Silver Mac

This new version just scrolls like butter…

192 Responses to “Cool things you can do on Mac”

1. Giorgio Martini said: Sun, 22 January 2006 at 09:13

   What can I say… wow. Been using a Mac for over 6 months now, but almost all of these are new to me. Thanks!

2. T said: Sun, 22 January 2006 at 11:28

   I’ve tried that text clipping thing with Firefox on my Gnome laptop and it works here as well!

3. Marco said: Sun, 22 January 2006 at 16:42

   Here’s a cool one:

   Open the Terminal and type “KillAll Dock”, without quotes. Do not hit enter yet! Now, minimize a window while holding shift. As the window is minimizing, and before it is completely minimized, hit enter in the Terminal to kill the dock (don’t worry, it’ll restart itself). Have fun playing with the distorted window! Scrolling it is awesome!

4. KP said: Tue, 24 January 2006 at 09:22

   I like the invert color feature, but on my PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, I only get the inverted colors for a split second, then it goes to inverted greyscale. Is there a system preference or something?

5. Graham said: Sun, 5 March 2006 at 11:15

   Wow thanks man ! The Copy Text and Slow minimise are new to me thanks.

   You can also Shift + click a window that is minimised to slow Maximise it
   this feature is going to be a realy use full feature to me as i am running an old iMac G3.

6. Big J said: Fri, 30 June 2006 at 08:23

   Like “T” said, the highlight text and drag to desktop feature also works in linux, KDE, GNOME, FluxBox and probably many more.
   I’ve just tested it in windows xp (just to make sure :)) and yes, it doesn’t work…

7. Brian said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 08:07

   What about the zoom feature? That’s pretty dang cool.

   Hold down command and hit the - or + keys. Or, if you have a scrolling mouse, hold down control and scroll.

8. Oz said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 08:23

   Brian, In addition to that zoom, hold down command + Option and you will zoom wherever you scroll. ( just remember to turn it on in Univeral Access–In System Preferences

9. Thame said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 08:37

   The shift also works for other animations like expose and dashboard…

10. Matthew said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 08:57

    Marco - Bloody good tip!

11. Matthew said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 09:01

    Another tip.

    Hold down option and command while clicking the dock icon of an open program - all windows will hide except the application you clicked!

12. Ed said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 09:18

    Heres another I found with some keyboard mashing:

    Command + Control + Alt + Eject Key = turn off computer (almost as good as having a shutdown key on the keyboard again!)

    I’m pretty sure this is right, at least my computer shut down and I haven’t bothered turning it on again to test again!

13. Monkey said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 09:37

    Heres another I found with some keyboard mashing:

    Apple + Option+ Eject Key = sleeps computer

14. rick rapp said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 10:32

    I like another version of the screen capture (Apple+Shift+4) hold Apple+Shift+Ctrl+4 and it auto pastes the selection to your clipboard, then paste it wherever you want it. Great for Photoshop.

15. MacMonkey said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 10:47

    Those are great tips….but something your Windows buddies can boast is a simple cut and paste in their finder (windows explorer). Why for the love of god doesn’t Apple allow you to cut files from one location, store it on clipboard, and paste them in another location? So simple, yet so necessary. Instead we need to rely on a third party app like Pathfinder to do it. Come on Apple, stop inventing time machines and reinvent Finder…..

16. dbriansmith said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 10:48

    I bet the invert thing looks great on a black macbook!!!

17. Jon said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 11:02

    If you hold command while moving a file in finder, the file will be put in the new location and the file in the old location will be deleted. Apple’s keyboard cut and paste…for files.

18. Craig Phillips said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 11:20

    Actually MacMonkey you can Copy and Paste in the Finder (and have been able to for a while - can’t remeber is it was 10.3 or 10.3.x) - I not sure why you can’t Cut & Paste…

    Probably because its file desctructive if you don’t paste and log out or suffer a BSD on Windows and that doesn’t jibe well with the Mac philosophy… (”like where’d my file go dude”)

19. Dan said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 11:21

    I can’t use the dictionary function (Ctrl - Cmd - D) in Safari for some reason, but I can use it in other places such as Mail and Help. Any ideas?

20. Graham English said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 11:44

    If you dug these, you need to get Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips by Scott Kelby. I’m pretty sure that’s where it all started.

