The coolest hidden feature of OS X is probably the text input system.
Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#52CMD-down will open the selected file in the Finder (same as double-clicking).
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use spotlight for all kinds of math (12 / 4) * (44 + 35) etc Command + c will copy the highlighted spotlight result. Expose (show all windows) and drag and drop files to that window (i grab the file, while dragging show all windows by either a keybord key or hot corner and drop it to the new window) Hold down command to move around background windows without giving it focus. Ctrl + (arrows or numbers) to go to cert…
IMO Spotlight is the best example of minimalist software design. In a single universal field you have instant: app launcher, calculator, dictionary, file search, email search, contact search. My single best tip for Mac power-users: learn what you can do with Spotlight. Edit: grammar
Spotlight also has keywords -
kind:pdf
date:yesterday
author:short_name
from:contact_name
And the boolean relations AND, OR, NOT work as you might expect.
There's a lot of cool stuff hidden in Spotlight. Try
man mdfind
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#54A more comprehensive DB of various tips for MacOS: http://secrets.blacktree.com/
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#55A 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 Spotli…
That fifth trick is superb. Apps that don't reopen their closed main window when cmd-tabbed to drive me nuts (Mail especially, as there's no shortcut to open the message viewer).
This has been one of my main sticking points of OS X window management for a very long time. At least there's a workaround, thanks!
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#56The first two are part of the reason why I hate using Windows at work. The fact that you cannot drag files to their icons and have that file opened in the application seems like something out of the past. To scroll a window in Windows, the window needs to have focus. To scroll a scroll pane in an active window, that pane needs to have focus -- it is maddening especially when hover events work for non-focused windows…
I'm not sure what you're talking about - dragging files onto icons always worked for me. What was maddening for me though in Leopard (10.5) is that you couldn't drag a file to an already-open application, like you could in the Windows taskbar (like to drag a file to a specific explorer window, for example).
Thankfully, you can do this now in 10.6 - drag the file to an already open application and hold it there for a few seconds. Then the app comes up, then (without ever releasing the mouse button) drag the file to the application window, and hold for a few seconds. Now you can drop your file in that window. The whole process takes about 5-6 seconds (which is agonizingly slow), and, IMO one of the worst aspects of application-driven window management (versus window-driven window management).
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#57I wish there was a way to do these (like you can in windows), maybe someone knows a way?
- Right click a file, "Send To". The nice thing about it is you can add items to the Send To folder so you can have a customized list of apps you can open files with
- Right click on a folder and "open in terminal"
- Type a path into a finder window and have finder open it
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#58Hold Ctrl-Shift while moving your cursor over the Dock to temporarily enable magnification. Useful when your Dock is crammed with tiles.
you can also hold down ctrl and scroll up or down the trackpad with two fingers to magnify the whole screen. Really helpful for zooming in when your laptop is hooked up to a projector.
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#59The first two are part of the reason why I hate using Windows at work. The fact that you cannot drag files to their icons and have that file opened in the application seems like something out of the past. To scroll a window in Windows, the window needs to have focus. To scroll a scroll pane in an active window, that pane needs to have focus -- it is maddening especially when hover events work for non-focused windows…
You can drag files to application icons just fine in windows. You can't drop them on taskbar, but can on desktop (which you can embed into task bar to have immediate access to all your desktop icons with other apps maximized).
Just add desktop as a toolbar on the task bar, uncheck all the text and make it take full line, so as not to conflict with running apps. Then drag files onto those icons and they will be opened in new or running instances, whatever apps are designed to do.
Edit: so it looks like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15669592/taskbar.png
Re: Mac OS X hidden features and nice tips & tricks
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually a Readline thing.
Something I've always wondered though - did emacs take them from readline or did readline take them from emacs? How old is readline? Where did all of those C-a, C-e, etc conventions come from?
They came from emacs. Readline is now around v6, readline v2 seems to have been from the mid 1990s.
There is a smaller set of standard commands for killing (C-h for char, C-w for word, C-u for line) which are used in many terminal apps. They are orthogonal to emacs, and probably about as old (1970s).