Please share your hidden macOS features or tips and tricks

Question

Do you know any hidden or little-known nice feature of macOS (née Mac OS X)? It doesn't matter what it is—maybe just a short terminal command or a keyboard shortcut. Share your experiences on hidden Mac OS X features with us..

Please post one tip per answer. Please also check to see if your answer has already been posted - duplicate answers will be deleted. To search answers for this question use inquestion:400 (or inquestion:this, directly from the question page) in addition to your search terms in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Also provide details on how to achieve that feature, and if possible, include a relevant image too!

Answer 1

In any Finder window or Open/Save dialog, you can hit ⌘⇧G (just '/' also works in Open/Save) to get a location bar from which you can directly type in the directory to go to. It even supports ~ for home and tab completion.

The Open/Save dialog has several other useful shortcuts:

• ⌘ R - Reveals the selected item in a new Finder window.
• ⌘ I - Info window shows for the selected item.
• ⌘ ⇧ > - Shows/Hides hidden files in the dialog
• ⌘ F - cursor jumps to the Find text field
• / or ~ - Opens a Go To Folder dialogue.
• ⌘ D or ⌘ ⇧ D - selects the ~/Desktop folder as a destination
• ⌘ ⌥ L - selects ~/Downloads folder as a destination
• ⌘ ⇧ O - selects ~/Documents folder as a destination
• ⌘ ⌥ S - Shows/Hides sidebar
• ⌘ . or esc - Cancels and closes the dialog window

Answer 2

In the terminal, you can pipe the output of any command to pbcopy to copy it to the system clipboard. You can also paste from the system clipboard using pbpaste, and pipe that to another command or write the value directly to a file:

Copy a string: echo "ohai im in ur clipboardz" | pbcopy

Copy the HTML of StackOverflow.com: curl "http://stackoverflow.com/" | pbcopy

Open a new buffer in VIM, initialized to the content of the clipboard: pbpaste | vim -

Save the contents of the clipboard directly to a file: pbpaste > newfile.txt

Answer 3

I always find the ⌘+⇧+4, space (you must press space at the end otherwise it doesn't work) command is really useful, and one that a lot of people don't know you can do. Upon pressing space, you get a large camera icon for your cursor, and it allows you to take a screenshot just of the highlighted window. The nice thing is that OS X preserves the window drop shadow, with full alpha transparency. So when you paste the images into other documents, they look fab.

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More screenshot magic from 3rdparty.

Screenshot Secrets via: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/01/01/mac-os-x-screenshot-secrets.html:

• ⌘+⇧+3 Capture entire screen and save as a file

• ⌘+ctrl+⇧+3 Capture entire screen and copy to the clipboard

• ⌘+⇧+4 Capture dragged area and save as a file

• ⌘+ctrl+⇧+4 Capture dragged area and copy to the clipboard

• ⌘+⇧+4 then space Capture a window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar and save as a file

• ⌘+ctrl+⇧+4 then space Capture a window, menu, desktop icon, or the menu bar and copy to the clipboard

• Another useful trick is to hold space while drawing a capture area to reposition it.

• Another trick is to hold option while drawing a capture area, to resize the area in all directions, instead of just the one corner you're dragging.

• For fine-tuning on a certain axis, you can hold shift and the axis you next move in is the one you'll control.

• Hit esc while capturing an area or window to exit capture mode.

Note: I added this because I find it to be useful. I don't mean any offense to anyone's answer in doing so.

Answer 4

You can increase or decrease your volume, brightness, or keyboard backlighting brightness by quarter increments by using the following combination:

⌥ + ⇧ + Volume Up/Down

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Note that this feature was disabled in Mac OS X Lion from 10.7 through 10.7.3. This feature was restored in 10.7.4. For workarounds on how to accomplish this on earlier Lion versions, see this question.

Answer 5

While ⌘+Tab-ing between applications, without releasing ⌘, you can hit Q to quit or H to hide the selected application. Works great with the mouse to get rid of a whole bunch of applications quickly.

The bevel won't go away and you can repeat this for as many applications as you like as long as you're holding ⌘.

If you have multiple windows of an app, use key 1, ↑, or ↓ to reveal the windows while that app is highlighted in the application switching strip. i.e.: while ⌘+Tab-ing, when you highlight the app with multiple windows, keep ⌘ held down and press one of those keys. Then use mouse to go that window.

