Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 540 posts

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#271

Post by erichurkman »

TaqPolymerase wrote: post #218
zenexer wrote: post #194

- Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 will let you take a screenshot of a region of your screen and copy it to the clipboard. It can then be pasted directly into most applications, from email clients to chat clients. No random screenshots sitting around. If you want to capture a whole window, press Space after the initial shortcut, then click the window. - While a menu is open, hold Option; if you're lucky, you'll get some additi…

Cmd-Shift-5 for some more nice screenshot options, including disabling that floating window that appears before your screenshot gets saved to the Desktop Cmd-Down also opens in Finder, just like Cmd-O

⌘-Shift-5 to disable that floating screen shot thing... I love you. That thing is _so slow_ and distracting I always worry my screen shot didn't actually save until that slow window popped up on some random screen.

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#273

Post by awinder »

m463 wrote: post #266
awinder wrote: post #166

I’ve been using windows more recently since my personal Mac bit the dust and I’m trying to decide if there’s really that much reason to own a personal Mac. So now I realize for years I’ve been using this silent feature of macs for years called “not totally jacked up font rendering”. I would never have imagined this was a feature, but apparently there is a collective insanity in windowsland where the quality of font r…

I think newer versions of mac os x might have messed with your font rendering again. They turned off subpixel anti-aliasing and it looks worse on older displays. (I can't help but think of the "slowing down older iphones" thing) search for "fix blurry fonts mojave"

I’m on a 1440p ultrawide from this year on mojave vs latest windows 10.

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#274

Post by Jakobeha »

When typing with fancy characters: - Alt-command-space brings up a window where you can select arbitrary Unicode characters - Go to your keyboard settings in System Preferences and add the “Greek” keyboard. Then you can press ctrl-command-space to switch your keyboard and quickly type in Greek symbols (e.g. “a” becomes alpha). Press ctrl-command-space again to switch back.

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#276

Post by rrwright »

The `say` command line tool. It will cause a synthesized voice to speak out loud whatever follows that command via text-to-speech.

This is especially useful for pranking your loved ones for whom you have remote shell access. ssh in and cause the other person’s computer to start talking to them... by name... asking for help... to be let out of the small metal box they’ve been trapped in for SO long...

This has been available in Mac OS for at least 15 years, and probably longer.

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#278

Post by beders »

amacneil wrote: post #159

Double clicking the title bar of a window to maximize it (without going into full screen mode). I used to install Spectacle on every computer, but this was really the only feature I needed from it. Somehow it took me 12 years of using macOS to learn how to maximize windows.

Also double-clicking the edges of windows (when the resize cursor shows) will expand the window in that direction.

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#279

Post by ivansavz »

macOS has a very good built-in text-to-speech engine with real voices that sound good (i.e. not annoying to read).

It's part of the Accessibility > Speech menu in Settings.

I wrote up a little info doc for how to enable keyboard shortcut for it so you can use with any text you can select: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...

Use cases: - read blog posts and news articles while doing dishes (basically turn anything into an podcast at the press of a button) - read hacker news comments - proofreading text (you can hear the typos much easier than you can see them in a text you have written)

Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?

#280

Post by m463 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #89
pcr910303 wrote: post #66

While this isn't a generic feature, I want to say that everyone should try embracing the non-keyboard nature of macOS (as it always has been done), not just complaining that some of the elements are not reachable in the keyboard.[0] Try using the mouse, trackpad (which is top-quality), and the Touch Bar (which I guess will be the most controversial?). Especially drag-n-drop. I'm not sure if it's already mentioned, bu…

Isn't the touchbar explicitly a "keyboard nature" type of interaction? You mentioned Mac OS having a non-keyboard nature, and then tout the touchbar?

Maybe it is a zen koan, designed to find the nature of the keyboard within and without.

As the apple keyboard strokes become shorter, and the gestures become more numerous, we become one. ;)

Post reply on HN