For me, it was finding that I can use "Stacks" in Finder to clear desktop. For years, I was irritated with screenshots lying all over my desktop screen but didn't have the energy to sort them manually. When I found out Stacks, I was like ...
Smart Folders (Finder -> File -> New Smart Folder). It's not exactly hidden but I never paid too much attention to it. It's essentially a way to create a folder whose content is dynamically updated based on your search conditions.
For example, you can create a smart folder that contains all PDF files matching a certain name pattern within a given directory (or the whole disk) [0]. You can get really advanced, there's a ton of different parameters you can use [1], and you can even create more complicated conditions by holding Option and clicking the plus sign (now changed to just three dots). And of course you can drag these folders into the sidebar's Favourites section.
Your default web browser with your default search engine will now open and perform your query.
I can't stress this enough how much I use this workflow when writing code.
Another thing for the OPs issue with the screenshots, (there's a few steps via terminal so maybe try the above shortcut to search for an article on how to do it) you can have all your screenshots redirect to a folder.
For example all of my screenshots end up in $HOME/screenshots
Also, another cool and sometimes useful shortcut, holding option while clicking is a big thing in osx. Try click the wifi icon in the top right corner whilst holding the option key. It will give you a bunch more details :)
I’ve been using windows more recently since my personal Mac bit the dust and I’m trying to decide if there’s really that much reason to own a personal Mac.
So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in windowsland where the quality of font rendering is not just a total and utter failure. So this is my new top Mac feature.
Some people, myself included, prefer how Windows render fonts. Others prefer MacOS.
From what I recall the last time this came up on HN, MacOS tries to render true to the font as if in a professional work flow that ends with a physical product. Windows aims for on screen legibility as it's primary goal.
Also remember that most Windows machines have a much lower DPI screen that what comes with or is hooked up to a Mac, so what is being optimized for there is also different.
Honestly hooked up to my large 1440p screen, MacOS's font rendering isn't /that/ nice, it becomes a wash vs Windows, and on a 1080p laptop I'll take Windows don't rendering.
I remember watching a speech from Steve Jobs where he specifically said he learned about calligraphy or typefacing (I don’t remember the specific terms) to implement proper font rendering on macs. This was also before OSX came out.
It was interesting because I realized how subtly difficult font rendering is. Unless you’re using a monospaced font all of the characters have different widths, you have to figure out how to split text into lines, or how much to space text if the alignment is set to justify. In some of the fancier fonts on macOS, the characters actually change slightly if there are other characters nearby.
My wife spent two years with a Surface Pro running Windows 10, and when it recently croaked we got her a new MacBook Pro. The degree of relief she had is remarkable.
It’s the little stuff like this that is just so frustrating that we can’t do this better on all platform. macOS has similar sets of flaws, it just does it better than the others. I just wish we could have a few years without new above ground features and more cleaning up quality and consistency of UI/UX features. I’d take more of that on any platform.
- Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 will let you take a screenshot of a region of your screen and copy it to the clipboard. It can then be pasted directly into most applications, from email clients to chat clients. No random screenshots sitting around. If you want to capture a whole window, press Space after the initial shortcut, then click the window.
- While a menu is open, hold Option; if you're lucky, you'll get some additional options. This works after right-clicking an item in Finder, for example, or after right-clicking an icon in the Dock.
- Magnet for window management. This is a third-party application, but you'll wonder how you lived without it. If you've used Spectacle, Magnet is similar, but I find Magnet to be a bit more graceful.
- Sidecar and AirPlay. Want a second screen? Got an iPad or Apple TV? You can effortless treat it as a second screen with very low latency. It "just works."
- Cmd + Space to open Spotlight. Most power users are already familiar with this; if you're not, try it.
- Cmd + Shift + G in Finder to go to a folder by path. You can also use it to copy the path to the current folder.
- Return/Enter to rename the currently-selected file in Finder. If you're coming from Windows/Linux and are accustomed to pressing F2, you might not know about this one.
- Similarly, to open the currently selected item in Finder, press Cmd + O. To navigate up a directory, press Cmd + Up.
