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So I’ve made a number of videos now where I share Mac tips and tricks with you,
and each time I make one, I’m convinced that I’ve found all of the tips and tricks that
are worth sharing, and that there won’t be any more videos, and then I go and do some research,
and I learn a bunch of new things that I had no idea about. So, it’s only right that I share these
things with you, and that’s what I’m going to be doing today in this video - 10 more tips and
tricks for your Mac computer. Stick with me until the end of the video, I think there’s a couple of
absolute game-changers here. OK, let’s get into it.
Let’s start by talking screenshots, and stick with me, even if you know how to take a screenshot,
I still reckon there’s at least one tip here that you won’t have known about.
So, to take a screenshot on your Mac, you need to remember some key commands.
Command, Shift and the number 3 on your keyboard will automatically take a full-screen screenshot
of whatever is on your screen. Command, Shift and the number 4
will bring up this little crosshair, and you drag that across the part of the screen
that you’d like to take a screenshot of, and let go to take a screenshot.
Command, Shift and the number 5 is the kind of ‘Swiss Army knife’ of the screenshot function,
giving you loads of options all within the one menu.
On the left of the menu here, you’ve got options for capturing a screenshot of the entire screen,
an individual window, or a portion of your screen. In the middle, you’ve got the option to screen
record, rather than take a screenshot, and again you can choose to do this for the entire screen,
or a specific area. No option to screen record a specific window, which is kind of annoying,
but a little tip for you, if you hold and drag, on a large screen like the one I’m on here,
you can see the pixel count as you move the cursor, and 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall
is the typical wide-screen view that you’ll want for most things like YouTube videos.
Here in Options, you’ve got lots of options, like where you want to save to,
a timer function, and then you’ve got the capture button over here on the right.
Now, I said that even people who knew a lot about screenshots should stick around,
as I’d hopefully be able to show you something you didn’t know, well how about this?
When you capture a screenshot using the Command, Shift and 5 shortcut, which is great if you want
to screenshot a specific window, a downside of that is that Apple automatically puts this shadow
effect on the back of your screenshot. Now, some people really like this, I actually quite like it,
but there are times where I don’t want it. So, press Command, Shift and 5 to get your screenshot
options, then before you click the Capture button, press and hold the Option key on your keyboard.
And your computer will take a screenshot of the selected window, but importantly, it won’t super
impose it on a shadow background, like it does by default, which is a super handy tip to know.
Oh, final screenshot tip before we move on. By default, your computer will capture screenshots
in the PNG image format. If, for whatever reason, you’d like them to be captured as JPEGs instead,
do the following. Press Command and SpaceBar to open Spotlight Search, and search for
Terminal. Open Terminal, which will look like this, and copy and paste the on-screen command in.
I’ll include it in the description of the video, so you can literally copy and paste it.
Then press Enter to run the command, then restart your machine. Screenshots you take moving forward
will be in the JPEG format instead of PNG. If you want to revert back, open Terminal,
paste the following phrase in, I’ll include it in the description of this video,
restart your machine, and you’ll be back to PNGs.
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If you’ve moved to a Mac from the world of Windows, you’ll probably be used to having
both a backspace button, and a delete button. The difference is simple, especially when you’re
typing - the backspace button allows you to work your way back through text as you delete,
the delete button allows you to delete forward through text.
Now, with there not being a delete button on the Mac, you can’t perform this function.
Well, actually you can, you just have to know how to do it, and it’s really easy.
When pressing the backspace button, press and hold the function key, this one down in the
bottom left of your keyboard. Then, as you press the backspace button, you’ll delete forwards,
rather than backwards, essentially emulating the delete button on a Windows computer.
