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

Hold Option & click Speaker/Volume icon in top menu bar to quickly select audio output and input devices (bluetooth, airplay etc.)

via https://twitter.com/justinerdman/status/316936844958916608

Answer 2

When you're in the ⌘+Tab task switcher selecting the Finder and pressing ⇧+Q will restart the Finder.

Answer 3

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 4

You can increase or decrease your volume by quarter increments by Pressing:

⌥ + ⇧ + 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

LaTex from Grapher:

Answer 6

• When typing text in any document or text field ⌥ Option+Backspace will delete the entire word, the same with ⌥ Option+Del which will delete the whole next word.

• Using an accented language? Press ⌃ Control+Backspace after an accented letter to delete just the accent, not the letter.

Answer 7

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 8

It’s possible to enable AirDrop on unsupported (older) Macs running Lion by entering a single command in Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces -bool true

This also enables AirDrop over Ethernet (not just WiFi). (CableDrop™?)

Don’t forget to logout and login again, or reboot your Mac after entering the command.

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

Answer 9

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 10

In iTunes, it’s possible to make ⌘ + F focus the search input instead of toggling the full screen mode.

Simply enter this command in Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Target Search Field" "@F"

Then, restart iTunes.

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

Answer 11

 sudo purge

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

Answer 12

Option ⌥-click menulets to bring up extra information. I use this all the time!

Battery Menulet:

Airport Menulet:

Bluetooth Menulet:

Sound Menulet:

Answer 13

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 14

⌘ + ctrl + "two finger swipe" = change the opacity of the window under the cursor

Answer 15

Dialogs usually have two useful actions accessible from the keyboard. ↩ performs the default action (Save, in the image below) and space performs the secondary action (Don't Save, in the image below).

Answer 16

I avoid using the mouse, so I like to start applications using Spotlight. You can launch Spotlight by pressing ⌘ + space. Once Spotlight is launched, type in application name and press enter.

So to start Safari without using the mouse, type: ⌘ + space -> "Safari" -> ↩

Answer 17

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 18

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 19

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

Answer 20

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 21

When ⇧+clicking on an open app in the Dock the application hides.

Answer 22

_{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 23

Ever wanted to stop the iTunes visualizer at that really cool moment and take a picture? In iTunes 10 (and previous versions really) you can control what your visualizer is doing. You need to have a song playing to notice changes.

Simply press the ? key to see a help menu of the controls. On most visualizers press f to see the current FPS. (all except the default)

To freeze the default iTunes visualizer press F to freeze the mode, then press L to freeze the camera. Now that your visualizer is completely stopped, press M to change the mode. Turn the fog on and off with N (only works with certain themes). Change the color palette with P before freezing the mode or locking the camera or it has no effect. ⌘ + F for full screen, then ⌘+⇧+3 for full screen grab.

Viola, instant custom desktop pattern!

Answer 24

When resizing columns in Finder, hold down ⌥ whilst dragging, and you'll resize all columns and reset the default width.

Answer 25

You can ⌘-click and drag many OS provided icons from your menu bar to rearrange or remove them if it's getting too crowded. Doesn't work with all 3rd party ones, but many built-in ones (like volume, battery, sync, bluetooth, etc) can be removed this way. Many of them can be removed from the control panel, but this is the only way some of them can be removed once activated (that I'm aware of).

Answer 26

Hold ctrl and scroll with the mouse/trackpad in order to zoom the view at any time. Extremely handy in order to discern pixel differences of a UI.

Answer 27

Hold ⌘ you can drag icons to reorder on Status bar. Drag out of status bar mean delete it from status bar.

Answer 28

Want to move back and forth through Safari pages or Finder windows?

⌘+[ to move back.
⌘+] to move forward.

Answer 29

If you want to Open/Close FrontRow just use ⌘ + esc

Answer 30

When closing an unsaved document ⌘+D will invoke Don't Save for you.

Use with care though.