Show hidden files (dotfiles) inside any finder window or file open dialog: Cmd + Shift + .
Discovered after ~10 years
Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
11–20 of 540 posts
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#12You can write low level code to interject all keystrokes and program keys.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#13Wait until you find out you can change which directory screenshots save to. I have a dedicated "screenshots" directory in my home directory. And then a stack in the Dock for it similar to the one for the Downloads folder.
I need this.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#14Setting most (but not all) system preference using the terminal. It made doing clean installs every year so much easier. https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/main/.macos
This is gold. Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#15I believe desktop Stacks is only a version old (10.14) so you probably haven't been missing it for too long fortunately. Another good tip for screenshots is disabling the floating thumbnail. Just open the screenshot app and disable it in the options menu.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#16Double click text to select a word. Triple click text to select the whole paragraph.
For decades I assumed that there’s some weird fluky behavior when trying to select a word and accidentally selecting the paragraph.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#17Has anyone found a way to name desktop spaces anything other than Desktop 1, Desktop 2 etc?
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#18The keyboard shortcut in finder to take you to your home directory, cmd + shift + h if I recall correctly. Makes it trivial to keyboard navigate to anything when you can easily start from the same place every time!
You can also set which folder (downnloads/documents/desktop) to open by default when you open a new Finder Window.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#19Wait until you find out you can change which directory screenshots save to. I have a dedicated "screenshots" directory in my home directory. And then a stack in the Dock for it similar to the one for the Downloads folder.
Any idea if there is a way to remove the preview that shows up in the bottom right corner? OSX doesn't write the screenshot until after that disappears which is annoying
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#20I believe desktop Stacks is only a version old (10.14) so you probably haven't been missing it for too long fortunately. Another good tip for screenshots is disabling the floating thumbnail. Just open the screenshot app and disable it in the options menu.
On the topic of screenshots, one I didn’t know was hitting space before you take a screenshot will make it capture an entire Window, including the shadow instead of having to drag a region