Cmd + ~ (tilde) Cycles between the windows of the same app. Similar to cmd + tab. Saved me so much when reading multiple pdfs in preview
Oh this is a live saver that I have been looking for since forever.
Thank you so much.
Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
421–430 of 540 posts
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#422While 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…
And yet you can't select and drag text like you can on Windows...
What do you mean? I can select and drag text fine.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#423The `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 av…
This incredibly useful to get alerted to some long-running job finishing or the like, e.g.
./some-lengthy-job | say Done
I still use this as a kitchen timer all the time when cooking while on my Macbook with utimer, which is basically a count-down timer for the shell (available via brew install utimer), e.g.
utimer -c 10m | say Pasta is doneRe: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#424The `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 av…
Serial Experiments Lain (1998) used PlainTalk for its title cards. You can still recreate the title card voices in macOS. say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one"
That doesn't seem to work on the latest Catalina ("Voice Whisper not found.") – do I need to install them separately?
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try changing the default in Safari, on the theory that it might use that as some sort of “system search engine”? Failing that, it’s probably just hardcoded.
Changed and it's still Google. Yeah the search string is probably hardcoded :(
Try Alfred. It’s even easier. I have a global shortcut that opens a search engine prompt. Press enter to begin the search.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#426Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#427Smart 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…
I’ve been sad since they were introduced that they don’t work at the file system level, hence not in CLI applications. Support for them in desktop apps that open directories is also spotty. I would LOVE them if they were reimplemented as a fuse style file system instead of a userland macOS trick.
You could probably write a wrapper that uses the plist + spotlight (mdfind) to get a functional wrapper.
That being said, I agree that support should be native.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#428You 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.
This does not seem to be supported in iTerm, if anyone else is wondering.
In fairness, it's barely supported in Terminal.app --- in that I had to make a bunch of solid-colored images to make it work! It should be a first-class feature of all terminal applications. I had no idea how much I want this feature day-to-day until I got fed up with a 27" monitor display crammed with overlapping identical-looking tcpdump windows a few weeks ago.
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#429I usually have multiple Bash tabs open in Terminal, and I needed a quick way to see what each tab contained. The following bash script will set the Title of the tab. #!/bin/bash # Sets the title of the Terminal Window / Tab. # title foo => Sets the title of the Terminal Window / Tab to foo. echo -n -e "\033]0;$1\007"
Should anyone be wondering why this doesn't work in fish, it seems it overwrites the title back to the default pretty much instantly. So no custom tab names with fish, it seems!
Re: Ask HN: What feature did you find after years of using macOS?
#430I once discovered a way to restore a minimized window without using the mouse. It requires a bit of practice:
1. Press Command-Tab to show your running apps. Keep holding Command.
2. Press Tab until you've selected the minimized app.
3. Press the Option key, and let go of the Command key. You must release the Command key after pressing the Option key! The minimized app is now unminimized.
Note that this only works for an app with all of its windows minimized. If there is already a visible window of the app you won't be able to get to the minimized one with this trick.
I posted it once to Super User where it’s still getting attention after 9 years: https://superuser.com/questions/196141/keyboard-shortcut-to-...