What cool stuff have you discovered in the Mac OS?

[flyboyy]

I've been using Macs since my B & W laptop. ; ) Yes I know one of the three b&w computers sold. It's the Scottish in me.

There are constant changes and I typically don't follow them and so miss out on a lot, however I have been using search features more often of late and I just noticed that in 'preferences' you can start to type into the search bar top right and it'll highlight (with a spotlight) the section to look into for what you want to explore/change. Very cool!!

So how about a random listing of cool stuff in the Mac OS?

 

[IWT]

It's the Scottish in me.

That puts you above the rest

Me same! Only never left the UK

Ian

 

[flyboyy]

It's actually quite confusing as I have Scottish, Irish, English and Swiss running around in my veins. Can't make up my mind as to if I should be eating haggis, English biscuits, yodelling or playing the Irish pipes.

 

[IWT]

Oh what a tangled web we weave - I mean this in the nicest sense, not quite as Sir Walter Scott implied. Really, it's all about confusing factors over which we have no control


Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

So how about a random listing of cool stuff in the Mac OS?

I used to be the host of a Web site that gave out cool tips about the Mac OS.

Here is one that I use all the time, and when I first found out about it I was upset that I hadn't heard about it way sooner.

If you don't know the meaning of a word, click or double-click on it to highlight it, and then hold down:

Command-Control-D

and a pop-up window with the definition, and even synonyms, will appear!

This doesn't work in all applications. And in some applications (e.g. some third party browsers) you have to hit Command-S to save the word into memory after you highlight it for this to work.

 

[pm-r]

Here is one that I use all the time, and when I first found out about it I was upset that I hadn't heard about it way sooner.

If you don't know the meaning of a word, click or double-click on it to highlight it, and then hold down:
Command-Control-D
and a pop-up window with the definition, and even synonyms, will appear!

I have been able to do a similar thing by selecting a word or sometimes a phrase and right clicking and choosing the "lookup" option that produces a window with dictionary, thesaurus Etc.
I've had this feature working since at least OS X Mavericks and still works in El Capitan and as far as I know it's a built-in OS feature.

As for the OP's question, just doing a Google search on various Mac OS version "features" often brings up some indication or hints of things that might or could be useful. Or "Mac OS hints" for some other variation suggestions.



- Patrick
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[flyboyy]

Thanks Randy/Patrick. I've used the right click for awhile and it's quite useful.
I wonder if there is a way to hook up my Oxford English Dictionary to this feature? Maybe I'll contact the developer...

 

[IWT]

I wonder if there is a way to hook up my Oxford English Dictionary to this feature

Not entirely sure about that; but you can choose which dictionaries you want. To do this, highlight a word, Right Click on it > Look up "word" > Configure Dictionaries.

Here you will find a large list, some foreign naturally, but you can select at least one Oxford Dictionary (US) which may suit you.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

So how about a random listing of cool stuff in the Mac OS?

I dare say you might find several hints and goodies with a Google search such as this:

mac os tricks - Google Search

There used to be a Mac utility that may also be available that also provided various user options by basically toggling the appropriate terminal flag I believe or some such thing, but I cannot recall its name.


EDIT:
My brain kicked in, and with the help of a quick visual scan of my Utilities folder, I see the name of the utility I could not recall is TinkerTool.app:

TinkerTool: Description

Product description for the latest generation of TinkerTool

www.bresink.com

I cannot recall if it's tied in to the Mac OS version one is using or not. I believe his readme at his web page will explain if that is needed or not.

Probably best if you have a backup, preferably cloned back up, before implementing any commands, but everyone has a current working backup these days don't they. Yeah right... ;-)



- Patrick
=======

 

[flyboyy]

Not entirely sure about that; but you can choose which dictionaries you want. To do this, highlight a word, Right Click on it > Look up "word" > Configure Dictionaries.

Here you will find a large list, some foreign naturally, but you can select at least one Oxford Dictionary (US) which may suit you.

Ian

What that is the magic sauce! Took me a minute to figure out that you have to scroll down to get the "Configure dictionaries" part, but that opened up a whole vista of choices. My wife was quite interested in the French (she's French) and the Spanish as she wants to keep up practice and I got my wish with the Oxford English Dict. +thesaurus, + Oxford French and even Chinese as I have some Chinese friends.

 

[IWT]

I got my wish with the Oxford English Dict. +thesaurus, + Oxford French and even Chinese as I have some Chinese friends.

