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Snow Leopard - Hints, Tips and little changes

xUKHCx

xUKHCx

Administrator emeritus
Original poster
Jan 15, 2006
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The Kop
With Snow Leopard falling in to a few members hands early I figured it would be a good time to start the next round of Hints and Tips.

Following on from the Leopard Hints and Tips thread here is a place to post and share all the little, lesser known, tips about Snow Leopard.

For people new to Mac OS X it may well be worth reading the Leopard Hints and Tips as well due to the close nature of these two operating systems.
 
A quick summary up to 283 of most posts.

  • Hold down shift to slow down the genie effect
  • When binding Macs to AD or Open Directory, Directory Utility can now be set through the accounts tab of System Preferences instead of in Applications > Utilities, which is where it was in 10.5
  • Option-click on the Sound menu to select input and output audio devices (speaker in top right of screen next to clock)
  • Option-click the Sync menu to get more detailed sync info
  • When in expose, press spacebar to "zoom-in" each window.
  • Text substitutions, by default, have to be enabled from the context menu for each text field, every time, in Substitutions > Text Replacement.
  • To enable substitutions for *all* text fields, by default, right-click in a text field and go to Substitutions > Show Substitutions. Then check "Text Replacement."
  • Data detectors in apps like TextEdit don't work like they do in Mail. In Mail, "data detectors" work by you hovering over the text (an address, a phone number, etc.) until a little dotted border appears that lets you bring up a menu. In other applications that now support them (TextEdit, Stickies, etc.), you simply highlight the text and right-click - and the data detector options will appear as the first items in the context menu.
  • When in expose clicking on the application icon in the dock removes other windows and only shows the windows of that application. Command + 1 sorts windows alphabetically and command+2 sorts by application.
  • Are wifi problems still there for those who had them with Leopard?
  • If you right click on an image you can tell it to set it as a background, without having to go into the change background preferences.
  • When starting a Time Machine backup, it shows the percent complete when it is preparing the back up (when in the menu bar).
  • When you run Automator scripts it now displays a little animated cog in the menu bar rather than showing the little stop sign and script name.
  • When you option click the Airport menu item in SL, it shows you various information like security, BSSID, channel and stuff like that. You can option click the wifi menu bar button to see the details to the network you are currently connected to.
  • Preview finally supports holding the shift key to make a perfectly square selection!
  • Looks like the iTunes artwork screensaver no longer has duplicate album artwork, in leopard the SS would always have some artwork showing up multiple times, set to 8 rows. And yes, I have plenty of artwork.
  • Icons (now at 512x512 look gorgeous - check out the detail on the Apple icons) they also now have a "perspective" when in coverflow.
  • Disk Utility now warns you before you Verify Disk on your startup disk:
  • Trackpad PDF scrolling better
  • System Zoom is much much better.
  • When you first start Voiceover you get a very helpful tutorial. Voiceover also has a HUD on the bottom left which tells you what Alex (or your chosen voice) has said.
  • To enable the chinese handwriting input, firstly you need a macbook of some sort. Then goto: System preferences > language & text, click the 'input sources' tab then scroll down and Chinese simplified or traditional.Close the preference window then logout and log back in again. Hit shift+ctrl+space and it'll come up. With the handwriting pad turned on your mouse is disabled, to get the mouse back hit the same key combination.
  • Pill button in Finder windows has an animation now.
  • Preview.app: CMD-Delete sends the current image to the Finder TRASH.
  • - Clicking the pill button in Finder windows has an animation now.
  • - After dragging a selection box in the Finder, it fades out when you let go.
  • - All animations are much smoother now
  • - No horizontal tearing in Spaces anymore
  • - No horizontal tearing in Safari scrolling
  • -iChat now shows a progress bar for sending images within chat view.
  • - Lots of little subtle Finder animations
  • - Preferences icon shows list of Preference Panes when right clicked.
  • - When expanding a folder down in List View in the Finder, the icon changes to an opened icon.
  • - Spotlight: Window settings stick and you can add and remove columns (such as Date Modified, Last Opened, Kind) by hitting cmd-J
  • - Waking up a sleeping display no longer flickers when it awakes.
  • - Right-clicking a Dock menu and right-clicking again closes the menu (as it should.) In Leopard, the menu would keep popping up if you right clicked while it was already open.
  • - Apple changed the Stacks an animation to a zooming animation instead of the scattering icons animation. It's much smoother and more pleasing to look at.
  • - Apple FINALLY keeps the shadows on the Finder windows during a minimize. It used to bug me that the shadow would disappear and then the window would minimize. It looks much better now
  • - Shadows under windows are also retained when using Exposé. Again, looks better and doesn't show that flicker that Leopard had