21. Crashpod » Blog Archive » Yet more OSX tips said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 11:51

    [...] With whole websites dedicated to uncovering the nuances of OSX, it’s no wonder that interesting tidbits are popping up all the time. Any OSX savvy user that follows the cult of tycho will find this discovery from Silver Mac’s “Cool things you can do on a Mac” incredibly helpful: When in any of the Cocoa (Mac native) applications you can hover your mouse above the word and press Ctrl-Cmd-D on your keyboard. You will get the Dictionary description for that word. [...]

22. Victonight said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 12:05

    Slow Motion also works with the Dashboard. Hold shift as you press the Default F12…

23. MacMonkey said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 12:14

    re: cut and paste in Finder

    Jon, yes that is a way of moving a file, but first you have to either bring up a separate window or spring load your way through what could be a jungle of pathways before you get to what you want, and oh…if you happen to let go of the mouse button before you get there bad luck.

    Cut and paste, hold the path in clipboard, find your destination then paste would be so much better. IMHO.

    Besides that, Macs rule

24. goobimama said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 12:44

    Slow motion also works in the dashboard WHEN you are deleting a widget. Press shfit while clicking on the close widget button (X)

25. linkinpark342 said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 12:53

    *holds super key+mouse 1 and drags from one corner to another* Hey check that out i made a png of what i selected on my desktop….
    I

26. glibberish said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 12:57

    MacMonkey: copy and paste of files works in Finder just fine! However, given how scattered I get, I’m glad Cut doesn’t work–too risky. Requiring a modifier and drag is a safety procedure. Makes for a more noob-friendly OS, too.

27. zenmouse said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 14:48

    I work for Apple and actually any mac specialist knows all of these, so they probably wouldn’t “freak out.”

28. trevc said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 15:06

    To copy your screen captures to the clipboard, just hold the control key as you draw your box, or if you’ve hit the space bar, before you click on a window with the camera …. saves having to clean up files afterward!

29. Mac tips « mad dog in the fog said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 15:09

    [...] Silver Mac > Cool things you can do on a Mac [...]

30. Taylor said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 15:55

    How about this one…If you have a bunch of windows open and you want to see something behind the window your in but you don’t want to leave your current window, hold comand and click and drag the back window around. It doesn’t jump to the front when you hold comand.

31. johndoe said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 16:00

    many of these are controlled by useful widgets so you don’t have to remember the shortcuts

32. Lawsy said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 16:35

    Good list, the dictionary one looks as if it will be very usefull.

33. jaduffy108 said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 17:54

    Very useful imo…Target disk Mode:

    How to use FireWire target disk mode

    Important: Unplug all other FireWire devices from both computers prior to using FireWire target disk mode. Do not plug in any FireWire devices until after you have disconnected the two computers from each other, or have stopped using target disk mode.

    Tip: If you will be transferring FileVault-protected home directories (Mac OS X 10.3 or later only), log in as the FileVault-protected user and temporarily turn off FileVault. After transferring home directory contents to the target computer, enable FileVault protection again if desired.

    To use FireWire target disk mode

    Make sure that the target computer is turned off. If you are using a PowerBook or iBook as the target computer, you should also plug in its AC power adapter.
    Use a FireWire cable (6-pin to 6-pin) to connect the target computer to a host computer. The host computer does not need to be turned off.
    Start up the target computer and immediately press and hold down the T key until the FireWire icon appears. The hard disk of the target computer should become available to the host computer and will likely appear on desktop. (If the target computer is running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you can also open System Preferences, choose Startup Disk, and click Target Disk Mode. Then restart the computer and it will start up in Target Disk Mode.)
    When you are finished copying files, drag the target computer’s hard disk icon to the Trash or select Put Away from the File menu (Mac OS 9) or Eject from the File menu (Mac OS X).
    Press the target computer’s power button to turn it off.
    Unplug the FireWire cable.

34. ph said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 18:14

    Uh…. cool trick, the invert thing…. but how do you un invert once you’ve activated it?
    gulp

35. Michiel said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 18:23

    @MacMonkey: Am I missing something here? Afaik it IS possible to copy & paste a file within the finder without dragging (no, not by using the terminal). When right-clicking on a file you’ll get a contextual menu which has the option to “Copy “”". Then you can navigate to the place you want put the file and “Paste item”. That does exactly what you just described…

36. Marksy said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 18:53

    I find that the “flash screen” when there is an announcment, alert or error.. its really usefull when an application in the background needs your attention and/or sound is muted.

