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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?

#481

Post by Khaveesh »

IgorPartola wrote: post #436

Might be mentioned below but: In the terminal you can use pbcopy and pbpaste to use your clipboard: cat my.txt | pbcopy . In the terminal you can use the open command to open a file or a folder in finder: open . and open foo.pdf . Double tap the window frame to maximize it correctly (not to a new screen and not just on one axis but the way Windows maximize works). Multiple virtual desktops and swiping between them wi…

The cat command is unnecessary when all you want to do is copy a file's contents to clipboard. Just do

  pbcopy

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

#482

Post by jw1224 »

A little late to the party, but hopefully these are useful if anyone sees them:

- If you need to make a quick screen recording video, open QuickTime Player. There’s an option to record the screen in the menu.

- (This one’s been extremely useful to me, and hardly anyone seems to know about it!) — If you need to provide tech support to another macOS user, open iMessage on your Mac, and start a conversation with the other person’s Apple ID. Click the dropdown caret beside their name in the recipient list, and click “Ask to share screen”. A VNC request will be sent straight to their Mac (with built-in microphone audio, so you can chat to them), plus options to control their computer remotely.

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

#483

Post by m-p-3 »

jw1224 wrote: post #482

A little late to the party, but hopefully these are useful if anyone sees them: - If you need to make a quick screen recording video, open QuickTime Player. There’s an option to record the screen in the menu. - (This one’s been extremely useful to me, and hardly anyone seems to know about it!) — If you need to provide tech support to another macOS user, open iMessage on your Mac, and start a conversation with the oth…

I found out lately that you can even record the screen of a brand new iOS device using QuickTime when plugged via USB.

You can easily record the initial setup that way, which helped immensely with users working from home getting phone upgrades during the pandemic.

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

#484

Post by jw1224 »

m-p-3 wrote: post #483
jw1224 wrote: post #482

A little late to the party, but hopefully these are useful if anyone sees them: - If you need to make a quick screen recording video, open QuickTime Player. There’s an option to record the screen in the menu. - (This one’s been extremely useful to me, and hardly anyone seems to know about it!) — If you need to provide tech support to another macOS user, open iMessage on your Mac, and start a conversation with the oth…

I found out lately that you can even record the screen of a brand new iOS device using QuickTime when plugged via USB. You can easily record the initial setup that way, which helped immensely with users working from home getting phone upgrades during the pandemic.

I didn’t know about that, thanks for the tip!

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

#485

Post by nxpnsv »

etimberg wrote: post #411
nxpnsv wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found out the other day that you can drag and drop this into a document...

Hmm, it must be something special in certain apps. I've tried that into the Slack desktop app and it didn't accept it

That’s odd that was my exact learning example

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

#486

Post by awinder »

MikusR wrote: post #463
awinder wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a hard pill to swallow when my ability to read anything is so strained by trying to focus letters. I mean if I was just able to read the words better I'd not be complaining, that's what I want to do lol. I'm on 1440p here and microsoft sells devices with higher resolutions so I don't know how much legs this argument has to keep going on. I mean this is what I see in windows system preferences promising to make…

Something is broken with you pc. What resolution have you set? In Windows you set display resolution to your monitors native resolution. And then in Scale and Layout you set the necessary scaling.

Native resolution (3440x1440), scaling is default. This was a clean install on new hardware.

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

#487

Post by anotheryou »

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…

Mac rendering only looks good on retina though. On "normal" monitors windows looks way better.

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

#488

Post by nicwolff »

aunty_helen wrote: post #217

Cmd-space to bring up spotlight Type whatever you want. Cmd-b Your default web browser with your default search engine will now open and perform your query. I can't stress this enough how much I use this workflow when writing code. Another thing for the OPs issue with the screenshots, (there's a few steps via terminal so maybe try the above shortcut to search for an article on how to do it) you can have all your scre…

For more fun, have your screenshots sent to a folder, then have a LaunchAgent run pngcrush on new files in that folder...

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

#489

Post by niteshade »

TaqPolymerase wrote: post #230
throwaway333444 wrote: post #8

Setting 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

Do you have a good way of discovering these keys / syncing them with the UI? I like to do the same thing but sometimes change a setting in the UI and don’t know what to update in my script without diffing the entire prefs directory before and after the change.

AFAIK diffing is the only way, I'd love to hear if anyone has a better technique

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

#490

Post by niteshade »

You can do basic screensharing with Messages on macOS. Open Messages, select a message thread with an existing contact, then from the menu bar, select Buddies > Invite to Share My Screen (or Ask to Share Screen).

Doesn't work for groups (last time I tried at least), and hideously undiscoverable.

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