  • - Ever since Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), when an app crashed while it was launching, every window from that point on would stutter when minimizing it. The only way to get it to be smooth again was to quit the Dock. Snow Leopard no longer does that. I'm very surprised by this.
  • - Scrolling in the Finder is smoother
  • - Finder preferences now includes an option to choose the default location for Finder searches (such as "Search the Current Folder" or "Search This Mac") I'm glad they finally put this back because when I wanna search the entire drive, I use the Spotlight menu, but when I'm in a folder, I want it to search just that folder.
  • - Finder prefs has an option to show or hide the warning when changing file extensions. I'm glad they finally added this. That dialog got annoying over time.
  • - Finder now has a "Path Bar" (or at least seems more prominent/on by default)
  • - You can now hide the Finder sidebar without losing the unified window.
  • - Right clicking the tile of a window will show you a menu with the path to that folder. In Leopard, you had to cmd-click it to do that.
  • - The Dock now remembers the ACTUAL Dock size you set it to. In Leopard, you could set it to a certain size, and then when you rebooted or logged back in, it would be a few pixels LARGER (barely noticeable, but I noticed).
  • - Option-clicking the sync menu in the menubar gives you more detailed information
  • - Option-clicking sound in the menubar lets you change your input device.
  • - Address Book window no longer shrinks each time you launch it. Seriously. Leopard's Address Book window would get a few pixels smaller every time you launched it until it was as small as it could get. The only way I was able to previously fix this, was to lock Address Book's preference file after I had the window set to the size I wanted.
  • Option-click the battery. Gives you the battery condition and everything.
  • Under Date & Time in System Prefs. there is a box that says "Show Date"
  • Dock options allow you to minimise windows into application icon
  • When pressing Command-Space to switch between input methods, you can now hold command to get an translucent window in the middle of the screen that lists by name all the input methods you have enabled, making it much easier to switch to a specific one.
  • The $29 install disc can do an installation on a blank HDD!
  • You can update straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard
  • New background gradient thingy in Expose. Outline for instead of highlight. Labels under windows. Minimized windows are under a "bump" and are smaller than the rest.
  • Black stripe with options now has black buttons.
  • Software Update is revised. Launch it for yourself, I'm downloading updates.
  • That Dock menu is different. I suspect that'll be on the menu bar in 10.7.
  • Menu bar seems more translucent.
  • System Prefs is different, with revised and separate keyboard and mouse panels.
  • The weather widget is now powered by Yahoo!, as opposed to AccuWeather as in 10.5.
  • Network drives can be added to "Drives" on the sidebar in finder.
  • If you've reset a account password, remotely (AD, or install disc), next time you log in, you get the option a prompt to reset the keychain.
  • When logging in with a domain account, you now get a prompt if you password is going to expire.
  • Snow Leopard is able to instantly detect the language of typed text and then apply the appropriate spell check, repairing small errors on the fly. You can even switch back and forth between languages and it'll figure it all out automatically. (see here)
  • When switching spaces, the window glides over instead of arrow switching.
  • When arranging icons in Finder, they glide to the positions instead of instantly going there.
  • On time machine, flipping through windows is much quicker and smoother.
  • When screen sharing cmd+option+esc brings up the force quit menu on the shared screen. When using Screen Sharing to control another computer, hitting Cmd-Tab to switch apps will switch the apps on the *remote* computer, not the computer you're sitting in front of.
  • To exit screenshare Move the cursor to the bottom of your screen while Screen Sharing is launching....Or, go into Exposé, click on the Screen Sharing app in your Dock and click Quit.
  • Holding Command+Shift and pressing the pill button in Finder toggles thru the different view options for the buttons (ie small, larger, with text), and just holding Command goes in the opposite direction.
  • When using extended mode, dragging an item from a browser (ie an image) to the non-main display (the one with the menubar), it will place it on the spot. In 10.5 when you did this it would place it on the main display, and then you could drag it to the other one.
  • When activity monitor is being use. right click on it and you can change the dock icon.
  • Finder (as in the entire window display app, the desktop, the menubar, and folder-viewing windows) and Dock were rewritten using Cocoa. Not only are they much faster and natively 64-bit, but nearly every action relating of and to files leverages CoreAnimation.
  • A MB/MBP works perfectly with an external monitor if you turn it on using an Apple Remote or press the power button and shut it really quickly.
  • BIG changes to Automation Services.
  • Expose tips here
  • If you want to just record the computer sound (for which there's no option, for some reason), just plug in a stereo to stereo cable from the headphone jack to the Line In.
  • Two finger zoom gesture makes QT full screen, also zoom on the desktop changes the size of your icons.
  • Someone mentioned that the screen grabs are named by date now (big props for that, who doesn't hate "Picture 1 already exists"). Photo Booth pictures are now named similarly.
  • When an app stops log out, it will now ask if you want to force quit the app.
 
