Please share your hidden OS X features or tips and tricks

Question

Do you know any hidden or little-known nice feature of 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 Terminal, if you hold option, your cursor turns into a small "+". While holding option, you can use this to highlight and copy any square/rectangular area of text instead of whole lines at a time.

Answer 2

In Safari, on a page that wants you to select a file for upload, instead of clicking "browse", you can usually just drag a file directly to the "browse" button. It will set the filename without even opening up the file dialog.

Slightly recursive example below :)

Answer 3

⇧+⌥+← or ⇧+⌥+→ can be used to select the previous or next word.

Answer 4

Often a simple spotlight query isn't enough.

The shortcut ⌥+⌘+space brings up the powerful finder search window no matter what app is running.

Not only can you use the normal search types like kind:app or kind:mail but you can force spotlight to show you files that are normally hidden.

This is particularly useful to search for and inside hidden system files such as .ipsw packages, detailed logs and CoreServices utilities.

You may want to add System files to your default search menu for quicker access.

• first click the circle plus to the far right of the Save button to show the optional search filters
• then choose other under the Kind dropdown
• lastly search for System and check the include toggle.

Answer 5

_{Just came across this one...}

To enter a newline character in a text field you can use ⌥ + return. Similarly to enter a tab character use ⌥ + ⇥. This is particularly helpful in a find and replace window.

Answer 6

By pressing ⌥ + ⇧ + + you can create the  - Symbol on a german keyboard.

The tilde-key btw is created by pressing ⌥+N for all those who searched `~´

For English (American) keyboards, the shortcut is: Option ⌥ + Shift ⇧ + K

Answer 7

It’s possible to set a blazingly fast keyboard repeat rate, much faster than the maximum possible setting in System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard → Key Repeat.

The trick is to use this command in Terminal.app:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0

After that, log out and back in, or just reopen all applications.

Disclaimer: This is just one of the many goodies in my .osx file.

Answer 8

Switcher + Exposé

(10.6+)

While ⌘+⇥ing (holding ⌘, tapping ⇥), you can press ↑ or ↓ to switch to the currently selected application's window Exposé view. You can then use the keyboard arrows to highlight a window and ↩ to switch to it.

Answer 9

• Select a bunch of text and drag to the desktop and it will make a text clipping.
• Drag it back to a text window and it will dump the text there.
• Double-click and you can view the selectively copy for pasting elsewhere.
• Install the quicklook extension and you can view text and pict clippings in quicklook.

Answer 10

The 'Open Terminal Here' applescript that can be added to the finder toolbar(?), is a great way of getting a shell prompt to the folder your are viewing.

The 'original' is at the pages of its author Marc Liyanage:

http://www.entropy.ch/software/applescript/

He kindly links to a number of other versions so you can take your pick.

The other side of the coin (though not worth it's own answer) is the command

open .

to open a finder window for the current shell folder.

Answer 11

To quickly lock your computer with a screen-saver style password, regardless of whether a password or time delay is set in the Security preference pane, enable the keychain status menu item and use its Lock Screen command. To enable it, open the Keychain Access utility, choose Preferences… from the Keychain Access menu, and enable "Show Status in Menu Bar" from the General pane.

Answer 12

ive found that you can play tetris in terminal... When you are in Terminal type emacs and hit enter. After that press escape button and X button at the same time. Now just type “tetris” and hit enter.

( stolen from here http://secretpctips.com/2011/04/mac-os-secrets-easter-eggs/ )

Answer 13

I love the DigitalColor Meter application (in /Applications/Utilities) for finding the color of something on screen (especially useful for web development). cmd + shift + h to lock/hold the color you're on, ⌘+⇧+c to copy the value as RGB Hex value.

Answer 14

⌘ + ` (backtick accent) switches between multiple windows of the same app.

Answer 15

When switching focus between applications, you can hold down ⌥ and click on another application. When you change focus from one application to another, the first application hides. So, let's say you are switching from an open Finder window to an open TextEdit window while holding the ⌥ key. Finder will hide once you click on the TextEdit window. I discovered this by accident and it's pretty cool

Answer 16

 sudo purge

I use this all the time for freeing unused memory on my Mac.

Answer 17

In finder "columns" view, double click the block below the scroll bar arrows to auto fit column width

via @Mactip

Answer 18

If you want to quickly resize your Dock you can click and drag the bar that separates the apps from minified windows, the Trash etc. If your Dock is on the bottom then drag up to increase the size of the dock and down to make them smaller. Drag left/right if your Dock is on the side of the screen.

Answer 19

You can disable 3D Dock effect ( if you don't like ) when dock is at bottom.

Use tinker tool (it's free).

Now, switch to Dock tab, do as instructed in image.

Answer 20

An often-neglected feature of OS X is the ability to drag files and proxy icons into other applications or windows.

Try this in Adobe apps. Why use the File > Place… command? Just drag a file directly from the Finder directly into the document you’re working on.

Drag files onto Dock icons to open that JPG in Photoshop rather than iPhoto. Drag an image from your browser into Photoshop’s Dock icon.

Answer 21

You can access the file, edit and other application menus with the "move focus to the menu bar" setting in Keyboard Preferences. I changed it from the default to ctrl ` as the default merely adjusted brightness.

No-one at Apple seemed to be able to let me know how to do this!

Answer 22

Hibernate your MacBook Pro with

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

and then put it to sleep which will save the state of your system and then power off. Very handy when flying.

If instead you want very fast sleeps, without writing memory to disk, use

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

To restore the default behaviour, use

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

Answer 23

Click and hold Show All in System Preferences, and you'll get a list of all Preferences panes

At the bottom of this list there is a Customize... option

which enables a check mark in the lower right corner of each Preferences panes item

un-checking a check mark, will disable/remove the item(s) from the view, but not delete it.

Answer 24

3rd party apps can add unwanted items to your right click menus! To add or remove items from the right click contextual menus: Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Select the "Services" panel and uncheck the services which you don't need.

Answer 25

I use "Spacers" to organize my Dock. Some apps can make them, but its also possible with this command for the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

Use

killall Dock

after, to restart your Dock. Now a "Spacer" appeared, just copy and paste this command again to make more. They can be removed and repositioned by dragging just like normal apps.

As an example, here's a spacer between Launchpad and Chrome:

Answer 26

Quickly find your search results in Safari

1. Perform a Google search in the toolbar
2. Click a result
3. Press ⌘+G

via @Mactip

Answer 27

While you are using ⌘ + ⇥ to cycle through open applications, you can press Q before you release ⌘ to close the app. You can close several apps before release ⌘.

Answer 28

Exposé for spaces and 'Show desktop' attached to corners of the screen. I've attached 'Show desktop' to my lower right corner, and Exposé for spaces in the top left. Now, i can go bottom right to the desktop, grab a file, move over to the top left to switch to a space, and drop it there in a Finder window or Application.

Answer 29

Remember the double-sided arrows on both the top and bottom of the scroll column in OS 9? Go to the terminal and type:

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

When you login/restart, this will work across all other applications. Very handy to have.

Answer 30

Do a "killall dock" in Terminal while a window is being minimized with the Genie effect (helps to hold down Shift to slow it down) and the window will be 'stuck' in the Genie effect yet still be operational! For example, you can still scroll.