    I think its available under Universal Access, on or off.

37. Erik Jon Sloth said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 19:11

    A short evaluation (yes, I use Windows):

    Dictionary:
    - Really cool feature (my jaw just dropped)

    Invert screen:
    - Why on earth would you wanna do that?

    Slow motion:
    - Why on earth would you wanna do that?

    Text clipping directly to a file on the desktop:
    - Cool feature (no jaw-dropping, though)

    Screen capturing:
    - Cmd-Shift-3?!? In Windows you just press “Print Screen” on the keyboard, how’s that for a cool feature?.
    - Cmd-Shift-4 and then SPACE to capture window? Do you have to hurl a dead goat over your left shoulder as well? In windows you just press ALT+”Print Screen” to capture the active window…
    The secret key-combination CMD-SHIFT-3 reminds me of the early versions of WordPerfect (no, thats not a compliment :).

    TOTAL SCORE ON THE MAC vs. PC SCALE: 2/5

38. LBE said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 20:25

    If you press ⌥ key while you’re over a widget, the (×) will appear.

    ↓

    You can delete a widget without opening that + in the left-under corner of the screen.

39. Alex said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 20:26

    RE: Erik Jon Sloth

    Invert screen:
    -For use in bright light or if its sunny outdoor to read txt clearer

    Screen capturing:
    - Windows needs you to paste the capturered screen into Paint, photoshop etc and save to req. file type… OSX saves the file automatically to your desktop as the file type you set it to

    Do you prefer it to be complicated?

    and finally

    Slow Motion:
    -Well if your 3D card renders your windows why not show it off? Its not the default minimise mode but windows doesn’t exactly use the genie or scale effect when minimising.

40. Adrian Bool said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 22:15

    The invert screen option used to be pretty useful when it went to inverted grey-scale - but with the inverted colours it just looks ridiculous.

    Does anyone know how to revert to the old (Jaguar?) behaviour of grey-scale invert??

    Thanks

    aid

41. vrypan|net|log » links for 2006-09-08 said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 23:17

    [...] Cool things you can do on Mac some nice tips. (tags: osx howto) [...]

42. Dave said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 23:23

    the invert colors option is recommended when your battery is running low (PowerBooks).

    rgds Dave

43. B3NN3TT said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 23:27

    Re: invert screen-

    Black pixels use no power, which is a useful feature on a laptop. Battery life can be extended considerably by making all your white pixels black.

44. Mike said: Fri, 8 September 2006 at 23:46

    “Uh…. cool trick, the invert thing…. but how do you un invert once you’ve activated it? gulp”

    Actually, you can’t, it stays like that forever.

    OK, just kidding, just repeat the Ctrl-Opt-Cmnd-8 again :-)

45. anonymously yours said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 00:10

    To copy text and (some) pics from any webpage to another app, all you have to do is highlight the text (and pic) and drag (by the text) to any app in the dock that will show allowance, IE, drag to the dock and textedit and stickies and mail will each grey to show that it is eligible.

    Stickies will show the text only and you have to drag the graphics in separately, same in mail.

    Dragging to text edit in the dock gives you the pics and text and then you can save with pics as rtfd.

    btw, love the invert tip and am using it now.

46. Reid said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 00:33

    Many more keyboard combos are documented here:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

    Ya, I know, not quite as much fun as keyboard-msashing.

47. gareth said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:04

    Also when highlighting text, if you hold down Cmd and Alt and then select text you can highlight at will from within the body of the text rather than being bound by selecting whole lines - if that makes semse?! Drag to desktop works with this also. :)

48. Nick said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:06

    Yeah. My wife’s mac got put in the negative color mode by one of my kids. Took me a while to get it out of that mode. Seems like if they are going to create that “feature”, at least they should make it easier to get out of, like put an icon at the top or bottom of the screen to undo it whenever in that mode.