Cool! Can we keep this thread for 10.6 tips only? I don't need to read "hold down shift to slow down the genie effect" for the 1000th time.
 
So my post about people staying on topic, took people off topic? :rolleyes:

Back on topic, here's my Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only Tip:

If anyone is binding Macs to AD or Open Directory, Directory Utility can now be set through the accounts tab of System Preferences instead of in Applications > Utilities, which is where it was in 10.5
 
I heard that you can type in highlighted windows in expose? Can anyone confirm? To clarify, you bring up expose, highlight a window and then you can type in that window whilst still in expose.
 
gaz617 said:
I heard that you can type in highlighted windows in expose? Can anyone confirm? To clarify, you bring up expose, highlight a window and then you can type in that window whilst still in expose.
Click to expand...

I just tried it, and unless I did it wrong, it doesn't work.
 
After activating Exposé for all windows, press Tab to begin cycling through groups of windows by application (similar to Dock Exposé).
 
Snow Leopard Roar Feature:

hissingzb_2.jpg
 
I'm not 100% sure this is new, but if it isn't, it didn't show up for me before. The battery menu now shows a battery condition.
 
Option-click on the Sound menu to select input and output audio devices

screenshot20090828at201.png


Option-click the Sync menu to get more detailed sync info

screenshot20090828at204.png
 
this thread will be great. Snow Leopard will be the OS that reveals little things that will make a world of difference to different people. That option clicking the sound to get the line in options will save me a few clicks every day or so. awesome.
 
I've put 23 tweaks that I've found on my blog

A couple

1) Preview is drastically updated, numerous tweaks to cropping, annotations are enhanced
2) Security system prefs are simplified, specifically around firewall.

:)
 
Because I know these two drove me crazy and I'm sure it'll drive others crazy too…

1. Text substitutions, by default, have to be enabled from the context menu for each text field, every time, in Substitutions > Text Replacement.

To enable substitutions for *all* text fields, by default, right-click in a text field and go to Substitutions > Show Substitutions. Then check "Text Replacement."

2. Data detectors in apps like TextEdit don't work like they do in Mail.

In Mail, "data detectors" work by you hovering over the text (an address, a phone number, etc.) until a little dotted border appears that lets you bring up a menu.

In other applications that now support them (TextEdit, Stickies, etc.), you simply highlight the text and right-click - and the data detector options will appear as the first items in the context menu.

This one was driving me nuts because I kept hovering my cursor over phone numbers, etc. waiting for that little border to appear.
 
rorschach said:
Option-click on the Sound menu to select input and output audio devices

screenshot20090828at201.png
Click to expand...
Will this allow you to set output to "headphones", and thereby prevent music from playing from the internal speakers of (e.g.) your MacBook when you accidently pull out your headphone cable? If so, that would be great.
 
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