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

On newer versions of macOS , you can access an interactive tool for taking screenshots via ⌘+Shift+5.

Modes

You can use three different modes.

Capture/Record Entire Screen

This mode is basic and lets you capture the entire screen. It replicates the functionality of ⌘+Shift+3.

Capture/Record Selected Portion

This mode allows you to crop out parts of the screen beforehand. You can move or resize the selected portion. The width and height of the portion will appear while resizing. This mode replicates the functionality of ⌘+Shift+4.

Capture Selected Window

This screenshot-exclusive mode allows you to take a screenshot of a window. Windows include context menus and other UI items as well. This mode replicates the functionality of ⌘+Shift+4 after pressing Space and selecting a window.

Preview/Markup

After capturing your screenshot or recording, you can view a preview of it. Right-clicking this preview allows you to set its save location, open it, delete it, or use Markup.

Markup editor allows you to draw freehand circles, add text, crop, or rotate screenshots.

The Markup editor also allows you to trim recordings.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

If you are a recent convert to osx and miss the mouse/cursor acceleration of a windows mouse? OSX mouse doesnt feel quite as good as the windows mouse?

Give SteerMouse a try!

Answer 4

If you drag files while holding the command key, the contents move but don't copy. Great for cutting the copy - then delete original process.

Answer 5

Secrets by Blacktree is a preference pane which enables many hidden OS X and specific application preferences (e.g. change Dock to 2D, change iTunes stoplights back to horizontal). Saves you a couple of trips to the Terminal.

Answer 6

There is a fast way to create a hidden folder on Mac OS. Hidden folders a created by typing "." on the beginning (e.g. ".hiddenfolder")

The Finder won't let you do this though. So we gonna use the terminal.

to create a new folder:

mkdir .hiddenfolder

first of course you have to navigate to the location, you want the folder to be. For example the Desktop:

cd /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/

or drag a folder into the Terminal to get it's address

To know where you are right now, type:

pwd

Another way is, to rename a folder. To do so type:

mv ActualFolderName .hiddenfolder

To open a hidden folder, make hidden files visible like described earlier, or use terminal (navigate there first, or type open absolute path)

open .hiddenfolder

or if you are in the hidden folder already, just type

open .

to show hidden folders/files in terminal type

ls -a

Answer 7

Not sure if it's posted already but you can drag folders and files from the finder into an application's open / save dialogue. It sets the save or open path to that of the folder or file you're dragging. Excellent when you prefer to use the finder to navigate but don't want to repeat the process in your app or vice versa. Also, on many cases, whilst in the open / save dialogue, you can hit command R to reveal the files in the finder.

Answer 8

I am new to Mac so this might be common knowledge but in snow leopard if you hold 3 and 2 during boot you will boot into 32 bit mode and the same goes foe 64 bit when holding the 6 and 4 keys during boot. Macfuse for example did not like running in 64 bit mode

Answer 9

⌘ + ⇥ = switch between applications. Press ⌥ before releasing ⌘ and it will un-minimize minimized windows from that application.

Answer 10

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 11

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 12

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 13

Create a Keyboard Shortcut to open Terminal (or any application) no matter where you are or what application is currently active.

Use Automator to create a Service. Within Actions choose Launch Application.

In my case I made sure that the service receives no input in any application.

Then from the dropdown select other then double-click Utilities then select Terminal.app and click choose.

Save the service and make sure it has a .workflow extension.

Next open up System Preferences and click on the keyboard. Click the Shortcuts tab and select the Services option on the left.

You should see your new service in the General section named whatever you chose to name it.

Then you can click the none button that indicates it has no shortcut yet and assign it whatever shortcut keys you want.

There are other ways but this works no matter what application is active and it never fails.

Answer 14

Extremely quick way to open a new Finder window:

• Click on the desktop (even a sliver will do)
• Hit ⌘N

The desktop is part of Finder, so in a lot of ways it acts as a Finder window itself. For me it's faster to select the Finder app by just clicking on the desktop than to use Spotlight or to switch apps to Finder.

Answer 15

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 16

You can drag-drop Finder objects (or any document window's proxy icons) while doing any of the following:

• App-Switching (⌘+Tab or ⌘+⇧+Tab),
• Spaces (⌃+→ or ⌃+←),
• Show Desktop (⌘+F3), or
• Mission Control (⌃+↑).

Combined with dropping into open/save dialogues, this means you'll never have to navigate to a file in one app and then navigate to the same file again in the open/save dialog. You'll also never have move windows around in order to drop a file into Safari.

Eg. I have an image open in Preview, and want to send it as an attachment in gmail.

• Gmail pops open the "select attachment" file dialogue:
• Start dragging the proxy Icon from Preview - don't let go of it

• While continuing to drag the file, switch apps with ⌘+Tab.

  • Keep holding ⌘, but release/hit Tab or ⇧+Tab repeatedly to get to Safari.
  • Let go of ⌘ once Safari is selected, to bring it to the front.

• Drop the file onto the file dialogue, and it'll become selected. File is selected and ready to send. Return to finish selecting the file.

If you save screenshots to the desktop, then a similar trick is useful with the "Show Desktop" keyboard shortcut (⌘+F3).