49. Saigan said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:20

    If you want to cut files, install OnyX it has the option to implement cut in the menu ;) (and it’s free)

50. craven.fr said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:21

    Cool things you can do on Mac…

    This entry on Silver Mac had me calling Emilie over to watch more than once. The inverted screen (ctrl-opt-cmnd-8) and slow minimise (shift) are my favourites, but the text drag will probably be handy if I can make it a habit. Anyway, recommended ….

51. Jason said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:25

    The drag text to desktop is also availble in Linux and *BSD, well KDE. And don’t forget kids, the middle mouse button pastes the selected text to where ever you like, no copy/paste required. This has been standard on unix for decades.

52. Harry Smoke said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:26

    Awesome tips, thanks!!

53. Mike said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:36

    Interesting. Thanks for the tips!

54. Martindale said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 03:37

    My Gnome desktop does everything here that isn’t just eye candy…

55. ct said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:01

    Right, text-clipping to the Desktop does not work on Windows. But it does work dragging text into another app, which is where you want the text to begin with. What use, really, is putting it on the Desktop, only to drag it again into another app? Drag directly into your email, word processor, text editor, URLs onto browser, etc. These do work on Windows.

56. Extra Character said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:10

    A dictionary is available in most aplication text windows. Highlight the word, right click, and a menu allows you to select the dictionary among other things. If you have a single button mouse control-click does the same thing.

57. gareth said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:20

    I thought I’d commented but can’t see it so apologies for double posting if I have.
    Text Clipping - try Cmd and Alt to highlight text from within the body of text without being restricted to whole lines; slightly random but interesting.
    And for Win users who may be envious of Screen Grabbing try Captrect from here:
    http://www.yomogi.sakura.ne.jp/~si/SolidImage/index_e.shtml
    which does a great job.
    Love the screen invert one, nice :-)

58. Josh P said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:28

    You can use the shift key to slow down a lot of other effects as well. Try holding shift while you use Expose to show the desktop or other windows. You can even use the shift key to slow down the rotate effect that happens when you use apple’s fast user switching. Try using shift to slow down other effects you think might work! It’s fun using the shift key to really show off a mac to windows users. I think that’s the number one reason it was put there in the first place.

59. Chas said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:33

    Enjoyed your article but wanted to add…

    Re: Text clipping

    This section is not completely accurate. Windows has “Snippets” instead of text clippings. It is the same functionality, though more Mac applications impliment Text Clippings than Windows apps impliment Snippets.

60. claytron said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:48

    one thing i’ve found handy is the extras in cmd + tab. go to an item and press ‘h’ to hide that and press ‘q’ to quit it. tis beautiful.

61. gregory said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 04:55

    On the screen capture, you can throw a control in the Cmd-Shift-4 and Cmd-Shift-3 and it will copy the image to your clipboard (instead of just making the png). Then you can just tab over to photoshop and paste the screenshot.. Cmd-Cntrl-Shift-4

62. Dan Vine said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 05:07

    I use the “white on black” option (invert) daily.
    You can take your mac laptop outside and read normal 12pt font in Word or any text editor in direct sunlight. Haven’t tried this is on a new “glossy” mac laptop screen.

63. dave said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 06:21

    Shift clicking works with expose as well. Hold shift and activate it (usually F9-F11) Of course I love expose because its so fast, but it’s fun to watch with a handful of windows open :)

64. monkeyhumper said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 06:28

    I wasn’t satisfied with having PNG files as my default picture files, and there is a way to change the format in terminal. I’d look it up, but I’m too busy destroying my rods and cones with the inversion shortcut.

65. David Currin said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 06:31

    KillAll Dock returns KillAll: command not found when I try it

66. John said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 06:41

    The “clipping” effect worked in Windows 98: select and drag a portion of text onto your desktop, and it would appear as a clip. I don’t think it worked in reverse (dragging a clip into an email), and the icon was also ugly (but then again, there were a lot of ugly things in Windows 98).

67. Rob said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 07:03

    On a MacBook(pro) you can zoom to the cursor by holding Function + Control (fn + ctrl) and using two-finger scrolling on the trackpad. Quite useful when you need it.

    It may also work on newer powerbooks as they had two-fiunger scrolling.

68. Roar said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 07:16

    Marco, this doesn’t work. I’m running 10.4.7, and you can’t input commands during the Genie sequence.

