So, while working here I have been shown some really neat Mac tricks which have made my daily life much easier. I figured I might as well share a few of those with you today.
When I have something on the screen I’d like to share with another person, say because I don’t know what the warning means or it is a picture that cannot be downloaded/ saved for some reason, I now use “Apple+Shift+4.” A cross appears where my curser was and I can drag over any area on my screen to take a picture. Once releasing the picture is available on my desktop. Likewise if I want a whole window after holding down the above, I then tap “Spacebar+Shift+4” and a camera will appear were the cross was. By moving the cursor (now a camera) around the screen you can select which full window (even if it is not fully visible on your screen) you’d like the picture of. Clicking your mouse will then give you a .png file, which you can email or iChat to friends, coworkers, etc.
Another helpful hint I’ve been shown is for while using my MacBook Pro. While using my Mini at work I have access to a full keyboard and I tend to use the forward delete button, which does not exists on the laptop. However, if you hold down “function” (fn) key while pressing the “delete” button you can now delete anything in front of your cursor. Another cool deleting ability is holding the “alt/ option” key and then pressing “delete.” This will allow you to delete whole words instead of letter by letter.
Also, if you are an iTunes junky and hate it when you transfer a CD that isn’t in the iTunes database and you are stuck typing in all the information one line at a time, this will be of assistance. First- always be connected to the Internet when you download your own CDs into iTunes, as many CDs information will auto-fill. If it doesn’t auto-fill then select the album (you can hold down “Apple” and click each one to highlight). Once the album you’d like to update is selected press “Apple+I” (i) and you can now fill in all the information about this album at once, rather than each line at a time. Only the individual song titles would need to be done one line at a time now.
There are really so many shortcuts out there; “Apple+P”- print, “Apple+V”- paste, or “Apple+Z” to undo- which works in every program I’ve tried it in thus far. You can find these shortcuts in your menus or on sites like Apple- Shortcuts. Speaking of, to rename a hyperlink all you need to do is “control+click” on the link and choose “edit hyperlink” from the hyperlink menu. This will bring up a window that allows you to display (name) your link instead of using the full address, which can be painful to both you and your readers.
It seemed like a bit much and a bit of a bother to learn all of these different commands when I started. However, after using some of these on a daily basis I have come to realize just how time saving these tricks really are.
