In my previous video, I showed you 10 things that you could do on your Mac, that you might not have
known about, and I said at the end of that video, that I would have more tips coming your way.
Well, I wasn’t lying, here I am with another 10 things that your Mac can do,
that you might not know about. Now as ever with these tips, please ensure that you’re running
the latest version of Mac OS to ensure that all of these work for you, but in general everything
here should work on your Mac, whether it’s a Mac laptop like the Pro or the Air, or a desktop like
the Mini, the iMac or the new Studio. OK, 10 tips, let’s get into it.
You can bulk rename files in Finder, which can be really helpful if you’ve got a load of files with
all different kinds of names, and you need to try and bring some kind of order to the proceedings.
Select the files, then right click and choose Rename.
First up, you can choose whether you wish to Replace Text, Add Text or Format the name.
If you choose Replace text, you’ll then specify what in the current file names you wish to find,
and what you’d like to replace it with. If you choose Add Text, you can specify
what text you’d like to add, and whether you’d like it to be before or after the current name.
And if you choose Format, you can rewrite the entire thing,
choosing a name format, inputting any kind of custom formatting, numbers etc.
It’s all very simple, and works really well with folders full of lots of files,
allowing you to quickly organise and manage folders that might otherwise be a bit of a mess.
Following on with the format of bringing a bit of order to chaos,
you can also use something called Stacks, to organise your desktop at the click of a button.
Now, I’m really particular when it comes to my desktop, I hate having clutter,
but for the sake of this illustration, I’ve quickly put a load of files on the desktop to
make it look as messy as I can, and they’re a mixture of lots of different file types.
So, what I’m going to do is right click on my desktop, and choose Use Stacks.
Just like that, your desktop condenses the files down into easy to manage stacks,
and if I right click again, I can choose how I’d like the stacks to function, whether it’s by file,
or by Tags, or by the date they were last opened. To view the files in a stack, just click on the
stack, and it will open up, and you can access the files as usual. Click out to close the stack.
Just to cover a point that we briefly mentioned in the previous tip, let’s talk Tags for a second.
You can use tags as a way of managing your files. To assign a tag to a file or a group of files,
select them, then right click and either choose Tags to create a custom tag, or you can click one
of these options above to create a coloured tag, which you can then rename if you wish.
If I then open Finder, and scroll down in the bar on the left, I can see the tag that I’ve
just created, and if I click into it, I can view the files associated with that tag. This will work
for tags all over the Mac, so it can be a really good way of organising files that you might have
in loads of different folders, allowing you to quickly bunch them together when you need to.
You probably already know how the traffic lights in the upper left of your apps work.
The red button will close the window down. It won’t always close the app down,
you might need to either go to the menu bar up in the top left and quit the app fully that way,
or press Command and Q on your keyboard to fully close an application down, but the red button will
close the window you currently have open. The amber button will minimise the window,
and then you can tap down here in the dock to bring it back to where it was.
The green button will make the app go full-screen, which some people really like.
The issue with full screen is that it literally goes full screen, so you lose things like the
menu bar up at the top, you can’t view the time, you won’t be able to see your dock without moving
your cursor down to the bottom of the screen. What many people like to do is to Zoom the app.
To do that, press and hold the Option button on your keyboard as you tap the green button,
and this will maximise the app to the entirety of the screen, without going completely full screen.
Another way to achieve this is to double-click on the title bar of an app, which by default
will zoom the app, and double-clicking it again will put the app back to how it was.
You can change this setting, if you go to System Preferences, then Dock & Menu Bar, you can
toggle this between a double-click in the title being used to zoom an app, or minimise an app.
You can access a feature called Hot Corners. Go into System Preferences,
then Mission Control, and press the Hot Corners button. A hot corner, essentially means that,
if you push your cursor into that corner, a pre-defined action will happen. For example,
you can see that the bottom right is configured to be a quick note.
Anywhere on the Mac OS, with this enabled, you can push down into the bottom right corner,
and then click, and a note will be created. But you can do other things with Hot Corners.
I personally find that using it to access Mission Control or the Desktop
are especially useful, but you can see all of the options that you’ve got available to you here.