69. Rob said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 07:18

    If you hold shift and use Expose or show the Dashboard it does it all in slow motion. And if you have widgets that expand & contract using animation. Those too take it slow with a shift click…

70. BigJim said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 07:39

    Two comments on text clipping…
    1. Any Windows user who bothers to go through the right-click > new > text file gyrations is a newb. Put Notepad on your quicklaunch bar and learn the shortcut for copy and paste. Also, this doesn’t create a file if you don’t want it to.
    2. Is this really a good mechanism anyway? Selected text isn’t a “file” per-se, so Finder is making that decision for you. It’s not horrible, but it’s not perfect.

71. carl said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 08:10

    If you add Ctrl to the screen capture key combinations, then it will take the snapshot and place it on the clipboard instead of to a file. So for example, if you wanted to take a full screen shot and e-mail it to someone but don’t care about saving it in a file for later, you could hit Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-3 and then in a new message window in Mail do an Edit->Paste (Cmd-V).

72. Richard said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 08:23

    • To quickly and easily select a certain word but not any surrounding space or punctuation, double-click on it. It’s also possible to select a paragraph in the same manner by triple-clicking on it. Additionally, you can extend the selection by keeping the mouse button pressed after pressing it for the last time (the second and third time for words and paragraphs respectively).
    • To move to the beginning or end of a line of text, press command-left or command-right respectively.
    • The icon to the left the window title represents the file or folder which that window represents as a Finder object. For example, you can drag this icon into a folder.
    • To quickly navigate to a folder which is open in Finder when selecting a file or folder using a file or folder selection dialogue, drag the folder onto the dialogue.
    • To quickly see the definition of any word, position the cursor over it and press command-control-D.

73. drew said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 08:31

    @ KP - Yeah, my powerbook does the same thing (pretty much same model, but slower). Still really cool, though, inverted gray-scale…

74. TJ said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 08:33

    The dictionary thing didn’t work for me. 10.4.6. iMac G5.

75. Dis said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 08:52

    Also, if you hold the control key during any of the screen-capture sequences, the screen image will be saved to the clipboard instead of a PNG file on your desktop.

76. hobeaux said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 09:36

    additional screen shot features:

    Command-Shift-4 + spacebar: This allows you to capture a single window, dropdown menu, or what-have-you. The file retains the opacity of the original object (drop downs are semi transparent, windows are transparent in the corners)

    don’t want to get screenshots all over your desktop? then get screenshots put into your clipboard instead!
    control-command-shift-3: full screen capture
    control-command-shift-4: crosshair selection
    control-command-shift-4 + spacebar: window/menu

77. Jethro said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 09:49

    Me and my friends did the inverted screens to all the Macs at my school one day (about 90) and the lab assistants could figure out what was going on. I later found out that they ended up wipeing out the user profiles on all of them and recreating them. That made me feel like an asshole. lol oops well thats my story

78. Tim said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 09:52

    What about the system-wide zooming? Make sure you have zooming turned on in system preference, then press command+option+ “=” or command+ option+”-”.

79. jj jukes said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 09:57

    Here’s an addition to the tect clipping feature.

    If you highlight text in Safari, you can than drag it directly to the Mail icon in the dock and it open a new mail message containing the text. This will also work with other applications besides safari, such as TextEdit.

80. Atvaark said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 10:17

    About screen capture… If you hold the ctrl key in addition to the other keys (for instance, Cmd-ctrl-Shift-3), the picture goes to the clipboard instead of being written to a file.

    To remember that, just think about the C : *c*trl = *c*opy

81. Gabe said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 10:42

    One more screen capture tidbit: Once you’ve determined which screen cap method to use, hold Control as you click and the capture will be placed in your clipboard.

82. John said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 10:54

    As a further refinement on your screen captures, you can capture them to the clipboard rather than to a file. Simply add the Control key to any of the standard screen capture sequences and you get the screen capture on the clipboard (ie Shift-Ctrl-Cmd-4). Very handy when you just want to paste into an e-mail and not keep it around.

83. Nonong said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 11:23

    COOL! Love the invert screen the most.

84. Justin said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 11:31

    Actually the invert screen thing saves a lot of battery power on my MacBook.

    I get like an extra 30 mins out of it.

