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Seven Useful macOS Tricks You Might Not Know

You know, Apple would sell a lot more Macs if they made emojis easier to insert and added Animoji.

/s
 
Nice tips, thanks.

Not a secret or anything, but a nice tool that I forget to use too often but like when I remember it is the Summarize command. Highlight some text on web site, in an email or document, etc. and then select Summarize under the Services menu from that app's main menu. It brings up a condensed version of the text with a slider bar that can control the percentage of condensing. It usually does a surprisingly good job of finding the critical meaning of a bunch of text.

My apologies if this is obviously known by all, but I don't see it get a lot of attention. I wish it existed in iOS too.
 
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Jeremy1026 said:
You can’t prove that a document has been signed by the signature holder unless you witness the signing or the document is notarized. Linking to an Apple ID would only prove it was either the signature holder, or someone who gained access to their account.
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Digital signing isn’t flawless, but it’s far better than relying on your random hand scribbles, which millions of people can gain access to over the years, through various documents you sign. As long as you keep your private key secure (which is generally 100% up to the owner), nobody else can use your digital signature. I find that somewhat better.
 
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BasicGreatGuy said:
Very impressed with Macrumors the last two weeks. You guys (and gals) have stepped up your internet game. Articles like these are the kinds of things that keep people coming back to the site, not to mention the wonderful forum members who are always full of vim and vigor. 🙂
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Agreed!

Solid tips many if not all I didn't know about and completely forgotten about the picture in picture video tip.

This will be super helpful for support down the road in a mixed environment: Windows & Mac.
 
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These are some nice articles to jog the memory of features I forget are available.

One comment about split screen—after using my iPad Pro almost exclusively for the past month, I kept feeling like I should be able to flick another app from the dock onto the mac’s split screen, but the dock is hidden and unavailable. Pretty surprising that the feature is better implemented on the iPad than on the Mac!

Lastly, it was mentioned earlier that Better Snap Tool was more useful than MacOS split screen or Magnet, and I agree—highly recommended!
 
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Really wish Picture in Picture worked in chrome. But there is a not so convenient work around.

Install "Helium Lift" from the App store, and the Open in Helium extension.

It's not as seamless as picture in picture, but a half decent work around when you're in a bind. One benefit it has over PiP is that you can do any webpage not just videos.
 
BasicGreatGuy said:
Very impressed with Macrumors the last two weeks. You guys (and gals) have stepped up your internet game. Articles like these are the kinds of things that keep people coming back to the site, not to mention the wonderful forum members who are always full of vim and vigor. 🙂
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I’m liking it.
The copy and paste across iCloud it interesting
 
Today I learned that I can put true type TTF and open type OTF fonts on my iPad and iPhone for use in Pages. Neat.

Extensis has a free app if you have the paid desktop suitcase version.
Out of the three free ones I found this seemed to work best.
It can receive ZIP files from iOS Safari and file shared files in iTunes.

Font Manager by namedfork.net
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/font-manager/id789211165?mt=8
 
lec0rsaire said:
Magnet is a better app for arranging windows and only costs a buck. The emoji and PIP stuff is made really simple with the touch bar. Still it’s great to highlight these things for non-tb macs and those newer to the OS. I also like to clear my recently used emojis after a while and this can be done by opening keyboard prefs, pulling up the emoji character window and clicking on clear/delete recently used on the upper left corner.
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Spectacle works great for arranging windows and is free (it takes just thirty seconds of playing with it to learn the most useful shortcuts)
 
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I tried universal copy paste, and it works 1/10 for me. I then give up and forget about it. Magnet is great in arranging windows. Never bother PIP but good to know. Emoji... ok. I know there are people liking it.
 
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PIP never worked on my Mac(s), is this hardware related, I have 2 Macs, a 2012 MBP and a 2012 Mac Mini, technically they are the same.
Might be some plugin or setting I use, will try in a clean User account later on.
 
We need more useful and interesting posts like this, and less Samsung posts.
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Shirasaki said:
I tried universal copy paste, and it works 1/10 for me. I then give up and forget about it. Magnet is great in arranging windows. Never bother PIP but good to know. Emoji... ok. I know there are people liking it.
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I had the same problem originally. Thanks to an Apple Forum post, searching and deleting the ~5 items in keychain containing the keyword "handoff" fixed the issue.
I think I also turned on/off handoff on iPhone and Apple Watch and restarted everything.
 
Didn't know about #5.

I myself have recently discovered a very nifty trick I didn't know about after having used macOS on a daily basis for over 10 years. If you want to attach an open document to an email in Apple Mail, drag the name of the document from the title bar of the opened document window to the body of the email. No need to look for the document in Finder or to browse to it from the Mail's attach dialog.
 
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Miallo said:
I discovered that when taking a selection-screenshot via Cmd+Shift+4 when pressing Alt it after the initial click it will resize the window from the center of the selected area (nice if you missed the initial position of the first click). And when pressing Shift it locks the expansion of the area to the one you move first until you release it.
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You can also hold spacebar after the initial click to move instead of resize the selection. And if you press spacebar once before clicking you can switch to screenshotting a single window.
 
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Perhaps Julie Clover should do something else for a living. Not knowing some of these basic 'mac' tips and working for a mac site is a bit amateur.
 
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vincebio said:
Perhaps Julie Clover should do something else for a living. Not knowing some of these basic 'mac' tips and working for a mac site is a bit amateur.
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Maybe you should stop and realize that many, many members, as well as lurkers, may not know about some basic OS features. That is who the article is for. Juli Clover(and MacRumors) is trying to educate people.

Get the chip off your shoulders and learn some manners. I think you owe Juli an apology.
 
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Not tricks , been used for years, that text dragging feature was even in Macintosh itself years old.

A better title word would of been Tips
 
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