and system preferences. The easiest tweak made to increase speed won't be far away from assigning new keyboard shortcuts.
Let's proceed on and get to step-by-step guide to adding new shortcut to browser bookmarks…
Unveiling 10 Hidden OS X Shortcuts
Years have passed since the first time I used my Mac. While using my Mac, by accidentally hitting wrong combination or purposely browsing for it, I'd discovered some hidden keyboard shortcuts.
Shortcut, as the name suggests, should bring us more productivity juice rather than drag us down. However, some shortcuts may suit you well, some may take more time for you to adapt; to adopt these new hidden shortcuts or to drop them, that's all depend on you.
Mail Keyboard Shortcuts
Without any doubt, Mail is the most welcomed Email Client. It's also the most essential Mac application. In my daily Mac usage, Mail has never been absent from my workflow.
There are lots of features provided by Mail which will take us dozens of hours to read through all of them. I, as a lazy reader myself, would gladly suggest some of these keyboard shortcuts to help you utilize most of Mail features.
Before proceeding to the list of keyboard shortcuts, these are several previous articles for your reference to get the most out of your Mail:
- 10 Nifty Mail Tricks that You Definitely Want to Know
- Ten Useful Mail Plugins
- Change Mail Alert Sound
- Change Flag Icon of Mail
- Mail Tips: Marking Messages
Continue reading and you will see a list of more than 60 Mail shortcuts!
40 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Finder
As the price of MacBooks are getting cheaper and cheaper while the design and specs of new arriving MacBooks (and the Pros) are getting more and more advanced, I believe they should be a lot of computer users are switching to Mac - including my friends, who are planning to switch.
Most of them will worry about the unfamiliar environment of the Mac they're going to migrate to. But what could I say is that, no need to worry too much, it only spends you less than three-day time to master the Mac.
Also it only takes you less than 30-minute time to see, try and familiarize with these Finder shortcuts. I believe you will also want to see my previous shortcuts compilation :
- Mac OS X Leopard: 200+ Productivity Booster Keyboard Shortcuts
- 100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols
- 25 Useful Shortcuts for Safari
Continue reading and you will see a list of 40 Finder shortcuts!
25 Useful Shortcuts for Safari
In most applications, there will be a bunch of shortcuts to help you boost your productivity. Especially in Mac, you will see more shortcuts than when you used Windows, it's just because Mac users are meant to be more productive and used less hand-mouse movement.
Some of the shortcuts, however, are not usually used, some are even not widely known. Today, I'd like to compile some of the useful shortcuts for Safari that you will probably use in the future, including the less-known but highly useful ones.
iMovie'08 - The Quick Shortcuts
Contribution of: Kelly Swee.
Ever felt that dragging the clips from the Event Library to the Project Library seems to be such a pain?
Add Selection to the Project
- Select desired clip in the Events Library
- Press E
The clip will be automatically copied down into Project Library from Event Library as it "flies" into it.
The orange line would appear at the bottom of the clip, showing that the clip is being used in the particular project.
Make a Clip as Favorite
- Select desired clip
- Press F
A green line would appear on top of the clip, showing that the clip has been marked as favorite. I would definitely recommend you to use this function as you could, at anytime, refer back to the best selected clips with minimal effort spent and it saves you from the trouble of renewing the clips again to find a particular clip that you want.
Using Advanced Drag-Drop
It seems that these little tricks here shouldn't be missed. This article is the extension of my other article entitled Using Drag-Drop.
Downloading Image Files
Sometimes you will see a nice looking pictures on the web; You want to download it. Instead of clicking on the image and hence being linked to the place where you can download it. But hey, it's really time consuming. You can just simply drag-and-drop it to anywhere inside your Finder (either Desktop or your local Hard Drive or somewhere else). Is it cool? It's really cool.
Modifier Keys and Their Impact on Keyboard Shortcuts
If you want to become a Mac power user, you should first remember some essential keyboard shortcuts. These most commonly used Mac shortcuts alone can cost you a hell lot of time to remember them.
Luckily, most of the shortcuts are derived by adding modifier key to the initial shortcut. These initial shortcuts are easy to remember and shorter than their derivation (i.e. addition of Option, Control, Shift, etc). With only half of your work, you can get your productivity double-up; It sounds like iPhone ads: Twice as Fast. Half the Price.
I also have included some nifty tricks to give you an idea on how you can intuitively apply this to your daily needs.
Adapt Mac Shortcuts for Windows Switchers
Once you change from a geeky Windows user to a professional Mac user, first you will encounter a problem regarding to keyboard shortcuts. I've experienced it before, though some of the shortcuts are the same but most of them are different.
