21 useful Mac Tips & Tricks Part 1

21 useful Mac Tips & Tricks Part 1

We gathered here all the tricks we could find on Mac and OS X so you can do your job more easily and quickly, but also have fun with some of them.

1. Slow Motion Effect
Do you want to impress your friends? Window effects on Mac OS X can be slow. Hold down Shift ⇧ and press the yellow button to minimize the window.

2. Disable notifications
There are times when you want to concentrate on your work, but your notifications attract attention. Disable notifications by left-clicking on the Notification Center while pressing Option .

3. Move the Dock
If the Dock's position prevents you, you can move it directly. Place the cursor on the Dock bar, which separates your application list from the bucket and the minimized windows. When the double arrow symbol appears, press Shift ⇧ and left-click on the Dock on the other side of the screen

4. Move the menu bar icons
The symbols in the menu bar may have different priority for you than the one set automatically. To move them, you will need to hold down Command ⌘ and drag the icon to the desired position.

mac tips and tricks

5. Use Spotlight for conversions
Do you want to know how many euros are worth $ 100? Do you want to convert a distance measurement from miles to miles? You can do it directly by searching the Spotlight

6. Use Spotlight as a calculator
If you want the result of a numerical act quickly, Spotlight also works as a calculator

7. Share screen from messages
You can share a screen with your contacts in iMessage. While in discussion, click on "Details" and select the icon for the two squares. You will see two options:

Invitation to share my screen
Ask a screen share

8. Turn off the Transparency effect & dark Dock and menu bar
The new look with the slides is impressive, but sometimes it does not allow us to clearly distinguish the elements on our screen. To use dark colors in Dock and in the menu bar, go to:

System preferences> General and you select it

"Using Dark Menu Bar and Dock"

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If you want to reduce the transparency effect you will need to go:

System preferences> Accessibility and select

Display> Reduce transparency

mac tips and tricks

9. Use AirDrop
Transfer your files at speed from Mac or iOS 8 device.

See the tips in our Guide :  AirDrop Guide

To be able to send files from Mac to iPhone or vice versa, you need Mac 2012 or later.

10. Bulk renaming
If you need to rename multiple files, you do not need to download any additional application.

Select the files you want to rename and right-click. You will see a window where you can choose the new file name.

11. Use the Emoji keyboard
Depending on the program you are in and writing some text, you can turn on the Emoji keyboard and add one of its icons to give "feeling" to your text. The combination you need is COMMAND + CONTROL + SPACE.

12. Send files directly to the bucket
By combining COMMAND + BACKSPACE, you can send any file immediately to the bucket without right-clicking the mouse and selecting the appropriate menu

13. Print special characters
What if you write French or German or some other language where there are special characters? Just press and hold that letter (in our example E) until the list of special characters appears and you select the one you want (as we did in Emoji).

14. Record video on video
If we want to capture the screen in video for example. to show some feature or app, open Apple QuickTime Player, and the FILE / NEW SCREEN RECORD menu. Clicking the arrow next to the record button opens a list to choose audio input if we want external sound to be recorded in our video. Then press the record button and select either a screen area or the entire screen. As soon as we finish, right click on the QuickTime Player icon in the Dock and select "Stop Recording Screen" from the menu. We save the video file and we're ready.

15. Share any part of a text with friends
Are you writing some text and want to send a piece of it? You select it with the mouse, right-click and select where to send it from the list.

16. Paste text without formatting it
Sometimes we want to paste a text from one program to another without formatting it (bold, oblique, size, etc.) so as not to spoil the formatting of our text. This is done simply by combining COMMAND + SHIFT + V (for Mavericks) and COMMAND + OPTION + SHIFT + V for Yosemite and EL CAPITAN.

17. Use the pop-up dictionary (English only)
Let the mouse pointer float over the word you are interested in and press the COMMAND + CONTROL + D combination

18. Delete text from left to right
On the new wireless keyboards and MacBook keyboards that are "condensed", the "Delete" key is missing. So how do we delete a character to the right of the cursor without going with the right arrow and using the "Backspace"? Use the Fn + BACKSPACE combination.

19. Start your Mac without the familiar sound
Some people do not want this sound that Mac does when we open it, or we do not want to make any noise. Use the POWER (button) + F10 + HOLD (pressed until it starts) as you turn it on.

20. See all open windows
Use CONTROL + UP ARROW (above arrow) to display all the open windows of the applications you have at this time to find what you are looking for.

21. Use Safari as a Twitter reader

As you navigate the Internet with Safari, you may want to see Twitter notifications at the same time. Click the "Sidebar" popup button located at the top left of the Taskbar. Then click the "Shared Links" button (third right at the top of the Sidebar). Nearly tweets will appear right away and you can click anywhere you want them to open in the browser's main window. Of course you should have added your Twitter account under "System Preferences / Internet Accounts".