Answer 6

Holding ⌥ (Option)while clicking menu bar icons will give you additional menu items or alternate menus. The alternate volume control menu will let you choose input and output audio devices.

Bonus: On older versions of OS X, this gave you the alert volume instead of devices. You can still get the alert volume using ⇧ clicking.

For the airport menu, you'll get WiFi connection information.

The Bluetooth menu will include debugging information and tools.

Time Machine will show "Verify Backups" and "Browse Other Time Machine Disks". Unlike the other menus, the Time Machine menu will show the alternates if you hold Option after opening the menu, and will hide them if you release it.

Answer 7

Proxy icons

In a document-based application (like Finder, TextEdit, Preview, Pages…), after a document has been saved, a proxy icon for the document appears in the title bar. It represent the file itself, and can be likewise manipulated:

• click it for a few seconds and drag to another application to open it, or to the desktop/Finder if you want to copy/move it, etc…
• ⌘-click (or control-click, or right-click) it to view the path menu, useful to open the folder or any subfolders of the file in the Finder.

• ⌘-click on the titlebar in Safari can help you easily move up the directory structure of a web site, too!

  

• Since Mountain Lion you can edit the document titles:

  

Answer 8

I love the fact that OS X will scroll the window that the mouse is hovering over, even if another application has focus. That way I can scroll an example that I am coding in TextMate without having to lose keyboard control on TM

Answer 9

Most applications on OS X respect emacs' style shortcuts for maneuvering about in text fields.

• ctrl+A: beginning of line.

• ctrl+E: end of line.

• ctrl+U: delete from cursor to beginning of line.

• ctrl+K: delete from cursor to end of line.

• ctrl+W: erase word to the left.

• ctrl+T: transpose characters around cursor.

There are others that are slipping my mind currently I'm sure. I miss this so much on Linux.

Answer 10

When I first switched to Mac a couple of years back, I was using it full time for nearly six months before someone showed me ⌘+space to bring up the Spotlight Search. Single best shortcut I've learned.

The Spotlight search field and Siri (especially with text input) can also handle simple mathematical expressions. No need for Calculator.app for a quick bit of division!

Answer 11

Want tab to go to every field on a form not just input fields?

I got sick of the state/country drop down fields of web forms being skipped when tabbing.

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard and set Full Keyboard Access to All Controls.

In system dialogs, if you tab-highlight a button, hit space to "click" it (hitting enter will still choose whatever the default action is, regardless of what button your tab has focused on).

Answer 12

I needed this today, when I had to shut down several Macs.

ctrl + ⏏ Shows the shut down dialog. Type R to restart, S to sleep

ctrl + ⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏ Shuts the computer down

⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏ sends computer to sleep

⇧ + ctrl + ⏏ send display only to sleep (great for locking your computer instantly)

ctrl + ⌘ + ⏏ restarts the Mac

⌥ + ⌘ + esc lets you kill not responding programs (including the Finder)

and one of my favorites

⌘ + , gets you to preferences of almost every program

Answer 13

While typing, just press F5 to get suggestions for what you're typing (almost equivalent to spell-check suggestions). Example:

Answer 14

You can click on Dock app icons with modifier keys for special functions relating to that app:

• With the ⌘ key pressed, the clicked application will be shown in a Finder window (via @Mactip).
• With the ⌥ key pressed, the clicked application will be hidden if it is visible.

Answer 15

The speech synthesizer, which is available from the command line, with the command say, knows how to correctly pronounce the operating system name:

say Mac OS X

It won't say "MacOSex", but "Mac OhEs Ten". That's attention to detail. It works even if you specify macosx as the argument.

Answer 16

In Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal), open can be pretty handy. It can:

• launch programs by exact path to the executable
• launch any program in the PATH directories by executable name

In Terminal, type open -a Application to launch an application that lives in the /Applications folder, or open <exact path to applcation> to launch an application that is anywhere on your computer.

• open files in default applications

Just us open <file>. open song.mp3 will open song.mp3 in the default audio player (in my case iTunes)

• open files with other applications

Open a file with Mail.app (i.e. mail the file) open -a Mail homework.txt

• open a Finder window into a local directory
• open a Finder window into a network share

open /Path/to/dir/ will launch the folder in Finder, whereas open . will open the current folder in Finder.

