The same goes when right-clicking (CTRL) in the Finder, you can press option to change up the choices.
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Eight Hidden macOS Features You Can Access With the Option Key
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Wasn't this also the time that Apple would only make a one button mouse? And their reason was something about user confusion, hiding things in the user interface, making right-clicking the only way to access something?
I learned that one a month or so ago from watching a snazzy labs video and man it makes me feel like such a pro lol its so cool. Also try another one: hold command and then drag a window that’s in the background
Isn't it the same as Command-+?
I see no difference.
I use Command-+ and Command-- to quickly change text sizes mostly in Terminal during presentations in class.
Apple's mouses had one button from the first one they made in 1983 with the Lisa. They did human interaction studies and found too many subjects would get confused about what button to click, also it was somewhat difficult to independently click different fingers. So they made the mouse simple and mimic real-world pointing; people naturally just point at something with one primary finger for everything. Two-button mouses for home computers came later with no defined purpose for the second button.
This is partly to prevent menu clutter. The entire premise or principle here is that modifier key shortcuts are for less common commands. They really are "power user" actions or more obscure actions. You can get by without ever having to know about or use "close all windows with one action", it's just very convenient. And so there is this nice feature shown in the article where if you hold modifier keys down when looking at menus, the menu items change to show the alternative actions.
It works for other modifier keys too, try it - click on File, Edit, View menus in any application and then hold down option and then shift, and even both at the same time, and the menus will change to show other commands, that are more obscure or less commonly used. BTW holding down the Option key while double-clicking or clicking a close box has always had a loose pattern of meaning either "close the thing you are coming from" or "close every occurrence of this thing".
More info here:
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/user-interaction/keyboard/
Well actually single-button mouses do not have a concept of right clicking, it's all just "clicking", ignoring which finger or side of the mouse.
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then they should give us a mac to be built as power users want. not making the GUI be as an easter egg. this is something i really hate in macos.
Please see my previous comment. Once you know how to show the modifier key alternatives in the menus, how to use Help, and a couple web resources for keyboard shortcuts, MacOS IS built as power users want. Every new app I get, I instinctively poke through menus while holding various keys down to see what they can do. I agree things like this might be a wee bit better promoted though.
Holy mother of Jobs. This has been one of my biggest pet peeves about full screen behaviour and this solves it completely. Thank you!
You can’t do it on a Windows PC either. Is that because it isn’t a computer?
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Right! I never knew about this! This is so oddly useful. I’d always resize windows from one corner then drag them toward the center. I knew of many of these Option abilities but this one blows my mind.
Interface designers have been doing this forever. The design idea here is to offer power and ease of use without adding tons of complexity. We've all used software and hardware with too many functions all laid out on the surface, and the learning curve is awful.
Most of these things are just quicker ways of doing things you can already do. You can still open System Preferences and get to your Displays and Sound panels the normal way, you can still hit command+option+ esc to bring up the Force Quit menu. But are also shortcuts to get to things quicker -- like getting to Sound by option-pressing its related keyboard key.
I agree, though, that if (say) all of Preview's output options aren't documented by Apple, they should be. Weird logic there.
They are. In about every app Apple has on the Mac there is this thing called "Help"
or RTFM if you want. But seriously look at the Help⇢Help for (App name) or the shortcut is ⌘?. Read through some of the entries and there might be some aha moments which could improve your productivity. (It could also waste your time )Apple do have a vast amount of information available but it is an immense amount to go through, and these functions may seem hidden. But I prefer this approach more to removing them altogether which seem to be the way Apple have gone in other fields.
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I am not sure what makes a distinction of "Power User", but I would not call this hidden as in swept away. It is called the option key because it gives more options, and if you use some App a lot it is well worth to invest some time to read the documentation. But I guess that is what makes you a power user. I think it is pretentious to think that spending time learning something should not be a merit. The reason for the option key is that some features and functions are essential for some but not for the majority, and to not end up with an interface that is cluttered with everything at once this is a good compromise.
Option-Command-+ is what zooms the whole screen in.
Command-+ is all you need to increase the font in Safari.
Do people complain more about not being able to find a command in an application, or an application listing too many commands in the menus? Hiding things creates more problems that it solves. Microsoft's Office development team stated that many Office users kept asking for features that were already there but the users just didn't know it.
How can you judge whether a command is for "power users only" if you don't even know what all those commands are? What qualifies you to judge whether someone is a "power user" or not? I can tell you that there are some things in System Preferences and the Finder that are only accessible by holding down Option key - things that would be difficult or impossible for "ordinary" users to do any other way . These are also things that many "ordinary" users would want to have.
Is anybody who uses even one of these hidden commands now considered a "power user"?
The problem with telling people to hold down Option key everywhere to see if something happens is that this method is too much hit-and-miss. Instead of telling people to scour the internet for hidden tricks, or to hold own Option key all over the place to see if something happens, just IMAGINE if there was some way to show users when they click on a menu, that there are additional commands available in that menu, even if they have never used that application or clicked on that menu before. Or when a dialog box is displayed, users could know with absolute certainty that additional buttons were available by holding Option key, even if they have never used that application or seen that dialog box before. This would require Apple to establish a clearly defined user interface guideline and for all developers to follow it. Any suggestions for how such an "early warning system" visual indicator could be shown in menus and dialog boxes?