Here are several tips and shortcuts that I think you will feel it useful if you really want to transform your Mac shortcuts into old Windows arsenals.
Change Modifier Keys
Maybe you've noticed, in most of the shortcuts CTRL key in Windows has the same function as the Command key in Mac. Basically, by swapping the action performed by Command and Control of your Mac, you can get most of your new Mac shortcuts suitable for Windows switchers.
To change the action of modifier keys, there are only several steps need to be done:
- Click on the Apple on menubar
- Go inside System Preferences...
- Choose Keyboard & Mouse and go under Keyboard section
- Find the button labelled Modifier Keys... and hit it
- Select Control key to act as Command key and Command key to act as Control key
- Confirm by punching the OK button
- Now, you've done most part of your Mac to Windows transforming process
Change Shortcut for Spotlight
Today, one of the readers email me asking how to change the default Command Space keystrokes for Spotlight. There are few steps needed to achieve it.
Changing Spotlight's Shortcut
- Go to Apple ▸ System Preferences
- Click on section Keyboard Shortcuts
- Scroll down until you found shortcuts for Spotlight; It's near the end of the shortcut list
- Double-click on the shortcut and you can see that now you can type in new shortcut
- Your changes will automatically be made
Editing Existing Application Shortcuts
Being quite of shortcuts geek here, it's very essential to know how to change those pre-defined shortcuts into more suitable shortcut. And to our surprise, Mac provides it for us.
There is one shortcut that makes me feel sick whenever I tried to use it, i.e. Select Next Tab on Safari. To perform this action, you will need at least two hands; Command-Shift-CloseBracket is the troublesome shortcut I mentioned above.
Leopard Tricks : Dictionary
Adding Reference Libraries
By default, your dictionary's reference libraries shown are Wikipedia, Dictionary, Thesaurus and Apple. Obviously, you can add more references to it.
First, go to your Dictionary Preferences Pane by either using keystrokes Command-Comma or using menu bar Dictionary ▸ Preferences. Then you will see there are more than four default references which is available for your Dictionary.
100 Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Creating Symbols
These shortcuts are for U.S. Keyboard as input source.
Warning
Some of these symbols cannot be seen.
Let's Start with an Apple
| 1 | Apple | Option-Shift-K (Apple) |
Mathematical
| 2 | ∫ | Option-B | 9 | ≠ | Option-Equal Sign[=] |
| 3 | √ | Option-V | 10 | ≤ | Option-Smaller Sign[<] |
| 4 | ∑ | Option-W | 11 | ÷ | Option-Question Mark[?] |
| 5 | ≈ | Option-X | 12 | … | Option-Semicolon[;] |
| 6 | ∞ | Option-5 | 13 | ‰ | Option-Shift-R |
| 7 | « | Option-Backslash[\] | 14 | » | Option-Shift-Backslash[\] |
| 8 | ≥ | Option-Larger Sign[>] | 15 | ± | Option-Shift-Equal Sign[=] |
Leopard - Quick Dictionary and Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts
Actually, you don't need to open dictionary application each time you want to check the definition of a word. With Leopard, you can trigger your word definition checking (Dictionary) on-the-fly. Like this :
Mac OS X Leopard: 200+ Productivity Booster Keyboard Shortcuts
| 1 | Cmd-C | Copy files |
| 2 | Cmd-V | Paste files |
| 3 | Option-Drag | Copy files to new location |
| 4 | Cmd-Drag | Move and auto-align icons |
| 5 | Cmd-Delete | Delete |
| 6 | Cmd-Option-Drag | Make alias |
| 7 | Cmd-Shift-Delete | Empty trash |
| 8 | Cmd-Shift-Option-Delete | Empty trash without warning |
| 9 | Tab | Select next field |
| 10 | Shift-Tab | Select previous field |
| 11 | Return | Perform default action |
| 12 | Escape | Close dialog box |
| 13 | Page Up | Scroll up list |
| 14 | Up Arrow | Select item above |
| 15 | Page Down | Scroll down list |
| 16 | Down Arrow | Select item below |
| 17 | Cmd-Shift-G | Open 'Go to Folder' dialog |
| 18 | Cmd-Period[.] | Close dialog box |
Leopard - Quick Look vs. Slideshow
Quick Look and Slideshow, which complement each other, are masterpieces of Leopard.