• open any URL with its default handler (e.g. a browser)

open http://google.com will launch the default browser and open the url. It also works for FTP (but i have not tested anything else)

For more, just run man open in Terminal or see this page.

From Super User

Answer 17

It took me a while before I figured out that hitting the space bar while in Finder launches Quick Look on whatever is selected. VERY handy.

Also note that holding ⌥ while doing this throws you straight into the full-screen view.

Answer 18

Running

pmset noidle

or

caffeinate

in Terminal will prevent your Mac from sleeping. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Answer 19

In most Mac apps (TextEdit, for example), you can ⌥-drag* to select a rectangular area of non-contiguous text.

You can also hold ⌘ while dragging to select multiple disjoint areas in a single selection.

*Hold ⌥ while dragging your mouse over an area

Answer 20

In any Open/Save dialog window, hitting ⌘+D opens the desktop folder.

Answer 21

When you drag and drop any file (or folder) from Finder onto a Terminal window, it gets converted into the full (absolute) path to that file.

I find this a small but occasionally useful trick when dealing with files in both Finder and Terminal.

Answer 22

Hold ctrl and move the scroll wheel (or use two fingers on trackpad). It will zoom in the entire screen.

This setting can be enabled or changed in the System Preferences, under
Accessibility > Zoom > Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom

Answer 23

Show the full directory path in the Finder window.

In the Terminal, run this:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

Then, run this.

killall Finder

There are all sorts of hidden defaults that can be mucked around with but this is my absolute favorite because now no matter which window I am looking at, I know exactly where I am.

You should also check out TinkerTool for other hidden settings.

Answer 24

Holding ⌥ (or ⌥fn on MacBooks, and depending on your System Prefs*) while pressing one of the function-row keys will bring up the System Preference panel for that key. Here's a list:

• ⌥+Brightness: Displays
• ⌥+Exposé/Dashboard: Exposé and Spaces
• ⌥+Mute/Volume: Sound
• ⌥+Keyboard Brightness: Keyboard (for Macs with backlit keyboards)

*If you have checked the option to use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys, done in System Preferences>Keyboard, then you will need to add the fn to the afore mentioned sequences.

Answer 25

Drag and drop files and folders to "Open" dialogs/sheets: very useful to open package contents with other software.

Just locate the file with the Finder

and drag and drop it to the Open dialog

Bonus: you can do the same thing with 'Upload file' web forms. (Only with WebKit-based browser)

➔

Answer 26

On i.a. en-US keyboards ⌘+` will cycle through multiple open windows in your current application.

On some other keyboard layouts the hot key may be e.g. ⌘+<.

You can verify—and modify—your "Move focus to next window in application" shortcut under System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Keyboard & Text Input.

Answer 27

Secrets is a database with a huge amount of hidden settings for both the system and some common applications.

This domain is now offline and the developer appears to have parked the work (based on MacUpdates activity). It was originally launched for OS 10.6 as a preferences pane although the data was delivered from a Google server which is now down. However :) - you can see some of the previous secrets listed as a web archive (may take a minute to load):

https://web.archive.org/web/20150621044359/http://secrets.blacktree.com/

Sept 2016

Answer 28

I really find the inbuilt dictionary useful on Cocoa apps like Safari and Mail etc.

With your cursor over a word, press ctrl+⌘+D to get a definition.

You can also drag a word straight onto the Safari icon in the Dock to perform a Google search for the word.

Answer 29

Holding down ⇧ while using the mouse scroll wheel will scroll the window horizontally.

Answer 30

Most animations in macOS can be played in slow motion, when you hold ⇧(Shift). Works for example to slowly minimize windows if you click the minimize button while holding the ⇧(Shift) key.

Other examples are:

• toggle exposé
• toggle dashboard
• add/remove dashboard items
• all kinds of animations in Twitter for Mac

From: http://www.eeggs.com/items/29318.html

In macOS, while in the finder, open any window & click the minimizie button (yellow) at the top of the window while holding shift.

This will minimize the window in slow motion using the new "genie effect" minimize function of macOS.

The CEO of Apple has shown this egg publicly several times. However, this egg is undocumented & has no system menu equivalent to use this feature. Anyone who has NOT followed the development of macOS & watched the demos at the MacWorld trade shows would not realize this somewhat useless feature exists in macOS.