- Ever installed a new drive in your Mac? You don't need to manually download macOS installation media beforehand; with the right key combination at boot, you can install it via the internet. There are a few different related combinations with differing functionality; it's worth looking them up and choosing the right one for your situation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255
After you press Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 and start dragging a region, if you hold the space bar, you can move this region around the screen so you're not trapped with where you originally started dragging.
Cmd-Shift-5 for some more nice screenshot options, including disabling that floating window that appears before your screenshot gets saved to the Desktop
If you're using a Macbook with a Touch bar, you can press Cmd + Shift + 4 to enter a screenshot selection mode, and then use Touch bar to adjust screenshot mode (full screen, window or selection) and destination (Desktop, Clipboard, Preview, Documents etc) on the fly.
After pressing Cmd + Shift + 4, press Space and then click on a window or alert to screenshot it entirely, instead of having to drag out a rectangular region. It works at the level of the compositor so the screenshot includes its chrome and translucent drop shadow, and nothing behind or overlapping the window,
ctrl + cmd + shift + 4 was what first came to mind. For the longest time I did cmd + shift + 3 and did the rest manually.
cmd + ctrl + o to open another tab in Finder in the same folder that's current open. In my opinion this should be the default for cmd + t, which opens a new tab but in your home folder.
For the app icons in the top right, clicking while Option is pressed also shows different menus. For example, the wifi icon now has options for diagnostics or the battery icon has a battery quality indicator.
Marking a file as "Stationary Pad" will create and open a copy every time you open the original. Good for templates or any other file you don't want to accidentally save changes to.
This has been around for a long time but most people don’t know about it:
Dragging and dropping files from the finder into an file selector window (ie. Open File in most programs) will navigate to that file and select it. As others mentioned this works in terminal as well to give you a path, but actually this generally works in any text box (unless it specifically handles paths being drag ‘n dropped). This also works with multiple files / multi file selection, and in the case of inserting the path as text, they are space delimited and auto quoted (convenient for shell use).
Edit: This icon can include the one at the top of a finder window (the window title). That’s actually interactable and can be dragged and dropped for the directory itself.
Mouse keys -- as an anti-feature. (press option 5 times)
My daughter enabled it while I wasn't at the computer and then thought my keyboard had died. Even took it in to get repaired, and got a new keyboard.
There is no permanent indicator that it's enabled, and it persists after reboots (once logged in)... when I figured out my brand new keyboard still had several broken keys I started looking for S/W level issues. Hard facepalm. It didn't help diagnosis that I did have some physically affected keys too.
Three-finger drag is the one thing I just can't live without.[0]
Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete)
Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search
Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick toggles
Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of various European languages are usually made by using Option+[key] for the accent, and Option+[key]+letter for the proper letter. The [key] maps are e -> ´, `` -> `` (I'm messing up the rendering of the quotes here despite my best efforts), i -> ˆ, u -> ¨ and some keys Option+[key] directly give a character when it's unique, such as Option+a=å and Option+o=ø, and Option+1=¡ (because it's the key for ! otherwise, which makes sense - and can help with Spanish)
For the longer examples, Option+e+e = é, Option+e+a = á, Option+`+a = à, Option+u+u = ü, Option+i+u = û, Option+n+n = ñ, etc.
Holding Option in menus also shows extra options and their shortcuts (although this is less and less the case outside of the Apple apps themselves). An example using Finder -> Edit and pressing/releasing the Option key[1]
Oh and one more: the app "Stickies", which allows you to have "post-it notes" with color coding and collapsing the note by double-clicking on the title, saving to file, etc. I use it to take quick notes or set casual reminders.
Last but not least, not an Apple app but a very helpful tool I've used to make the gif in this post: Kap is incredibly convenient to records bits of the screen and save to various formats, and it's been improving a lot since its early releases[2] (I have no stake in this, I'm just thankful for such a cool piece of free software)
Why do you do clean installs? I've been moving the same MacOS image since 2006. Four machines, without any issues using whatever MacOS provides at the time.
Do you have a good way of discovering these keys / syncing them with the UI? I like to do the same thing but sometimes change a setting in the UI and don’t know what to update in my script without diffing the entire prefs directory before and after the change.
are you mathiasbynens? If so, thank you. I've been using that script as a reference for my own clean install script. Not sure where else I could have found the information, seems like Apple themselves are against documenting it and have in fact deprecated some of the settings in later macOS versions.
my favourite feature is how the title bar icon in any app that’s editing a file (textmate/ word etc) is a pointer to the actual file unlike windows.
