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macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

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Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#11

Post by mathieuh »

Philpax wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any advice for making the most of the Dock? I find it pretty unhelpful coming from an older Windows / Linux background: I just want easy access to the windows that are open on my current workspace on my current monitor, and it seems ill-suited to that. I usually have it on auto-hide because it takes up space without providing much value. I'm aware that I can do the three finger swipe to look at all o…

The dock just annoys me. I’ve been a Mac user for almost 15 years and it has never seemed useful for me. I cmd+tab or use Alfred to switch apps. To switch between windows of one application it’s cmd+`.

Note that you can also use cmd+tab and then while continuing to hold the chord use the pointer to select an application switch to.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#12

Post by mig39 »

Philpax wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any advice for making the most of the Dock? I find it pretty unhelpful coming from an older Windows / Linux background: I just want easy access to the windows that are open on my current workspace on my current monitor, and it seems ill-suited to that. I usually have it on auto-hide because it takes up space without providing much value. I'm aware that I can do the three finger swipe to look at all o…

For me, the dock is a drop target for files. Got a PNG and want to open it in Photoshop? Drag it to photoshop on the dock, for example.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#13

Post by cadamsdotcom »

Philpax wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any advice for making the most of the Dock? I find it pretty unhelpful coming from an older Windows / Linux background: I just want easy access to the windows that are open on my current workspace on my current monitor, and it seems ill-suited to that. I usually have it on auto-hide because it takes up space without providing much value. I'm aware that I can do the three finger swipe to look at all o…

You should use Exposé for that.

To swap between applications, use Cmd-Tab.

To swap between open windows of the current application you can use Cmd-Backtick.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#15

Post by CharlesW »

mathieuh wrote: post #11
Philpax wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any advice for making the most of the Dock? I find it pretty unhelpful coming from an older Windows / Linux background: I just want easy access to the windows that are open on my current workspace on my current monitor, and it seems ill-suited to that. I usually have it on auto-hide because it takes up space without providing much value. I'm aware that I can do the three finger swipe to look at all o…

The dock just annoys me. I’ve been a Mac user for almost 15 years and it has never seemed useful for me. I cmd+tab or use Alfred to switch apps. To switch between windows of one application it’s cmd+`. Note that you can also use cmd+tab and then while continuing to hold the chord use the pointer to select an application switch to.

> Note that you can also use cmd+tab and then while continuing to hold the chord use the pointer to select an application switch to.

You also do things like (for example) start a drag, ⌘+tab to show running apps, then drop on an app icon without using the dock.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#16

Post by jacurtis »

Philpax wrote: post #5

Does anyone have any advice for making the most of the Dock? I find it pretty unhelpful coming from an older Windows / Linux background: I just want easy access to the windows that are open on my current workspace on my current monitor, and it seems ill-suited to that. I usually have it on auto-hide because it takes up space without providing much value. I'm aware that I can do the three finger swipe to look at all o…

I hide the dock and basically never use it.

Install Alfred or Raycast and Command+Space your way to everything. Its 100x faster. I can launch any app in about 3 key strokes, which takes For example cmd+space+c will launch or switch to chrome. cmd+space+py is pycharm, cmd+space+go is goland, cmd+space+fi is finder, cmd+space+me is messages, cmd+space+1 is 1Password. cmd+space+1p+space will start searching 1Password.

That launches apps. You can also just start doing math problems (calculator) by just cmd+space and start typing out a math equation. cmd+space+ai+space and just start asking a question to AI.

These only scratch the surface. But cmd+space, which is an easy modifier combo that you can do anytime, will basically unlock unlimited power. Once you get the muscle memory down you can literally launch any app in less than a second without even looking. If the app is already open, it just brings that app to foreground. Once you have that, you can use alt+tab to switch between apps that are already open. This is useful if you are just swapping between two or three apps for reference quickly. Furthermore alt+tilde (the squiggle key above tab and below escape on most latin keyboards) will switch between open windows of the same type. FOr example if you have 2 chrome windows open, it will switch only between those windows.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#20

Post by nomilk »

Love that this is straight to the point.

My tips:

- Use Alfred. Game changer. It's an immediate improvement on spotlight search, you can run commands with three keystrokes (rather than opening a terminal, just command + space, then > ), it gives clipboard history and fast append (lets you press command + c twice fast to append to clipboard, and opt + command + c to search clipboard history), and lets you make 'workflows' to make frequent tasks extremely streamlined (I use one to open LLM prompts in five LLMs, so I press command + space 'llm ' and 5 browser tabs open with the same prompt in grok, claude, chatgpt, perplexity, and (local) deepseek.

- Itsycal: an 'install and forget' calendar for your menu bar (it also uses vim keybindings to move around the calendar which is a fun yet practical easter egg)

- There's still no good window manager for macOS. Rectangle is as close as it gets, but it's not good IMO because it only works on non full size windows. (the solution is just get ninja-like with three finger swipe, and endure using the mouse/trackpad more than you'd prefer)

- Vivid for double the screen brightness

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