This video is brought to you by TrendMicro’s Cleaner One Pro!
With all the tutorial videos I’ve done recently one might conclude that I speak fluent Mac.
Every once in and while, however, I stumble upon tips and tricks that I’ve never heard
of that make me feel as if I speak gobbledygook.
Let me show you my most recent macOS tips and tricks discoveries that you might not
have heard of.
Warming up with a 3-finger drag!
This is a trackpad feature that works on both the trackpad of the MacBook, as well as the
external trackpad if you have one.
When managing and moving around windows, things might get cumbersome, especially when using
just a trackpad as you have to press and hold on the trackpad with the index finger and
then practice yoga moves with your other finger.
When you enable 3-finger drag, you just use your 3 fingers to move things around, avoiding
the extra step of having to press first and then hold.
3-finger drag works everywhere, not just when managing windows.
If you work on an image, for example, you can move around the selected objects as expected
and this is where you start to appreciate this feature.
If you haven’t heard of this feature and to enable it you have to think like Apple
- DIFFERENTLY - by NOT placing it in the logical trackpad settings, but instead in Accessibility,
Pointer Control, Trackpad Options, and Enable Dragging.
Really?!?
WHY?!?
Sound input and output Let’s talk about a hidden option that should
be available by default on the Mac.
You know how you can see your list of speakers and output devices when clicking on the Sound
menu?
Where are the microphones?
By default to change your input, you’ll have to go to System Preferences, Sound, and
Input which honestly is just too much of a hassle.
Don’t do that anymore.
Instead, click on your sound menu by holding the Option button to also reveal the available
microphone devices.
Before we move on to the next face-palm tip, one tip or more like a procedure that is a
best practice for any Mac user is properly uninstalling apps.
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I often use the toolbar, which gives me a glance at my computer's memory usage and junk
accumulation which I can clean with a simple press of a button.
Along with it, I can use the Disk Map tool to accurately pinpoint and figure out what
is taking up most of my hard drive space and adequately clean up everything.
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Next up is Refined Brightness and Media control.
Did you know that when you press the volume up on your Mac you have 16 little square increments
to increase the volume?
YES, I counted them.
Why 16 BTW?
Anyway, sometimes when watching somethings something those 16 increments might not be
precise enough.
Instead of going to the Sound Menu and trying to fine-tune the volume, you can simply press
Shift+Option and start increasing and decreasing the volume to achieve the optimal result.
Shift+Option also works with your brightness level as well.
I am sure by now you are all very interested to know, so I’ll tell you: using Shift+Option
gives you 64 levels instead of 16.
While on the topic of brightness control, I want to point out that 64 is the Max, but
if you have the Pro Display XDR 14 or 16-inch MacBook Pro, you are eligible for more brightness
- that sounded like a law firm commercial.
See, MacOS keeps the brightness around 500 nits tops unless the content you are consuming
or creating calls for more.
Only then do you get to fully see the potential of the 1600 nits beast of a display.
So if you are sitting and working on a document in bright sunlight the only thing that can
make you feel better is reading the specs of your 1600 nits display knowing that you
can only use 500 nits.
NO MORE.
The Vivid app allows you to double your standard brightness on demand which comes in very handy
on those sporadic but crucial moments when you really need to see what you are working
on.
For the people that are worried about long-term harm to the laptop, according to Apple “The
Pro Display XDR can sustain 1000 nits of brightness across the full screen.
This means that a pro can edit an HDR photograph or video with the entire frame at 1000 nits
of brightness, indefinitely.”
So the only victim here might be your battery charge, but that’s not something that you’d
want to blast your face with all day long anyway.
Ok, so, I am a designer by trade and as such, normal people's needs like converting or optimizing
images have always resulted in using pro-grade software for such simple tasks.
But if you don’t want to use Affinity Photo or Photoshop and you simply want to optimize
or change the image format for uploading reasons?
Well, it turned out you can do that on the Mac out of the box.
Just right-click on an image, go to Quick Actions and then convert image.
From there, you can reduce the size of the image or simply change its format from let’s
say PNG to JPEG.
Guess what, I now use that too.
While on the topic of images, I didn’t know that you can select a bunch of images and
generate a PDF combining them.
To do that, simply select all the images and right-click.
Go to Quick Actions and Create PDF and voila!
I am a long-time Mac user and I used to work in a newspaper where I had to merge multiple
images and pages into PDFs all the time.
Back in the day, that wasn’t an option and there were special tools for that.
Now, it’s part of macOS - very cool.
This reminds me that you can create PDFs by combining images and PDFs as well.
No word documents tho!
There’s no option to choose the size of the PDF in terms of optimization - just FYI.
The next tip that I have is something I could’ve used way too many times.
I am talking about the ability to record your iPhone screen with QuickTime.
The way I’ve done it so far was to use the built-in iPhone screen recording feature which
I would then AirDrop to my Mac for integration.
Still an option, BUT, the sacrifice would be the recording icon on the top.
If you want to avoid that and save the time of Airdropping the footage, simply connect
your iPhone to your Mac and open QuickTime.
Then, from the menu choose New Movie Recording, and from the little drop-down right next to
the Recording button, choose your iPhone as a source.
Press record and thank me by leaving a like on the video and subscribing.
BTW, if you don’t enjoy the video, let me know in the comments WHY and we’ll become
friends - I promise 🙂 For the longest time, I’ve been enjoying
the ability to sign documents using the Preview’s built-in annotations options.
With the help of the iPad, I was now able to create more accurate representations of
my signature.
Here’s how it works.
In preview, open Tools, Annotate, Signature, and Manage Signatures.
Click on create signature then select the third tab (iPad or iPhone) and select your
device.
Now, with the precision of the Apple Pencil, things look a lot better.
Now, let me give you some quick tips that you might find very handy.
READY?!?
When you press the F3 on the Mac you take advantage of Mission Control, viewing all
your active windows.
By pressing Command and F3 you do something better, which is to reveal the desktop.
If you use that a lot, you can create a hot corner for this action where when you hit
the bottom right corner of the screen, for example, you always reveal the desktop.
When previewing items in Finder with the Space, hold the space while previewing them, and
once you are done, release it.
This will save you an additional step of hitting the space bar again.
One of my personal favorites that I should’ve known years ago is using Command and the up
and down arrows to go in and out of folders.
This saves so much time when working and browsing between the folders of a project.
When you open Safari, press Command + L to immediately go to the address bar.
Do this.
Press command + Space to open Spotlight, type A, S, F, and press enter, then Command + L
- don’t you feel like an absolute Pro now?
While on the topic of Safari, Command + Z opens your last closed Safari tab.
Next, you can rearrange your menu bar icons by holding Command and dragging them around.
If you don’t use an app like Bartender, this might be the ideal free way to achieve
a better organizational balance in your menu apps.
Press and hold Option while right clicking on the Finder.
On the bottom, you’ll see the option to Relaunch the Finder in case it freezes up.
If you do the same action for other apps in the dock, you’ll be able to immediately
force quit them.
Next, if you find these tips a bit intimidating and you are fairly new to the Mac, check out
my beginners guide here.
Next, subscribe to the channel and as always, it’s been an absolute pleasure,
This is E Over and out