And you can of course move different functions to different corners,
so if you like Quick Notes for example, but you don’t want it in the bottom right,
you can go ahead and move it to somewhere more suitable to you.
Typing on the Mac is quick and easy, but it's even easier to use dictation. In fact, the words that
I'm speaking at the moment have been written into my script using nothing but the dictation tool.
First up, you'll need to enable dictation. You do this by pressing the function button
and the D button, then following the on-screen prompts to enable dictation.
Then when you want to actually use dictation, press the F5 button on your keyboard.
Your Mac will listen to you speak, and dictate everything that you say.
You need to get into the habit of saying things like ‘comma’ when you want add a comma,
and ‘full stop’ or ‘period’ when you get to the end of a sentence,
or ‘new line’ when you want to move the cursor down to a new line, but it really does work and it
works well, and if you find typing either tiresome or difficult, this can be a real lifesaver.
Handoff is one of the most useful tools in the entire apple ecosystem,
and it's incredibly easy to both set up and use. Handoff allows you to begin doing something on one
of your Apple devices, and then continue doing that thing on another Apple device, for example
browsing the web on your Mac, and then resuming on your iPhone, or writing an email on your iPad,
but then continuing it on your Mac. But you can also use Handoff to copy something on one of your
devices, but then paste it on another device. As an example, I use this all the time with
my video scripts. I write the scripts on my Mac, and then copy and paste the script into
an application on my iPhone, which I then use with my teleprompter. Let me show you.
Here’s the RTF file on my Mac. I’ll open it, select all the text, and then choose Copy.
Then here on my iPhone, I’ll create a new script file, and choose Paste. You can see that the phone
pastes the content that I copied over on my Mac. The real beauty of this is how little you
have to do to make it work. So long as your devices are all signed in as you,
and all connected to the same wifi network, this will work. Give it a try, it’s an amazing feature.
If your Mac supports Touch ID, you’ll likely have created a fingerprint for your primary
finger when you set the Mac up, but you can create multiple prints, just like you can on the iPhone.
I believe the limit is 3, and to add new ones, simply head to System Preferences, and Touch ID,
and then add more prints. I have my index finger on both hands for this,
so that no matter what I’m doing, if I have something in my right hand for example,
I can still reach across and unlock my Mac without any major issues.
If you use a Trackpad, either the one built into your Mac or the one that you can purchase
for desktop Macs, you might not realise that you don’t have to do that horrible
click-down thing when you want to select something, you can use what Apple call,
Tap to click. Tap to click requires the lightest of taps, and is totally silent,
but still works exactly the same way as a regular click. Let me show you the difference.
To enable it, head to system preferences, then Trackpad,
and enable Tap to click. It does take a bit of getting used to, but it’s one of those
features that, now that I use it, I really couldn’t imagine using a Mac without it.
You can sign documents with ease using your Mac, thanks to the Preview tool.
Let’s say that this PDF which I’ve got here, needs signing. If I double click to open it, it
will open with the Preview app. If I go to Tools, then Annotate, then signature, I can literally
drag and drop a signature right into the PDF. But let’s assume I’m doing this for the first
time, I need to create a signature. I do that by choosing Manage Signatures.
You can use your finer on the Trackpad to draw your signature in.
I’ll be honest, this is one of the few times where a Mac function that should work really doesn’t in
my experience, I find this quite difficult to get right, but there are two other options.
One is to write your signature on a piece of white paper, and use the camera in your
Mac to scan the signature in. This is pretty good, this worked quite well when I tried it.
A better alternative, if you have one, is to use your iPhone or iPad. The iPad in particular is
awesome if you have an Apple Pencil, as you can use the pencil to scribble your signature over
on your iPad, and it will be saved to then use on all your Apple devices, including your Mac.
So there you go, 10 more tips for things that you can do on your Mac that you might
not have known about. I have got another one of these videos planned for very soon,
but in the meantime, are there any other tips that you use, that I haven’t included?
Drop me a comment and let me know. Oh and don’t forget to check out
my original 10 Mac Tips video, which I’ll link to in the description of this video.
As ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and subscribing to my
channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next vide0.