My absolute favorite is cmd+shift+/ which brings up the Help Menu search box.
With this I can type any menu item string and execute the item rather than having to remember each shortcut.
Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
11–20 of 85 posts
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#12The big one that I went through recently was killing startup items. You tend to hoard them over time, especially with a dev machine. Look in, and clear out in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems Like any good UNIX, there are a dozen other ways that applications can launch themselves in OS X, so run a ps and find processes that you don't need and figure out where they are being started. I alias ever…
Check out Lingon [1] for a nice front-end to launchd to modify its start-up items. It lets you quickly schedule items, such as bash scripts, in launchd too.
1. http://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/ for $4.99 or http://sourceforge.net/projects/lingon/ for a free, older version.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#13I like ctrl+opt+cmd+8 to toggle reverse video.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#14Wow, I just saw this nugget in one of the comments: VI mode for the standard Terminal.
Add "set -o vi" to your profile and you get access to same modality and commands of VI. Damn, I wish I knew about this option earlier.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#15"I love the fact that OS X will scroll the window that the mouse is hovering over, even if another application has focus. That way I can scroll an example that I am coding in TextMate without having to lose keyboard control on TM"
This also happens on Windows (at least on Chrome) but Windows goes even further: you can click through a link or button on a non-focused window. On OS X, in order to follow a link or click a button on some non-focused window, you need to activate it by clicking and then click again on the desired link/button. This drives me nuts as I found out I use this all the time on Windows. I call this feature "smart focus".
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#16"I love the fact that OS X will scroll the window that the mouse is hovering over, even if another application has focus. That way I can scroll an example that I am coding in TextMate without having to lose keyboard control on TM" This also happens on Windows (at least on Chrome) but Windows goes even further: you can click through a link or button on a non-focused window. On OS X, in order to follow a link or click…
Command click on buttons in background windows to click them without bringing the window to the front. Works for most things (at least anything using standard cocoa controls), although clicking links in Safari is a notable exception since it still seems to bring the window to the front.
You can also command+click and drag background title bars to move those windows without bringing them to the front.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#17"I love the fact that OS X will scroll the window that the mouse is hovering over, even if another application has focus. That way I can scroll an example that I am coding in TextMate without having to lose keyboard control on TM" This also happens on Windows (at least on Chrome) but Windows goes even further: you can click through a link or button on a non-focused window. On OS X, in order to follow a link or click…
This happens between Chrome windows, because you are still within Chrome if you have one of the windows in focus, so Chrome can determine which window you want to scroll by figuring out which one you are hovered over. On Mac, it scrolls even if the application in question is out of focus.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#18One I like is Ctrl+Cmd+d while the pointer is over a word will pop up a small dictionary with a definition of that word. This does not work in every application (e.g. it doesn't work in Chrome or Firefox), but it should work in any Cocoa based application.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#19Don't post tips here, post them on apple.stackexchange.com so others can find them...
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#20A few I can think of:
- Open the Apple menu. Now hold Shift. More menu options! Now try holding Opt. Even more menu options! This works for several Apple applications.
- Hold Opt when clicking on a menubar icon for extra information. For example, holding Opt and clicking the WiFi icon in the menubar brings up the signal strength, IP address and other useful information. Likewise for the rest of the icons.
- In Spotlight, select an entry in the search results and hit Cmd+Return to go to its parent folder. Opt+Return opens results in a Finder window.
- You know you can drop files on dock icons? Did you know you can also drop them on the icons in the app switcher (the thing that comes up when you hit Cmd+Tab)?
- This one is a bitch to describe, but very useful. You know you can hit Cmd+M to iconify ("minimize" in Windows-speak) applications to the Dock. But how do you get them back? Just do this: Cmd+Tab to the application, but don't release Cmd yet. Without releasing Cmd, press Opt. Now release Cmd. Done! This is equivalent to clicking the application's icon in the Dock, which means it has more uses than the one I described.