- you can drag that file anywhere to move it.
- CMD click it to see a breadcrumb menu showing where it is and navigate to the folder
on a similar vein, dragging a file into an open file modal box makes it browse to the containing folder. In windows, dragging a file would move the file into that folder.
I combine the above two quite a bit. Editing a file in app A, need to upload it somewhere via browser. Drag file from title bar into open dialog box, done.
> my favourite feature is how the title bar icon in any app that’s editing a file (textmate/ word etc) is a pointer to the actual file unlike windows.
This behaviour seems to come 'for free', so, when it breaks, I can only assume that it's intentionally broken. One of the many ways that Adobe Acrobat violates the design language on macOS is by making this somehow not work. (They also break print to PDF–I guess because otherwise you wouldn't pay for the PDF creation capabilities—and do their absolute best to make sure you don't access the native print settings, which is fun because Adobe's own print settings don't play well with the printer accounting software at $WORK).
Demos of all the drag and drop behavior can be seen in the Aqua keynote. Lots of people don’t know how powerful it is on macOS even though it was THE big feature at launch.
>- CMD click it to see a breadcrumb menu showing where it is and navigate to the folder
Similarly you can right click the window title (click with two fingers on the touchpad) for this functionality. It's very useful to navigating up in the folder hierarchy in Finder without adding any new icons to the toolbar.
> my favourite feature is how the title bar icon in any app that’s editing a file (textmate/ word etc) is a pointer to the actual file unlike windows. you can drag that file anywhere to move it.
I knew about this feature but it took me about a year or two of using macOS every day and the feature only working about 50% of the time before I understood how to get it to work reliably.
For those, like me, who were having problems: You have to click and hold the mouse button over the window, then hold the mouse there for a short period of time (e.g. half a second), then drag. If you drag too quickly it'll move the window instead.
Cmd-R (R for "reveal") in the open/save file dialog opens the present directory in Finder. This is useful as I commonly want to do some additional janitory tasks in the directory.
While this isn't a generic feature, I want to say that everyone should try embracing the non-keyboard nature of macOS (as it always has been done), not just complaining that some of the elements are not reachable in the keyboard.[0] Try using the mouse, trackpad (which is top-quality), and the Touch Bar (which I guess will be the most controversial?).
Especially drag-n-drop. I'm not sure if it's already mentioned, but the proxy icon (the icon in the title bar) is super-useful in situations when you need to find (e.g. upload/attach the file in Safari, opening the file with another app) the file somewhere else. Just drag the proxy icon and drop it to the destination, and it usually will do what you want.
Also the Touch Bar. Everybody complains about it while not even trying to take advantage of it...[1] Customize your Touch Bar so that the buttons are in a consistent way, e.g. I always put the new tab button (if it exists) in the far right, where I can reach without looking, and I put the most useful actions (like getting information, trashing files in Finder, tab switching in Safari, text suggestion, etc...) in the middle, and put the less-useful but somewhat frequent actions (like toggling the sidebar, emojis, etc..) in the left. If you consciously try using them for a week or two, you realize you're much productive using the Touch Bar than using obscure shortcuts or moving the mouse.
[0]: BTW, good news for people who were complaining - macOS Big Sur greatly increases the amount of controls reachable with the keyboard, although I dislike the fact that I have to bang more tabs to reach some button.
[1]: There's definitely Apple's fault here too, if you're using a Touch Bar equipped Mac, 'brew cask install haptickey' so that you get haptic feedback on your Touch Bar touches.
Batch renaming files in Finder.[1] It's quite useful and one of the few GUI-based looping operations that takes me less time than fat-fingering the shell incantation.
I recently discovered some nice helpers to resize windows:
- Hold down the option key while resizing a windows (with the mouse) to also resize the opposite side. This also works when resizing the window on a corner to resize all edges at once.
- Double click a window border to enlarge this side of the window up to the edge of the scereen. Hold down the option key to enlarge also the opposite site.
- Double-click the title bar of a window to maximize it
You can assign a folder full of images to the background of Terminal.app, and it will choose background images at random, so a folder full of dark solid colors gives you random dark backgrounds, enabling you to tell your terminal windows apart easily.