Answer 17

In TextEdit, you can go to a specific line number by hitting ⌘L. Useful if a script errors at a specific line number.

Answer 18

By long-pressing on the bookmarks tab on the sidebar, you can open a menu containing the structure of the bookmarks folder. You can move your mouse to jump to a folder from this menu.

Answer 19

One of the most amazing things I know to do in the terminal is "doctor terminal" I just love it! :D I know it's a silly program that's easy to make but, no other operating system has it.

This is accessed through emacs in the Terminal:

• Type emacs
• Press Ctrl+X
• Type doctor
• Press Return

After each question, you can recieve a response by pressing Return twice in a row.

Answer 20

Also TinkerTool shows some hidden features

Answer 21

Safari also supports a subset of Emacs keybindings

Answer 22

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

Answer 23

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

Answer 24

In an any Open/Save dialog, you can use Quicksilver to quickly find the desired file or folder and just drag it anywhere into the file dialog, sendig the file chooser directly to that location. [Enter] will do the rest.

(While not included in OSX, I assume, that the majority of users interested in this thread do run Quicksilver.app)

Answer 25

Custom Alert Sounds - An old trick from OS9 days (tested to 10.8) is to create your own alert sounds. Not entirely productive but if you are into hacking your Mac / OS to make it your own, this is one on the list - it's fun to have Peter Griffin tell you it's time for lunch.

• Sample your sound file as usual (download or record/input to the Mac using something like Sound Studio or QT Pro 7).
• edit down to 10 seconds or less adding a clean entry and exit
• export as an AIFF file
• place here: /System/Library/Sounds/*
• select the alert sound via the System Preferences / Sound / Sound Effects panel

Note: the Library folder may be invisible by default. If so open terminal and add the following to make it permanently visible:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Note2: this route path will facilitate a sound file available to all users on your Mac. You can keep it to yourself by placing the AIFF here:

/Users/username/Library/Sounds/

Answer 26

Text Edit - restore zoom feature in 10.7 / 10.8+

This is a helpful tip to remedy Apple's less than useful update to the ubiquitous Text Edit application from OS 10.7 following which they removed the incremental 'Zoom' control shown below.

I am aware of the keyboard shortcuts CMD + and CMD - that work post 10.7, however, the zoom increments with this method are pre-fixed and too large for me - I am most comfortable with 125% and to be honest, I am bugged that a useful function has been removed. So the action:

• Delete the default version of Text Edit in the system / apps folder (you can drag this app to the trash or use a program like AppZapper). If you go the manual method, delete the preferences file as well.
• beg, steal or borrow a copy of OS 10.6. Most regular Mac users will have one archived (I have Mac OS's back to 6.5, although I am sad).
• drag a copy of Text Edit 1.7.1 (or earlier - 1.6 should work from OS 10.5) to your current applications folder.

• Select any text edit document, get info (CMD + I) and set Text Edit 1.7.1 as the default application to open this type of file.

Note: you may get an error message from Text Edit stating that it cannot save the file due to a permissions error. Don't worry, the file is being saved OK under OS 10.7+ and the false flag is due to an Apple change in the way newer versions of Text Edit auto-save. To suspend this reporting, you can soft hack Text Edit 1.7.1's behavior in terminal with the following command.

defaults write -app textedit ApplePersistence -bool false

defaults write -app textedit AutosavingDelay -int 0

Hope you find this tip helpful.

Answer 27

Ever downloaded an app that Mac OS won't let you open because it's "from an unidentified developer"?

Instead of completely disabling this security feature (via SysPrefs>Security), try the following:

• Right-click the .app file
• hold Shift while clicking Open.
• The resulting warning now has an [Open] button, click it.
• The warning is circumvented for this app only, but still enabled system-wide. It will never warn you again for that particular app.

Answer 28

Quickly insert weird characters into text by setting Text-Replacement Keyboard Shortcuts for any characters you find in the "Emoji & Symbols" panel.

I personally use LaTeX-style shortcuts, so typing \arrowright gets replaced with →. Type a Space after the \arrowright to do the replacement.

Set your shortcuts in SysPrefs > Keyboard > Text

You can copy/paste characters from anywhere into the Replace With... column. I prefer to double-click characters from the Emoji & Symbols pane, so I know they're in the standard font packages. The Emoji & Symbols pane can be enabled by selecting

SysPrefs > Keyboard > Keyboard (tab) > Show Keyboard and Emoji Viewers in menu bar

and then choosing Emoji & Symbols in the resulting menu item:

Answer 29

I frequently use the shortcut: Shift + Home and Shift + End to jump to the begining and end (respectively) of a long command in Terminal. It is one of the most useful commands I have discovered for macOS to date.

Answer 30

Advanced cursor navigation for text.

• optionleft/right arrow – Move cursor to previous/next word break.
• commandleft/right arrow – Move cursor to start/end of line.
• commandup/down arrow – Move cursor to top/bottom of textarea.
• shiftleft/right arrow – Highlight left/right character.
• shiftcommandleft/right arrow – Highlight left/right word.
• shiftcommandup/down arrow – Highlight text to start/end of line.
• optiondelete – Delete word.
• commanddelete – Delete line.