Do you know the best thing about Mac? The device is packed with umpteen possibilities. There isn’t a day in a Mac user’s life that goes by without discovering something new or stumbling upon a hidden feature. It could be a feature in-built into the OS or an app that opens a new world.
Regardless of whether you are a MacBook Air or Pro, Mac Mini or iMac user, you’re bound to find the following cool mac tricks amazing, and it may even boost your productivity.
1. Don’t just listen, but see your music
In iTunes or the Music app, a display of a psychedelic light show can instantly enhance your music-listening experience on Mac. To start the show, press Command + T and display the keyboard controls by pressing Shift + /.
In the keyboard controls, A and S adds and subtracts bits to or from the light show, and M changes the display mode. If you want to hide or show the track information, press I.
Want to keep it old-school? Go to Window > Visualizer Settings > Classic Visualizer and bring to life the original iTunes visualizers. You can go back to modern visualizer following the same steps but choose Visualizer this time.
2. Hide icons
The desktop is a great place to save files, folders and documents, and it is also the perfect place to put all important files so that you don’t forget. But when you start to place everything on your desktop, it can start to look cluttered and unappealing quickly. So, how can you make your desktop look presentable?
The obvious choice would be to delete the files, but what if you need them? The alternative is hiding the desktop icons. Hiding icons is a fantastic option when you need to clutter-free your desktop for taking a screenshot or giving a presentation. You can learn all about hiding icons in the guide found here https://setapp.com/.
3. Copy and paste text between Apple devices
If you use a Mac and an iPhone, a really cool trick is to copy the text on one device and instantly paste it on another. For instance, you can highlight text on your iPhone, copy it, and then paste the text to your Mac.
For the trick to work, ensure your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are switched on both devices. Also, you must be logged into the same iCloud account.
4. Make Spotlight do more
Did you think Spotlight is only there to launch applications and find files? You’re not using Spotlight to its full potential!
Spotlight saves users from opening Safari when they need to perform a conversion or calculation quickly. For instance, if you press Command + Spacebar and type ‘1000 USD to AED’, it will do the currency calculation for you. It will even convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and work out the monthly cost of purchasing a 24-inch iMac over two years. Moreover, it enables users to search with particular criteria like kind: PDF or get definitions of words, weather updates, football scores, and so much more.
5. Electronically sign your documents on Mac
Why go through the hassle of downloading PDFs or documents, printing them out to sign and then scanning them to email it back when you have a Mac? Macs are in-built with the Preview application, which makes e-signature hassle-free.
Open Preview > click Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures > click Create Signature. You can create a signature using your iPhone or Mac’s trackpad, or you can sign on paper and hold it up to your Mac’s camera.
Whenever you need to sign a document, open it in the Preview app > select Tools > Annotate > Signature and select your signature to add it to the document. The signature can be resized or moved around in the document. You can save multiple signatures in the app and use whichever is applicable for the document to be signed.
6. Three-finger drag on the touchpad
For dragging windows and other files around Mac, users have to click down on the touchpad and move their fingers. In some regards, moving items by tapping and clicking feels like a step backwards. Fortunately, Mac offers a touch gesture called three-finger drag which lets users move items around Mac without clicking first.
It is an amazingly handy feature, which Apple buries in settings. You can enable this feature by going to System Preferences > clicking Accessibility > selecting Pointer Control > choosing Trackpad Options and clicking the checkbox next to Enable Dragging. Then, select three finger drag from the drop-down menu.
So, make a note of these tricks mentioned above to ensure your Mac is working to its full potential.