Not a Mac built-in feature, but life-changing nonetheless: Amethyst window manager. You can install it with brew cask install amethyst.
It's a tiling window manager. If you've used tmux, i3 or awesomewm you'll feel right at home.
Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
301–310 of 540 posts
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#302`pbcopy` and `pbpaste` for copying to / pasting from clipboard. Nice time savers!
In a similar vein, I have a shell script (fish, in my case) that combines these to let me quickly modify the contents of the clipboard:
function pbedit
set tmpfile (mktemp /tmp/pbedit.XXXXX)
pbpaste > $tmpfile
if vim -c "set nofixeol" $tmpfile
pbcopy Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#303Smart Folders (Finder -> File -> New Smart Folder). It's not exactly hidden but I never paid too much attention to it. It's essentially a way to create a folder whose content is dynamically updated based on your search conditions. For example, you can create a smart folder that contains all PDF files matching a certain name pattern within a given directory (or the whole disk) [0]. You can get really advanced, there's…
is there a way to use this to rebuild the missing "All My Files" on Macs?
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#304I’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"
Yep. Mojave really messed up the font rendering of my 2013 Macbook Air.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#305The 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!
cmd + shift + h = home directory cmd + shift + a = applications directory cmd + shift + d = desktop directory Semi-related, type `open .` in terminal to open that directory in Finder
I use cmd+shift+u all the time.
It's great when you don't have a mouse, or don't want to use it:
cmd+tab: pulls up app switcher, keep clicking until you select Finder
cmd+shift+u: opens utility menu t: highlights Terminal.app cmd+o: opens a terminal
type
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#306my favourite feature is how the title bar icon in any app that’s editing a file (textmate/ word etc) is a pointer to the actual file unlike windows. - you can drag that file anywhere to move it. - CMD click it to see a breadcrumb menu showing where it is and navigate to the folder on a similar vein, dragging a file into an open file modal box makes it browse to the containing folder. In windows, dragging a file would…
You can even drag the file into a terminal window to turn it into the full path.
Also works with copy-paste from Finder into Terminal (or iTerm). Love that feature
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#307Setting 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
are you mathiasbynens? If so, thank you. I've been using that script as a reference for my own clean install script. Not sure where else I could have found the information, seems like Apple themselves are against documenting it and have in fact deprecated some of the settings in later macOS versions.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#308- 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…
One more tip about the screenshot functionality:
If you're using a Macbook with a Touch bar, you can press Cmd + Shift + 4 to enter a screenshot selection mode, and then use Touch bar to adjust screenshot mode (full screen, window or selection) and destination (Desktop, Clipboard, Preview, Documents etc) on the fly.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#309OPTION + CMD + V to cut and paste files (found this today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080378)
Hold down OPTION to vertically select text (works in the terminal at least)
CMD + SHIFT + . in Finder to show/hide hidden files
CMD + CTRL + D on a selected word to open the dictionary
I'll sometimes use the `say` command to let me know when a long-running command on the terminal finishes (e.g., `say Done`)
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#310If you’re in Terminal and want to open a Finder window with the current path, just type “open .”