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

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

#291

Post by bengale »

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 think that’s sorted now. I had some weird issues when the last OS dropped but not seen it for months.

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

#292

Post by msftie »

"Reduce Motion" in Settings > Accessibility.

At some point in the last 8 years, Apple changed the animation for how a window becomes full screen. The default behavior is to expand while simultaneously shifting the window to the right, or conversely expand while the desktop shifts to the left.

Enabling "Reduce Motion" eliminates that behavior, and the full screen window fades in and out instead, which personally I prefer.

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

#293

Post by m463 »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #282

Is there a method to the modifier key "madness"? I'd like to form a mental model of when to use Shift vs Ctrl vs Option in various shortcuts being mentioned.

One way to discover this is to open a menu, then try hitting modifier keys.

Some functions will change, and some of the functions with shortcuts will add the modifier.

For example, open the Apple menu and press and release Option.

Some menu items that say "Foo..." which means they will have an "are you sure" dialog will change to "Foo" which means they will not confirm.

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

#294

Post by m463 »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #244

Option click on the upper right corner hamburger menu toggles Do Not Disturb mode without having to open the whole right panel notifications section. Helpful for presentations and screen sharing.

I have the system volume in the menubar too.

Option-click the volume icon will allow you to change your sound input and output devices.

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

#295

Post by cpach »

tptacek wrote: post #128

You can assign a folder full of images to the background of Terminal.app, and it will choose background images at random, so a folder full of dark solid colors gives you random dark backgrounds, enabling you to tell your terminal windows apart easily.

Oh. That’s really neat. I have used macOS for seven years and I had no idea that this feature exists.

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

#296

Post by simondw »

ntauthority wrote: post #136
browningstreet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange name/label for an awesome feature.

It'd make sense if the label were actually "Stationery", which is practically a paper template.

Fortunately, that is how it's spelled.

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

#297

Post by SPBS »

cmehdy wrote: post #126

Three-finger drag is the one thing I just can't live without.[0] Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete) Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick toggles Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of various European languages are usually made by using Option+[ke…

interesting, I've been using quicktime's native screen recording feature. Converting from mov to gif would probably take another tool though, probably ffmpeg

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

#299

Post by shadowfacts »

noman-land wrote: post #207
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…

After you press Ctrl + Cmd + Shift + 4 and start dragging a region, if you hold the space bar, you can move this region around the screen so you're not trapped with where you originally started dragging.

In addition to pressing space to move the selected region, you can also press:

- Option, to move all four corners symmetrically around the region's center

- Shift, to constrain expansion to a single axis

- Option + Shift, to move the edges on a single axis symmetrically around the center

- Space + Shift, to move the entire region along a single axis

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

#300

Post by m463 »

polyrand wrote: post #193

After doing cmd + c a file, you can use option + cmd + V to move/cut it instead of copying.

I think you can hold cmd or option when dragging and dropping a file to do something similar.

using option will duplicate

using cmd will move

So the default for dragging on the same disk is move. option+drag will make a copy.

The default for dragging to a different disk is copy. cmd+drag will move instead.

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