This is a follow-on from the previous tip. The delete button is of course useful for deleting
text forward on a windows computer, like we just saw, but it’s also useful for deleting
items from within Windows Explorer. So like here for example, I’ve got a file, and if I select it,
and hit the Delete button, it deletes the file. Here on my Mac, if I select a file,
and press the backspace button, nothing happens. But again, if you know what you’re looking for,
there is a way to quickly and easily perform this same function on your Mac. When you’ve
got a file selected in Finder, press and hold the Command button, and it will delete the item
for you, just like you can on Windows. Now, as you most likely know, on Mac,
deleting items is a 2 step process, items first go to the trash can, and then you either go and empty
that to permanently delete the items, or you can set your trash can to automatically delete
every 30 days or however long you like. This is essentially to give you the benefit of hindsight,
so if you suddenly realise that the file that you deleted, you actually want to keep,
you can quickly recover it. But what if you want to skip the trash can entirely, and go nuclear,
and just fully delete the item right away? Well you can. Use Command, Option and Delete,
and skip the trash can completely, going straight to the full-on delete instead.
Your Mac has a function known as Keychain, which is used to store your passwords and logins for
websites securely in an encrypted manner in the cloud. It’s super handy, and encourages
you to have strong passwords for the various different sites and online services that you use,
because you can access the logins across all of your Apple devices. But what if you want
to store information, rather than a user ID or a password? Well you can do that on your Mac,
using a function called Keychain Access. Open Spotlight search using Command and Space Bar,
and search for Keychain Access. You can see that the default view is all items, but you can
browse along the top here, looking at passwords, certificates, keys etc. The one we want is Secure
Notes. In the Secure Notes tab, press this Compose button up at the top. Give the note a name,
then input the information, and choose Add. Now, to view the note, double-click on it,
and you’ll need to press the ‘Show Note’ checkbox. You’ll then need to input your computer password
to make it visible, and as soon as you close the note, it will lock you out again,
which is obviously a good security feature. Apple claim that this could be used for storing
important, secure information for use in the non-Apple world, like a bank pin or alarm code.
The only negative here is that you can’t access these on iPhone or iPad at the moment,
which kind of sucks. You can however lock a note within the Notes app,
using the lock button up at the top, which is pretty much the same thing,
and this is accessible on Mac, iPhone and iPad, so you might prefer this option.
If you regularly copy text from one application to another on your Mac,
you’ll no doubt have encountered the issue where you paste content with a load of formatting,
like a font that you don’t want, or text at the wrong size. This happens to me with emails
all the time. It’s irritating, because you then have to select the text that you’ve just pasted,
and find the Clear Formatting function in whatever app you’re using, or even more annoying,
change each part of the formatting bit by bit. But, there is a better solution.
I’m sure you already know that Command and V is the command to paste on your Mac. Well
instead of using Command and V, use Command, Shift, Option and V. Yes, you’re going to
have to get a bit dextrous with your left hand to make this work, but it’s worth it,
as you’ll then paste your content without formatting, meaning it will match the formatting
of whatever you’re already working on, saving you a tonne of time and hassle in the process.
If you drag to select a load of text, pretty much anywhere in Mac OS,
you can then click down on your mouse or trackpad and drag that text to somewhere else.
So for example, rather than copying and pasting text into an email, you could simply click
and drag a load of text into an email instead. This in itself is quite useful, but if you click
and drag a load of text over to the desktop of your Mac, or any folder in Finder for that matter,
it will create a text clipping file containing that text. So, if you’re researching, and you find
this a useful way of quickly collating useful text together for example, this could be super handy.
Continuing with the text theme for a moment, if you’re running a newer Mac like one of the M1
devices, your function key down in the bottom left will double up as an emoji key. You tap
that button, and you can access the full range of emojis that you can access on your iPhone or iPad.
But if you’re running an older Mac that doesn’t have that button, there is a keyboard shortcut
that you can use instead to gain access to that menu. Just tap Command, Control and Space,
and the emoji menu will appear. Oh, and if you’d prefer a larger, more detailed and arguably easier
to use emoji menu, just tap this button up here in the top right of the menu, and it will expand.
Pressing the same button will take you back to the more minimalist emoji menu instead.