Wait until you find out you can change which directory screenshots save to. I have a dedicated "screenshots" directory in my home directory. And then a stack in the Dock for it similar to the one for the Downloads folder.
Three-finger dragging on laptops with touchpads: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609 It says it's for dragging windows, but it works for all dragging, including files in Finder etc. Couldn't do without it now.
Increase Contrast, which I prefer not just for aesthetic reasons (it gives a slightly old-school feel to the interface), but because it delineates areas of windows / apps more clearly: Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Increase Contrast. This will automatically turn on Reduce Transparency, but I used that setting anyway, to reduce distracting detail.
I have long used Shift-Command-4 to take screenshots, but I only recently discovered Shift-Command-5, which provides finer control (and it's much easier to use when I'm working at my treadmill desk).
Also, Command-K to clear out a terminal window (also often works in similar places, such as the MAMP error log viewer).
The various screenshot features are good, and also one of the best uses of the touchbar I've seen. Use any of the variations on taking a screenshot, and you will get a menu to take a screenshot of an area, window, full desktop, etc.
[+] [-] frankjr|5 years ago|reply
For example, you can create a smart folder that contains all PDF files matching a certain name pattern within a given directory (or the whole disk) [0]. You can get really advanced, there's a ton of different parameters you can use [1], and you can even create more complicated conditions by holding Option and clicking the plus sign (now changed to just three dots). And of course you can drag these folders into the sidebar's Favourites section.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/lD2zaSd.png
[1] https://i.imgur.com/SKsQRnQ.png
[+] [-] aunty_helen|5 years ago|reply
Type whatever you want.
Cmd-b
Your default web browser with your default search engine will now open and perform your query. I can't stress this enough how much I use this workflow when writing code.
Another thing for the OPs issue with the screenshots, (there's a few steps via terminal so maybe try the above shortcut to search for an article on how to do it) you can have all your screenshots redirect to a folder.
For example all of my screenshots end up in $HOME/screenshots
Also, another cool and sometimes useful shortcut, holding option while clicking is a big thing in osx. Try click the wifi icon in the top right corner whilst holding the option key. It will give you a bunch more details :)
[+] [-] awinder|5 years ago|reply
So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in windowsland where the quality of font rendering is not just a total and utter failure. So this is my new top Mac feature.
[+] [-] com2kid|5 years ago|reply
Some people, myself included, prefer how Windows render fonts. Others prefer MacOS.
From what I recall the last time this came up on HN, MacOS tries to render true to the font as if in a professional work flow that ends with a physical product. Windows aims for on screen legibility as it's primary goal.
Also remember that most Windows machines have a much lower DPI screen that what comes with or is hooked up to a Mac, so what is being optimized for there is also different.
Honestly hooked up to my large 1440p screen, MacOS's font rendering isn't /that/ nice, it becomes a wash vs Windows, and on a 1080p laptop I'll take Windows don't rendering.
[+] [-] Jakobeha|5 years ago|reply
It was interesting because I realized how subtly difficult font rendering is. Unless you’re using a monospaced font all of the characters have different widths, you have to figure out how to split text into lines, or how much to space text if the alignment is set to justify. In some of the fancier fonts on macOS, the characters actually change slightly if there are other characters nearby.
[+] [-] madhadron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IggleSniggle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
They turned off subpixel anti-aliasing and it looks worse on older displays.
(I can't help but think of the "slowing down older iphones" thing)
search for "fix blurry fonts mojave"
[+] [-] anotheryou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zenexer|5 years ago|reply
- While a menu is open, hold Option; if you're lucky, you'll get some additional options. This works after right-clicking an item in Finder, for example, or after right-clicking an icon in the Dock.
- Magnet for window management. This is a third-party application, but you'll wonder how you lived without it. If you've used Spectacle, Magnet is similar, but I find Magnet to be a bit more graceful.
- Sidecar and AirPlay. Want a second screen? Got an iPad or Apple TV? You can effortless treat it as a second screen with very low latency. It "just works."
- Cmd + Space to open Spotlight. Most power users are already familiar with this; if you're not, try it.
- Cmd + Shift + G in Finder to go to a folder by path. You can also use it to copy the path to the current folder.