I am trying to suggest a reasonable compromise in which commands could be hidden yet require no guesswork at all by users, so anybody would be able to see exactly which menus and dialog boxes have hidden commands. But the people who are trying the hardest to justify hidden commands don't seem interested in improving things. Their suggestions are basically keep everything the same, RTFM and hold down Option key everywhere in every application to see if something happens. Their mentality seems to be "My dad beat me, so I'm going to do the same to my kids" or "If I had to hold Option key everywhere and spend hours on Google, so should everyone else". It reminds me of this comic:
http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/349.html
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Let's say you could plug in a mouse to an iPad. When you move the mouse around, what do you expect to happen? There is no pointer to follow the mouse movement... There are no draggable windows to move around even IF there was a pointer... No dropdown menus, no menubar. I guess you could hope that the text cursor would move left-right in text fields when you move the mouse left and right, but not much else would happen.
Do people complain more about not being able to find a command in an application, or an application listing too many commands in the menus? Hiding things creates more problems that it solves. Microsoft's Office development team stated that many Office users kept asking for features that were already there but the users just didn't know it.
How can you judge whether a command is for "power users only" if you don't even know what all those commands are? What qualifies you to judge whether someone is a "power user" or not? I can tell you that there are some things in System Preferences and the Finder that are only accessible by holding down Option key - things that would be difficult or impossible for "ordinary" users to do any other way . These are also things that many "ordinary" users would want to have.
Is anybody who uses even one of these hidden commands now considered a "power user"?
The problem with telling people to hold down Option key everywhere to see if something happens is that this method is too much hit-and-miss. Instead of telling people to scour the internet for hidden tricks, or to hold own Option key all over the place to see if something happens, just IMAGINE if there was some way to show users when they click on a menu, that there are additional commands available in that menu, even if they have never used that application or clicked on that menu before. Or when a dialog box is displayed, users could know with absolute certainty that additional buttons were available by holding Option key, even if they have never used that application or seen that dialog box before. This would require Apple to establish a clearly defined user interface guideline and for all developers to follow it. Any suggestions for how such an "early warning system" visual indicator could be shown in menus and dialog boxes?
I am trying to suggest a reasonable compromise in which commands could be hidden yet require no guesswork at all by users, so anybody would be able to see exactly which menus and dialog boxes have hidden commands. But the people who are trying the hardest to justify hidden commands don't seem interested in improving things. Their suggestions are basically keep everything the same, RTFM and hold down Option key everywhere in every application to see if something happens. Their mentality seems to be "My dad beat me, so I'm going to do the same to my kids" or "If I had to hold Option key everywhere and spend hours on Google, so should everyone else". It reminds me of this comic:
http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/349.html
OMG...
The problem here is you turned what should have been a potentially reasonable feature suggestion into a ridiculous negative rant.
In your previous post, and here, you started with a rant about how Apple sux for hiding features. Good grief.
Think about that for a second. If Apple - or any other software developer - chose to build in a lot of options and show ALL of them on the surface what would that look like? What would it look like if “Close Window” and every derivative of that command that you can get with option, option-shift, etc, was also listed in the menu without pressing any keys or whatever else to reveal them. And then extrapolate that to all the other menu commands that have derivatives. The menus would all be 2-4 times as long as they are. Do you really think that’s better? No I guess not because your suggestion suggests a better alternative. But that’s how your rant started. Accusing Apple of hiding features arbitrarily and that people shouldn’t have to go hunt for them is where you started.
Your suggestion has merit. An indicator showing which menu items have alternative options if you hold other keys. But honestly how is this better really? You’d still have to press various keys (option, option-shift, etc) to see what those other options are. How does it benefit us really to know which commands have alternatives without knowing what they are without having to press the key in the first place? Knowing that alternatives/derivatives exist for some menu commands and that all you have to do to see 1. which commands and 2. what the derivatives/alternatives are, really should be sufficient. So just hit the File menu, press the option key and see the alternatives, hit the shift key and see the alternatives. All live. What you’re proposing has some merit, but arguably creates more clutter without any real advantage.
Regardless, you gloriously managed to turn what nearly, if not literally, everyone else thinks is a positive thing into a negative rant about Apple hurting the user by hiding things. No one really cares about your suggestion after you took that ridiculous position.
I’d advise a different attitude and approach if you want anyone to give a rip about your opinion.
Yeah, I have. Interface clutter is real and it makes software horrible to use.
This is old, and Office has gotten better, but it's not at all hard to see how Microsoft users could miss features in all the clutter they have typically larded their software with.
If only...
Interface design is always a compromise, walking a line between simplicity and feature discoverability. You can't have everything out in the open all the time or you get Microsoft's old approach. If you go too far in the other direction people don't know how to do basic things. Apple has always tried to keep things simple enough on the surface that a new user can intuitively start working and find the most-used features on the surface. Option-clicking and the like have generally be used, aptly, for "optional" things that most people don't need and don't want to use.
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Which is why ms office allows you to cutomize the shortcut buttons to your needs.