- Welcome to Household Hacker Quick Tips.
Today, we're gonna be going over some Mac shortcuts
and we're digging deep, so grab a shovel.
(dubstep music)
Now, last time on Quick Tips,
we went over Windows shortcuts, and they're pretty awesome.
Click this video here to go check that one out
or go down into the description
and you'll find a link there.
All right, let's get into the Mac goodness.
Did you know that something as simple
as holding down the option key on your keyboard
will open up a varietous amount of options for you
in all the menus in OS X?
For example, if you hold option and click your Wi-Fi menu,
it'll let you diagnose a problem
or allow you to see more detailed information
about the network that you're on.
This will also work when you have a frozen app.
Hold option, then press your cursor down
on the app that's frozen.
A force-quit item appears.
Just click that and you're all set.
So, in short, option and click all the things.
See what kinds of hidden gems are in there.
Did you know that when you push the volume up
or volume down key on your Mac,
it results in a 6% change in volume?
Here's the cool thing.
If you hold down option, shift,
and then press the volume up or down key,
it'll result in a 1.5% shift in volume.
So, you can finely tune it
and get that audio exactly where you want it.
An awesome thing about this
is it also works for the brightness key.
Now, I can think of a ton of reasons
why you might wanna take a screenshot
of what's currently on your desktop.
With a Mac, it's really simple and straightforward.
If you wanna snap a specific region,
just press command-shift, and the number four.
Now, highlight the area that you wanna capture
and let go of the mouse. (shutter clicks)
If you wanna grab the entire screen,
just press command-shift-three. (shutter clicks)
Both of these commands will drop the screenshot
right onto your desktop for easy access.
Now, what if an app you're running
locks up on you and you can't close it.
Well, with Windows, all you do is push control-alt-delete
and then just kill it in the Task Manager.
Did you know that Mac has something similar?
If you press command-option-escape,
a screen will show up and give you
all the applications that are currently running.
You can simply select one
and force-quit anything that's hanging on
and get back to business.
Are you editing some photos or videos
and you're looking for a particular file
but you just can't seem to locate it?
You don't wanna minimize out?
Simple, just hold down command and hit space.
The Spotlight Search is gonna pop up.
Just type in exactly what you're looking for
and drag it into the application of your choice.
Press command-space again to get rid of the search box.
This is great for people
with a lot of directories or window clutter.
Speaking of window clutter,
sometimes you have windows all over the place
and you can't find the application that you actually need.
Try command-tab.
It's gonna pop up a little box
filled with all the applications that are currently running.
All you do is keep holding down command
and press tab to cycle through them
until you highlight the app that you're looking for.
You'll jump right to it without having to deal with
all that screen clutter that you made.
Now, this one's really cool
if you're looking to clean up your desktop
or sort some files all into the same folder really quick.
I take a lot of screenshots, as you can see here.
So, what if I want them off my desktop,
but I don't wanna delete them.
Simple, just select all the files
that you want and press command-control-N.
A new folder will automatically be created
and all the selected files will be moved directly into it.
Pretty nifty.
Are you ever reading an interesting article online
but you keep coming across links that look interesting,
however, you wanna stick with the content
you're already reading?
Just hold down the command key and click on the link.
It's gonna open that link up in a new tab
that gets put into the background for later viewing.
So, now you can put your focus
on the main article and save some for later.
Now, let's say you're working
on a very important private document,
but you gotta get up and go to a meeting,
go to the bathroom,
and you don't want anyone to see your screen.
If you quickly hit control-shift and the power button,
or the eject button if that's what you have,
it'll put your screen to sleep, not the computer itself.
So, if someone tries to access your machine
while you're away, they'll be met with the login screen,
keeping your information safe.
And finally, don't you hate when you're writing an e-mail
and all your text looks like this,
but then you hit paste and it comes out looking like this?
Well, that's because you copy-and-pasted formatted text.
We can avoid that very easily and very quickly.
The common command to paste is command-V,
but all you have to do is add a simple shift to the equation
and it'll paste unformatted text
that fits your document perfectly.
Again, that's command-shift-V.
This is a real lifesaver.
So, there you go.
Those are all of our nifty Mac tricks for you.
We obviously missed a bunch,
so if you've got some cool ones, put 'em in the comments.
And if you're a Windows user,
don't miss the Windows keyboard shortcut video.
It's also in the description.
But anyway, we'll see you next time and thanks for watching.
(powering down)