- Return/Enter to rename the currently-selected file in Finder. If you're coming from Windows/Linux and are accustomed to pressing F2, you might not know about this one.
- Similarly, to open the currently selected item in Finder, press Cmd + O. To navigate up a directory, press Cmd + Up.
- Ever installed a new drive in your Mac? You don't need to manually download macOS installation media beforehand; with the right key combination at boot, you can install it via the internet. There are a few different related combinations with differing functionality; it's worth looking them up and choosing the right one for your situation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255
[+] [-] noman-land|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TaqPolymerase|5 years ago|reply
Cmd-Down also opens in Finder, just like Cmd-O
[+] [-] shantara|5 years ago|reply
If you're using a Macbook with a Touch bar, you can press Cmd + Shift + 4 to enter a screenshot selection mode, and then use Touch bar to adjust screenshot mode (full screen, window or selection) and destination (Desktop, Clipboard, Preview, Documents etc) on the fly.
[+] [-] h9n|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] decasteve|5 years ago|reply
cmd + ctrl + o to open another tab in Finder in the same folder that's current open. In my opinion this should be the default for cmd + t, which opens a new tab but in your home folder.
[+] [-] zeisss|5 years ago|reply
For the app icons in the top right, clicking while Option is pressed also shows different menus. For example, the wifi icon now has options for diagnostics or the battery icon has a battery quality indicator.
[+] [-] pindab0ter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vincenttermini|5 years ago|reply
- Get Info on file. - Check Stationary Pad box.
[+] [-] jlturner|5 years ago|reply
Dragging and dropping files from the finder into an file selector window (ie. Open File in most programs) will navigate to that file and select it. As others mentioned this works in terminal as well to give you a path, but actually this generally works in any text box (unless it specifically handles paths being drag ‘n dropped). This also works with multiple files / multi file selection, and in the case of inserting the path as text, they are space delimited and auto quoted (convenient for shell use).
Edit: This icon can include the one at the top of a finder window (the window title). That’s actually interactable and can be dragged and dropped for the directory itself.
[+] [-] tln|5 years ago|reply
My daughter enabled it while I wasn't at the computer and then thought my keyboard had died. Even took it in to get repaired, and got a new keyboard.
There is no permanent indicator that it's enabled, and it persists after reboots (once logged in)... when I figured out my brand new keyboard still had several broken keys I started looking for S/W level issues. Hard facepalm. It didn't help diagnosis that I did have some physically affected keys too.
At least I got a new keyboard out of it...
[+] [-] cmehdy|5 years ago|reply
Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete)
Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search
Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick toggles
Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of various European languages are usually made by using Option+[key] for the accent, and Option+[key]+letter for the proper letter. The [key] maps are e -> ´, `` -> `` (I'm messing up the rendering of the quotes here despite my best efforts), i -> ˆ, u -> ¨ and some keys Option+[key] directly give a character when it's unique, such as Option+a=å and Option+o=ø, and Option+1=¡ (because it's the key for ! otherwise, which makes sense - and can help with Spanish)
For the longer examples, Option+e+e = é, Option+e+a = á, Option+`+a = à, Option+u+u = ü, Option+i+u = û, Option+n+n = ñ, etc.
Holding Option in menus also shows extra options and their shortcuts (although this is less and less the case outside of the Apple apps themselves). An example using Finder -> Edit and pressing/releasing the Option key[1]
Oh and one more: the app "Stickies", which allows you to have "post-it notes" with color coding and collapsing the note by double-clicking on the title, saving to file, etc. I use it to take quick notes or set casual reminders.
Last but not least, not an Apple app but a very helpful tool I've used to make the gif in this post: Kap is incredibly convenient to records bits of the screen and save to various formats, and it's been improving a lot since its early releases[2] (I have no stake in this, I'm just thankful for such a cool piece of free software)
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609
[1] https://i.imgur.com/feRhErF.gif
[2] https://getkap.co/
[+] [-] hamiltont|5 years ago|reply
Discovered after ~10 years
[+] [-] throwaway333444|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ta1234567890|5 years ago|reply
Also, what do you use for backups?
Thank you.
[+] [-] juancn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TaqPolymerase|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heyvirgil|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SPBS|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muli_d|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrumm|5 years ago|reply
- you can drag that file anywhere to move it.