Quick Look, which cannot be opened at the same time with Slideshow, is known to be the simplified version of Slideshow. Though so, Slideshow in Leopard, that comes with better resolution, should not be completely buried under the trees. In this article, I will discuss some of the techniques to open your Leopard Quick Look and your Slideshow, that is hidden under Quick Look, at ease.
Toolbar
As I've just said, Slideshow is well hidden under the Quick Look. Hovering your mouse long enough on top of the eye icon, which is the button for activating Quick Look, would definitely unveil the fact that Slideshow is the alternate version of Quick Look. Therefore, holding modifier key Option change the tool icon from an eye into our familiar Slideshow button.
Leopard - All Shortcut Lists
Well, all of these can be seen inside Leopard Help Pane. However, this pane is really troublesome that it will always float over other panes. Fortunately, all of them are also provided inside info.apple.com.
How to Navigate into Shortcut Lists Help Pane
- Choose your Finder as an active window
- Go to Apple Menu Bar ▸ Help; this can be done using keystrokes Command-Shift-?
- Search for term
shortcut - Show the 4th search result entitled
Shortcuts for starting up - Scroll to the bottom of the Mac Help Pane and click on
shortcut lists - Now you can see all the shortcut categories
Shortcut Lists on Apple Info
- Shortcuts for Copying and Moving Files
- Shortcuts for Dialogs
- Shortcuts for Exposé and the System
- Shortcuts for Freezes
- Shortcuts for Interacting with Items
- Shortcuts for Menus
- Shortcuts for Mouse Keys
- Shortcuts for Navigation
- Shortcuts for Opening Folders
- Shortcuts for Selecting Icons
- Shortcuts for Spotlight
- Shortcuts for Starting Up
- Shortcuts for Taking Pictures of the Screen
- Shortcuts for the Dock
- Shortcuts for Universal Access Features
- Shortcuts for Windows
Categories:
Leopard,
Tips and Tricks
Tags:
Shortcut
Creating Keyboard Shortcut
Keyboard fans won't left any action unassigned. Luckily, it's easy to assign Application's action for your Mac.
There are several steps to assign a keyboard shortcut to unassigned action. But before that, knowing how to Quit Finder will be useful.
Step 1. Recognizing the Action
The first step is recognizing your action. This means that you should know exactly how to write the action name. These actions name can be seen at Menu Bar. For example, the New Burn Folder action.
Finder Shortcuts for Viewing
We often use Finder to browse through our files. Therefore, it's very important to know all viewing mode provided by your Mac Finder. Knowing this basic will be useful for you. Also, this will increase your productivity.
Finder can be opened by clicking on the Finder icon on the Dock.
Mac Browser Auto Complete
It is very glad to know that some of web browsers support very fast auto complete. This is an amazing auto complete that save time to time .com, .org or .net. Not all web browsers support this auto complete feature. This works on Firefox, Flock, and Netscape.
For example, when it is demanded to open url http://www.apple.com/, simply type down apple and then hit Command-Return, this action will automatically perform update for the url while opening. The same rule apply on .org or .net.
Categories:
Internet,
Tips and Tricks
Tags:
Shortcut
Hide Window, Hide Other Windows, the Real Technique
When touching this word 'Hide', one will think of the F11 key. It's not wrong, but it's not correct. F11 indeed hide all of the applications or files opened at the sight being hidden, but they're not really hidden, they're just being driven away to the side of the desktop, and they will definitely come back to view whenever clicking action performed on one of them.
Therefore, if the desire is to hide those eyes distractions, it's recommended to use real hide instead of that fake one above. There are two ways to hide. As usual, the slow one and the fast one.
The fast way is using keyboard shortcut.
- Command-H will hide the active window
- Command-Option-H will hide all the other windows that is inactive
It's fast, isn't it? However, knowing slow one won't be disadvantageous. Try reading this article Icon - Smart on Dock that tells about some of the tricks that can be done around the Dock, including hiding trick.
Categories:
Tips and Tricks,
Utilities
Tags:
Shortcut
Change Active Window in an Instant
Increasing productivity is a must for most of Mac users. In most of the case, using mouse is compulsory to be avoided for doing a pile of tasks. That's why, full participation of keyboard needed for each of the case encountered.
Some of those useful keyboard shortcuts provided by Mac are Command-Tab and Command-[~]. It's worth spending time mastering these two shortcuts.
Usually Command-Tab is used to change from one to other applications while Command-[~] is set to change from one pane to other pane of one application. Certainly, these two will be the best match ever built.
The cursor not only can move right but also, of course, can move to the left side. Command-Shift-Tab will perfectly perform this action.
Categories:
Tips and Tricks,
Utilities
Tags:
Shortcut