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macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

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101–110 of 360 posts

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#101
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.

There are also very good third-party replacements for cmd+tab. the one I use is called Contexts. Improves the experience massively

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#102

My favorites: To quickly find text, select some text and press ⌘E followed by ⌘G. In save dialogs, press ⌘= to switch between the compact and expanded layout. In save dialogs, press ~ to open a Go To File dialog prefilled with the home directory. Press / to open it prefilled with the root directory. Hold Option while opening the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth menus to access extra options. After copying a file, press ⌥⌘V to mov…

> To quickly find text, select some text and press ⌘E followed by ⌘G.

This is really nice. Once I am in this 'search' mode, I couldn't figure out how to get out of this mode.

- Edited to make question more descriptive.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#104
post #27
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 mean, it does work pretty similar to the windows task bar? If an application is open, it is listed there in the dock with a mark under it. You can pin applications to the dock or remove them via right clicking it. Right clicking on one will provide a list the windows which are open to which you can select from, as well as a "show all windows" option which will hide everything else, and visually show just the window…

The big difference for me is that there is no way to quickly jump between multiple windows of the same application. I often have multiple different projects open in vscode and would love a way to switch between them without having to right-click and selecting one from the list. All I want is something like the windows taskbar with auto-grouping disabled.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#105

There are so many hidden/obscure keyboard shortcuts in macOS, from time to time a post with a nice collection (and usually some hidden gems) appears on the front page here. But I always wondered if there is a place where you can find all of them, for reference.

Also pity that macOS makes very little effort to communicate these, so they almost feel like Easter eggs…

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#106
post #20

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 'workfl…

I find rectangle to be pretty good after needing a replacement for sizeup when development stopped there. My solution is to just ignore the existence of the full screen windows in favor of using the max window size shortcut to fill the current display. Then I can send a window to another display or resize it with shortcuts that are easy enough to get used to and avoid all the transitions that take seconds. The whole full screen experience is so bad otherwise, and this is from someone that is very used to the trackpad and all their gestures.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#107
Remember when Mac was intuitive?

I dig these cheat sheets but wow, what a total shift in paradigm from when you had one mouse button and if a feature wasn’t discoverable then it wasn’t shipped

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#108
All I want is an app that can fix the "broken window" focus management. Like when I click a window, Mac OS brings to top all windows of the respective app, and when an app (say, Finder) has no window open currently, bringing it to front also unaskedly manipulates the stacking order such that other app's windows become the top most one, completely destroying the visual context. Also, back in the days I used Expose a lot to navigate, but it has completely lost any spatial determinism and usefulness for me. These issues are very noticable, and feel gross and like a team of ignorants has messed around; it's very irritating that nobody is speaking about it.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#109
post #34
post #20

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 'workfl…

I used to use Alfred, but I've since switched to using Raycast as I liked some of the UI integration a bit better. I recommend trying it out! https://www.raycast.com/

Raycast has only rudimentary file workflows. Constant efforts for monetization (VC money) and milking AI hype are just cherries on top.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#110

Remember when Mac was intuitive? I dig these cheat sheets but wow, what a total shift in paradigm from when you had one mouse button and if a feature wasn’t discoverable then it wasn’t shipped

I think the issue goes beyond this. I get that Apple was always opinionated and wanted to ship intuitive features. Now they lost track of the intuitive and continued with the opinionated part, which degrades the experience in my opinion.
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