I’m pretty good with spelling, but I do still have some words that always cause me to pause
and scratch my head for a moment before I type them, and if you struggle with spelling, that’s a
feeling you’ll know all too well. The autocorrect function on Macs can actually be pretty annoying,
especially when it autocorrects names or brand names or other words that you know you’re typing
out correctly, but there is a little known spelling function on the Mac that’s seriously
helpful. If you’re unsure of the spelling of a word, just start typing out as much of the word
as you know. Then, once you reach the point where you don’t know any more of the word,
just hit Function and F5 on your keyboard, and your Mac will pop up a window with suggestions
for what the word could be. From there, you could either use it as a spelling aid,
or you could just click on the word, to input it right into your text.
I’ve covered Hot Corners before in one of my previous videos, where you can assign
functions to each of the four corners of your screen, but one that’s relatively new,
and one that you might be more familiar with from the iPad, is the ability to take a Quick Note.
The idea behind a Quick Note is that, wherever you are on your device, you’re never more than a quick
swipe away from being able to call up a new note, and quickly grab relevant content in relation to
what you’re doing, and input that into your note. I’ve got mine assigned to the bottom right of
the screen, you can assign yours to whichever corner you like, by going to System Preferences,
then Mission Control, and then choosing Hot Corners. Then, when you’d like to make a note
of something, simply push your cursor to the relevant corner, and click on the little note
that kind of peaks out from that corner. What’s great about this, is that if you’ve
got a browser tab open at the time, like I have here, you can click this link button,
just like on the iPad, and your Mac will insert a link to that page, which is obviously great
if you’re researching something, and want to be able to quickly come back to that particular page.
But you can also do this directly from a passage of text for example.
So here in Safari, I’ve got a passage of text selected, and I’m going to right click and
choose Add to Quick Notes. You can see that it quotes the text that I’ve selected in the note,
but it also automatically includes a link to the page, so if you’re using this as part of a
research project where you need to always be able to cite your sources, this is extremely helpful.
Most apps designed for Mac will come with keyboard shortcuts already included for the most commonly
used tasks, but developers won’t usually have a shortcut included for everything. You might
find that there’s a task that you’re carrying out, that you’d like a keyboard shortcut for,
but one doesn’t exist. Fortunately, you can create one for yourself, manually, and it’s really easy.
So, to do this, there’s two things you’ll need to do.
The first, is you’ll need to open the app which you’d like to make a shortcut about,
and then write down the menu path of whatever it is that you’d like to do.
So for example, let’s say that the app that I want to create a shortcut for is Microsoft Word,
and let’s say that the function that I want to create a shortcut for, is to access the
Format Document function, which you can see doesn’t currently have a keyboard shortcut.
I first of all need to open Word, and find out the exact menu path for this.
So you can see that it’s in Format, and then it’s called Document… with those three dots at the end,
that’s actually really important. I’m then going to go to System Preferences,
and then Keyboard, and then Shortcuts, and then App Shortcuts,
and I’m going to press this Plus button down here. In Application, I’m going to choose Microsoft
Word from the list. Then, in Menu Title,
I’m going to type the following; Format, hyphen, the ‘greater
than’ icon, then Document, dot dot dot. Notice the hyphen and the greater than icon
between Format and Document, and notice that I’ve included the three dots at the end of the word
‘document’. That’s important, because this has to exactly match what’s written in the application.
Then, in the Keyboard Shortcut box, I’m going to input a shortcut. For stuff like this,
I usually do something like Command, Option, Shift and a Number, which might seem like a lot,
but I want to ensure I don’t overwrite an existing, useful shortcut. You can of course
choose what you like. To input it, simply input the keys as if you were inputting the shortcut.
And now if I go into Word, and look up here in the Format menu, you can see that my shortcut has been
created. I can of course now input that shortcut on my keyboard, and just like that, the function
is carried out. If you’re a keyboard shortcuts kind of person, this is a super handy tip to know,
opening up a world of possibilities when it comes to getting the most out of your apps.
So there you go, another 10 Mac tips, to go with the 3 Mac tips videos I’ve already created,
so I think 40 Mac tips and tricks now, to help you get the most out of your computer. If you’ve not
watched those 3 videos already, I will link to them in the description of this video,
and I’d encourage you to go and check them out. What about you,
any tips that I’ve not included in these videos? Drop me a comment,
and let me know about them. And 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 video.