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15 Mac Tips and Tricks You Need to Know
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“If you have View Path selected as a Finder option, you can click on any folder in the path to go there”
Same for Finder BTW. Not sure why Path Bar isn’t turned on by default.
Yes, preview is mainly for images and the conversion to PDF is for that. All of these text file formats are more complex and there are too many options to make a conversion quite so easy, so I guess they just assume you will open them in their respective editors and print to PDF to do the conversion or save to PDF when the apps have that as an option. In either case it is pretty easy to generate PDFs from those kinds of files.
That is a very valuable feature. When you find a file via search, jump to folder takes you to that location where you can see the folder, see the associated files and take action on the file you found or the other files. At the very least, it shows you where that folder is.
It may be that you have no need for this feature and / or you work differently but people do file management in different ways either because of different use cases or because of their preferences for how to work. Don’t call something dumb just because you have no idea how it is used.
Also, if you right-click on the Folder name in the toolbar at the top of the window, it will show you the full path to that folder and you can navigate up the tree.
Closing all windows of an App (e.g. Finder) is much faster with CMD-option-W... just in my opinion since that is without mouse interaction.
One VERY important shortcut for me at least:
Shift-Ctrl-CMD-4 - screenshot - but it will not save the file, it copies the screenshot into your clipboard for pasting instead of creating a file that you later might have to delete just because you wanted to make a quick screencap for a PowerPoint or whatever.
Shift-Ctrl-CMD-4 - screenshot - but it will not save the file, it copies the screenshot into your clipboard for pasting instead of creating a file that you later might have to delete just because you wanted to make a quick screencap for a PowerPoint or whatever.
You can change the default screenshot image format from PNG to JPEG which will save a lot of space and the image looks the same.
would be helpful if it could do format conversion of any file to any file
would be helpful if it could do format conversion of any file to any file
Most of the keyboard shortcuts can be used on an iPad with Smart Keyboard attached.
Point 12-14 all work. Point 15 (shift + Cmd + 4) takes a screenshot and automatically displays the screenshot with edit/crop options, but pressing the option key or the spacebar whilst cropping is not applicable.
Point 12-14 all work. Point 15 (shift + Cmd + 4) takes a screenshot and automatically displays the screenshot with edit/crop options, but pressing the option key or the spacebar whilst cropping is not applicable.
I always use Spotlight completely by keyboard (no mouse clicks involved)!
- ⌘+Spacebar, to quickly open or close Spotlight
- Cursor-up and Cursor-down to scroll through
- Option-key on a selected file to view the path where it may reside
- ⌘+Enter, to open the enclosing folder - does the same thing as ⌘+R, but is far easier to reach on the keyboard
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If you hold down Option on the selected file in Spotlight, it shows you the complete path for this file. So you will know beforehand where this jump takes you - if this is important for you.
Because of <Eject> I assume this no longer works on Macs without optical drives?
I’d love to have a keyboard combination to shut down/reboot
If you only need a few pages from a large .pdf file you can create a new .pdf of just those pages using the print menu.
Select the print command then use the 'Pages' command and set it for the range of pages you want.
Then use the PDF dialogue button bottom right.
BUT if you chose to open it in 'Preview' in that PDF menu and then use the 'Export' command in Preview and then go to the second line 'quartz filter' then 'Reduce file size' you can get a .pdf of just the pages you want but with a much reduced file size. It can take it from over 2MB to about 400KB which is great for sending by email or when uploading documents
Always open it and check it first though as sometimes it compresses it too much and the quality isn't good enough.
Select the print command then use the 'Pages' command and set it for the range of pages you want.
Then use the PDF dialogue button bottom right.
BUT if you chose to open it in 'Preview' in that PDF menu and then use the 'Export' command in Preview and then go to the second line 'quartz filter' then 'Reduce file size' you can get a .pdf of just the pages you want but with a much reduced file size. It can take it from over 2MB to about 400KB which is great for sending by email or when uploading documents
Always open it and check it first though as sometimes it compresses it too much and the quality isn't good enough.
Also if you use the calculator app there is a convert menu there.
The best workflow is type in the number you want to convert first then go to the Convert menu, set up the parameters and then press convert. It's very extensive and even has up to date currency conversion.
An oldie but a goodie and worth repeating: on a web page hold down command then use + and - to make the text bigger or smaller.
Just a reminder:
Ctrl+A= select all
Ctrl+C= copy
Ctrl+V=paste
Ctrl+X=cut
Ctrl+Z= undo previous command
How to prevent audio balance drift when changing audio volume? (Third-party headphones, mine are Sony WH-1000XM4)
It's true JPEG will create smaller files, but PNG images are visually superior in some situations - the image does not look the same. PNG is better on text, and supports transparencies.
Ha. When OSX came out, I bought a book called The Missing Manual. It was like 700 pages. I can't imagine how many pages a Monterey Missing Manual would be. They were great books, but they no longer make them. I agree with you though - all this stuff should be included through the Help screens.
I never create pdfs that way. In each app, you can usually export to pdf, or alternately print, and select save to pdf