Great!

Ian

 

[Rod]

I'm not going to list all of the options here, there are too many but the Option key holds many secrets. Try pressing it when selecting a menu in the menu bar and see how many optional commands become available. Option + Right click also produces some interesting items.

Here's a bit of a list from Apple on shortcuts but there are more. Mac keyboard shortcuts

Here's an even better one just on Option key features: Eight Hidden macOS Features You Can Access With the Option Key
There are some really brilliant ones in the above article, some of which I already use and a lot I never knew about, but I will be now. Id recommend saving the page as a text file, I'm going to

 

[IWT]

I wholeheartedly agree with Rod about the Option key. I have, over the years, posted examples of its usage.

It's a key in plain sight, yet tends to be ignored.

One use, not mentioned in the splendid article posted by Rod is:

Hold down the Option Key and Right Click on a File. You will find some really useful "options" such as "Always open with".

In fact, once you've Option-Right Clicked a File, keep your finger on the Option Key, then lift it, then depress it again. This will actively reveal the changes between Option "on" and Option "off".

You can try this with almost any "Option Key on-off" action after you have initially used the Option key.

One final use of Option: say you have 6 Tabs open in Safari and you want to clear all but one of them. Hold down Option and Click on the one you want to retain. All the others will be closed.

Great post, Rod.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

I'm not going to list all of the options here, there are too many but the Option key holds many secrets. Try pressing it when selecting a menu in the menu bar and see how many optional commands become available. Option + Right click also produces some interesting items.

+!. Excellent suggestions for possible extra options.



- Patrick
=======

 

[flyboyy]

My brain kicked in, and with the help of a quick visual scan of my Utilities folder, I see the name of the utility I could not recall is TinkerTool.app:

TinkerTool: Description

Product description for the latest generation of TinkerTool

www.bresink.com

I cannot recall if it's tied in to the Mac OS version one is using or not. I believe his readme at his web page will explain if that is needed or not.

Probably best if you have a backup, preferably cloned back up, before implementing any commands, but everyone has a current working backup these days don't they. Yeah right... ;-)



- Patrick
=======

Nice I just dumped a whole bunch of old stuff and rediscovered some new and I can store them in another drive what is left. I have a SSD so space is limited. Thanks Patrick

 

[flyboyy]

I wholeheartedly agree with Rod about the Option key. I have, over the years, posted examples of its usage.

.....

Great post, Rod.

Ian

I am trying to understand what the slideshow option is about. I am not understanding why you would use it..

I was inspired to try the other keys that I never use and discovered the F4 key which I can move around the apps so my favourites are always on the first page.

 

[pm-r]

I am trying to understand what the slideshow option is about. I am not understanding why you would use it..

I'm sorry FB, but I am not understanding exactly what you mean by the "slideshow option".

It could possibly be any of the following hits:
mac slideshow option

mac slideshow option - Google Search

- Patrick
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[flyboyy]

OK I see it's for pics mainly.

 

[pm-r]

So how about a random listing of cool stuff in the Mac OS?

If you are still wanting to know more Mac OS tricks you could spend a lot of time just searching the web with a Google search and you could search with something very general such as:

mac os tricks

mac os tricks - Google Search

For more custom searches just modify your search phrase and maybe include your Mac version

No sense reposting here what's already available on the web, that's just a matter of searching and looking and some reading...

Besides many of the Mac OS tricks that are out there, there are also tons of small utilities that can make your Mac-using life so much easier and quicker.




- Patrick
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[pm-r]

So how about a random listing of cool stuff in the Mac OS?

Here's a newly released trick you can add to your list and do if you're running the latest Mac OS version and apparently you can also bypass CAPTCHAs on iPhone and iPad with a similar Settings toggle.

How to Bypass CAPTCHAs on Mac Automatically

How to Bypass CAPTCHAs on Mac Automatically

If you’re a Mac user, you may be interested in bypassing CAPTCHAs that you encounter as you browse the web, automatically. Nobody likes CAPTCHAs, which are the goofy tests that we are subject…

osxdaily.com

That's a handy little trick to help speed things up and let web pages know that you are not a Spam bot or machine but somebody living and real without a lot of extra hassles.

It seems that there are a few browser extension to do the same thing that will work with other browsers especially Google Chrome, but I haven't checked about other browsers.





- Patrick
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