- CMD click it to see a breadcrumb menu showing where it is and navigate to the folder
on a similar vein, dragging a file into an open file modal box makes it browse to the containing folder. In windows, dragging a file would move the file into that folder.
I combine the above two quite a bit. Editing a file in app A, need to upload it somewhere via browser. Drag file from title bar into open dialog box, done.
[+] [-] JadeNB|5 years ago|reply
This behaviour seems to come 'for free', so, when it breaks, I can only assume that it's intentionally broken. One of the many ways that Adobe Acrobat violates the design language on macOS is by making this somehow not work. (They also break print to PDF–I guess because otherwise you wouldn't pay for the PDF creation capabilities—and do their absolute best to make sure you don't access the native print settings, which is fun because Adobe's own print settings don't play well with the printer accounting software at $WORK).
[+] [-] minxomat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shantara|5 years ago|reply
Similarly you can right click the window title (click with two fingers on the touchpad) for this functionality. It's very useful to navigating up in the folder hierarchy in Finder without adding any new icons to the toolbar.
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertoandred|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmsmith|5 years ago|reply
I knew about this feature but it took me about a year or two of using macOS every day and the feature only working about 50% of the time before I understood how to get it to work reliably.
For those, like me, who were having problems: You have to click and hold the mouse button over the window, then hold the mouse there for a short period of time (e.g. half a second), then drag. If you drag too quickly it'll move the window instead.
[+] [-] projektfu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GolDDranks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcr910303|5 years ago|reply
Especially drag-n-drop. I'm not sure if it's already mentioned, but the proxy icon (the icon in the title bar) is super-useful in situations when you need to find (e.g. upload/attach the file in Safari, opening the file with another app) the file somewhere else. Just drag the proxy icon and drop it to the destination, and it usually will do what you want.
Also the Touch Bar. Everybody complains about it while not even trying to take advantage of it...[1] Customize your Touch Bar so that the buttons are in a consistent way, e.g. I always put the new tab button (if it exists) in the far right, where I can reach without looking, and I put the most useful actions (like getting information, trashing files in Finder, tab switching in Safari, text suggestion, etc...) in the middle, and put the less-useful but somewhat frequent actions (like toggling the sidebar, emojis, etc..) in the left. If you consciously try using them for a week or two, you realize you're much productive using the Touch Bar than using obscure shortcuts or moving the mouse.
[0]: BTW, good news for people who were complaining - macOS Big Sur greatly increases the amount of controls reachable with the keyboard, although I dislike the fact that I have to bang more tabs to reach some button.
[1]: There's definitely Apple's fault here too, if you're using a Touch Bar equipped Mac, 'brew cask install haptickey' so that you get haptic feedback on your Touch Bar touches.
[+] [-] baryphonic|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://osxdaily.com/2015/05/28/batch-rename-files-mac-os-x-...
[+] [-] ractive|5 years ago|reply
- Hold down the option key while resizing a windows (with the mouse) to also resize the opposite side. This also works when resizing the window on a corner to resize all edges at once.
- Double click a window border to enlarge this side of the window up to the edge of the scereen. Hold down the option key to enlarge also the opposite site.
- Double-click the title bar of a window to maximize it
[+] [-] tptacek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicoburns|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frereubu|5 years ago|reply
Increase Contrast, which I prefer not just for aesthetic reasons (it gives a slightly old-school feel to the interface), but because it delineates areas of windows / apps more clearly: Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Increase Contrast. This will automatically turn on Reduce Transparency, but I used that setting anyway, to reduce distracting detail.
[+] [-] NateEag|5 years ago|reply
You can then navigate by arrow keys or typing. Space bar activates the highlighted menu/submenu.
It makes life so much better.
Control-F2 itself was slightly broken in 10.14 (IIRC), so I hacked up a dumb workaround in my Hammerspoon config:
https://github.com/NateEag/dotfiles/blob/99f6b641151f85f6f78...
[+] [-] DamnInteresting|5 years ago|reply
Also, Command-K to clear out a terminal window (also often works in similar places, such as the MAMP error log viewer).
[+] [-] atombender|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnwalkr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmehdy|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://i.imgur.com/jCHL2Pb.jpg