Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#1

Post by trishume » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS
thume.ca

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#2

Post by mcraiha » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

My tips: 1. Forget Finder, it is just bad for any power user scenario, and IMO worst part of Mac OS. Use Forklift or other similar app for all GUI file management operations. 2. Never drag and drop (this applies to any OS). Early release can cause all kinds of issues. 3. Make sure that you have fast access to Activity Monitor, since some GUI applications do not show any reasonable progress indicators when they start long lasting compilation/export operations.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#3

Post by chime » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

Author says Alfred is marginally better than Spotlight but I use it for so many different things. Doing quick math is a very common function for me. My favorite hidden trick is cmd+L which displays the typed text in HUGE fonts, so someone across the room can read it.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#4

Post by macinjosh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

My favorite is this:

You can drag the Spotlight search bar anywhere on your screen. But if you want to restore it to the default position long tap/click on the Spotlight icon in the menu bar and it will snap back.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#5

Post by missing_paren » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

> cmd+backtick is like cmd+tab but between windows of the same app.

Well, I wish that were completely true, because cmd+backtick only cycles through the windows of the application, while cmd+tab lets you select the application you want.

From Ubuntu (or maybe rather Ubuntu's default desktop environment?) I am used to cmd+backtick allowing me to select the window - I did find an application that does enable this behavior [1] but I wonder what else is out there. I used to use Hyperswitch but it doesn't seem to work on Catalina

[1] https://contexts.co

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#6

Post by adamnemecek » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

I'll add another one, if you have a file dialog open, hit Command+Shift+G to open a dialog that let's you type in the path. Useful if you are going back and forth between terminal and some GUI app and some path is in your clipboard.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#7

Post by trishume » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

chime wrote: post #3

Author says Alfred is marginally better than Spotlight but I use it for so many different things. Doing quick math is a very common function for me. My favorite hidden trick is cmd+L which displays the typed text in HUGE fonts, so someone across the room can read it.

Yah it's perpetually on my todo list to learn to use Alfred for more things, like using its built in file browsing more. It would be nice to have Alfred workflows set up for more things like switching Chrome tabs and Discord channels.

I do use it a ton for launching apps and quick calculations, but Spotlight can do that with a bit less polish.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#8

Post by newsbinator » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

Spotify flashes non-stop (the left sidebar and the bottom control strip, but interestingly not the main app window).

> Quartz Debug: There are some apps that reduce your battery life in an insidious way where it doesn’t show as CPU usage for their process but as increased WindowServer CPU usage. If your WindowServer process CPU usage is above maybe 6-10% when you’re not doing anything, some app in the background is probably spamming 60fps animation updates. As far as I know you can only figure out which app is at fault by getting the Quartz Debug app from Apple’s additional developer tools, enabling flash screen updates (and no delay after flash), then going to the overview mode (four finger swipe up) and looking for flashing. This same problem can also occur on Linux and Windows but I don’t know how much power it saps there.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#9

Post by scarlac » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

chime wrote: post #3

Author says Alfred is marginally better than Spotlight but I use it for so many different things. Doing quick math is a very common function for me. My favorite hidden trick is cmd+L which displays the typed text in HUGE fonts, so someone across the room can read it.

A few tips for Spotlight that made me stop using apps like Quicksilver and Alfred:

1. Typing something and pressing CMD+B will open a browser and do a Google search for that

2. Typing math works now

3. You can change your Spotlight preferences to not include files you don't wanna search on, essentially always showing apps (if you just want it do be an app launcher)

Alfred does a lot more than this, but for me these were the key automation features I needed to stop using it.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#10

Post by trishume » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

missing_paren wrote: post #5

> cmd+backtick is like cmd+tab but between windows of the same app. Well, I wish that were completely true, because cmd+backtick only cycles through the windows of the application, while cmd+tab lets you select the application you want. From Ubuntu (or maybe rather Ubuntu's default desktop environment?) I am used to cmd+backtick allowing me to select the window - I did find an application that does enable this behavi…

Wow Contexts looks incredibly well designed. I'm not sure I'll actually use it over my current Hammerspoon setup, but they combine all my favorite quick selection techniques like smart ordering, fuzzy matching, providing two-character hints which will definitely select a certain item, persisting things to keep hints consistent, shortcuts where you press a modifier type and then release to activate ...

What I really want now is for Alfred to copy all of Contexts search features so that I can use them for generic search matching in Alfred workflows.