Neat Mac OS X tricks

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2006-10-19 11:38
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In this topic I'll post neat tricks I learn while doing everyday work on my Mac. Of course, you're welcome to add what ever tricks you have in store. ⌘C is not a trick, okay, but beyond that everything is fine.

So here you go:

In Finder you can press ⌘i to show the Get Info window of the selected item. Not a trick yet. If you have selected a few items, Finder will open one info window per item. Lame when you would like to get the combined size of all the selected items. And incidentally I do that a lot. Maybe it's a sign to buy a new hard disk. Now the trick: Press ⌘⌃i and you get one combined info window for the whole selection.

The general stuff forum is now open. ›
Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2006-10-19 12:07.

I am not a big TextEdit user, but I used it to write the Readme file for BetterZip which is included on the disk image. When you open this file (up to version 1.3) you will be greeted with a blinking cursor next to the beautiful icon. Ugly. Today Peter Hosey wrote in to tell me a few things about TextEdit:

1. The copyright symbol is ⌥G (at least on QWERTY and Dvorak): ©
2. It's possible to make a real hyperlink in TextEdit: Format→Text→Link…. The selected text will be the link name, and you enter the URL in a sheet. This relieves the need to put a bare URL in your ReadMe.
3. ReadMes should be non-editable: Format→Prevent Editing. That insertion point is distracting when the user is reading your ReadMe.

Thanks, Peter, the next version will have a better Readme file.

Submitted by Robert on Sat, 2006-10-21 10:12.

This is one of my all-time favorites. In nearly all applications that deal with text (web browsers, text editors, information managers, Pages, Mail, ...) you can select a portion of text and press ⌘E. This puts the selected text onto the system-wide find pasteboard which does not interfere with the normal pasteboard you use for cut/copy/paste. Now you can use ⌘G to search the next occurrence of your search phrase starting from the cursor location. Search backwards by pressing ⇧⌘G. Open the search panel with ⌘F and the search field is already pre-filled with the phrase.

By the way: I think they didn't choose ⌘G incidentally. On the keyboard G is directly above the key V. This way you can search and replace repeatedly by sliding your index finger up and down a little.

One more thing: The words system-wide above are important: You can put something onto the find pasteboard (⌘E) in your web browser, then switch to your text editor and search that phrase there (⌘G).

I just wonder why Spotlight doesn't use the global find pasteboard. I wonder every time I use it.

Submitted by Robert on Tue, 2006-11-14 14:49.

I just stumbled over this one by accident. Naturally, I have 42 different versions of BetterZip in various places on my hard drive (including the Trash). When I open an archive by double-clicking it in Finder, I can not always be sure which of them actually starts. So, I often right-click BetterZip's dock icon and select Show in Finder from the contextual menu to see which it is. I don't know why, but today I accidentally Command-clicked the dock icon which also revealed the app in Finder. Neat!

Submitted by Paranoid Android (not verified) on Sat, 2006-12-02 16:15.

I only found this one out a couple of months ago, and I've had my Mac for over 4 years..

When using the Finder, command-click the title of the window to reveal the path of the current folder, and to go up any number of folders.

The same trick works in Safari, OmniWeb, and no doubt numerous other apps. In Safari and OmniWeb it shows the history for the current tab.

Submitted by Robert on Sat, 2006-12-02 16:49.

This icon is called the proxy icon. You can also use it to move or copy the file. Just hold the mouse button still a moment until the icon gets dimmed. Then drag and drop it as if you started the dragging from a Finder window. One typical operation I do this way is dragging the file I am currently editing from TextMate into Transmit to upload the file to my web site.

Here is an interesting read on some problems with proxy icons:

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2006-12-07 11:30.

Hold down the Option key while clicking the red, yellow, or green button in the top left corner of any window. This will apply the action on all windows of this application. E.g., Option-click the yellow button of a BetterZip window and all BetterZip windows will be minimized to the dock.

Option-clicking a minimized window icon in the dock will restore all windows of this application minimized to the dock. The restoring trick does not work with Finder.

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2007-11-22 10:54.

Find a gazillion keyboard shortcuts on usingmac.com.