85. VivaMac said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 11:37

    Microsoft used to have “OLE Scraps” that were like the clipping feature on Macs. This was back in the Win95 beta time period. It might still work if you open WordPad, highlight text and drag it to the desktop. It works in Windows 2000.

86. laurie said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 11:52

    re: screen captures. if you hold down the control key when you click your mouse (after pressing cmd+shift+4), it will copy the picture to your clipboard (rather than create the .png file on your desktop). you can then paste it directly into photoshop, mail, ichat, etc.

    also, if you’re doing a cmd+shift+4 screen grab and change your mind, clicking the esc key will release your mouse from screen grab mode.

87. Noig said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 12:12

    Add Ctrl to the screen capture key combos (Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-3, Ctrl-Cmd-Shift-4) and instead of saving the image to the Desktop, it’s saved to the Clipboard, ready for pasting into another document.

88. Cool things you can do on a Mac « Tech Meat said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 12:56

    [...] read more | digg story [...]

89. huh said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 13:31

    in terminal type

    emacs (press enter)

    press (ESC+X )at the same time

    then type tetris

    AND PLAY TETRIS

90. tc said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 13:51

    i can’t use the ctrl cmd d in any app. I try to change itu to f7 (just like in macworld article) still nothing happen ??? mini 10.47

91. cabtrix said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 16:43

    Thought you ought to know this - hold down Option before you click on a file (or selection of files) in finder, then drag and drop to copy. Use Command instead to move the file(s).
    So, yeah, there -is- cut-n-paste too.
    Finder also copies files when dropping across different volumes, but moves them when within the same volume (eg from a folder to another folder on Macintosh HD). Pretty cool, huh?

92. LM said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 17:34

    Re: Huh.

    Tetris in Emacs! O_O This is fantastic

93. Steven Wittens said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 17:46

    Note that you can turn the zoom feature on/off using Command+Option+8. No need to go into the system prefs.

    I love the zoom feature for watching embedded videos (nearly) full-screen for example. On sites like YouTube, it even gives you a smoother picture than if you used their own full-screen button.

    What would be really cool for Leopard though, would be if they would implement the zoom by scaling the entire UI, rather than just zooming in on the pixels ;).

94. cyncsm.com » Simple Tricks for the Mac said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 18:13

    [...] I’ve been using a Mac for 3 years now and I found a couple of these tips new. I’ve known about the dictionary built-in to OS X, which comes in handy when checking definitions, but I only knew how to use it one way (highlight and right click). But, you can just hover over the word and Ctrl + Cmd + D and a simple window will pop-up displaying the definition. [...]

95. links for 2006-09-09 « Jago Illustration - Link Blog said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 19:20

    [...] » Cool things you can do on Mac » Silver Mac (tags: mac osx tips cool apple howto) [...]

96. remz said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 19:44

    The text clipping feature certainly sounds cool but that still sounds like a lot of work to me. :)

    I use ShirusuPad for taking down notes. An awesome, elegant and tiny application that does its job and does it well.

    Just highlight the text you want to copy and hold down Ctrl+C for a few seconds. Shirusupad will quickly pop-up and you can either make a new note or append to an existing one.

    No more click and drag routines…

97. Geert said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 20:13

    There is another option that is really handy:
    If you press the apple-shift-4 gives you the cross hair, that you can size to your likings, pressing space now, gives you the ability to move that selection around, releasing the space lets you size again, pressing space again gives control over the selection again, and so on     

98. Benji XVI said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 20:58

    You can also shift-F9, shift-F10, shift-F11 with exposé, and shift-F12 with dashboard.

99. rich miller said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 21:58

    Here’s one that I just stumbled across yesterday.

    Holding down the “Command key” and a number key together will open websites in your Safari Bookmarks bar. So, the first website (the one on the far left) in my bar is “Bloglines.” If I hit “Command-1″ then it’s off to Blogllnes we go!

100. Adam’s Blog » Cool things you can do on Mac said: Sat, 9 September 2006 at 22:44

     [...] This link came up recently on Digg. It covers a few cool (and mostly useful) tricks for MacOSX. [...]

101. OS X tips that you can use everyday at armchairgeek said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 01:43

     [...] Silver Mac has listed 5 cool things that you can do on a Mac running OS X. These are things that you could use in your everyday computing. I am a huge fan of the text clipping. Sometimes I get frustrated with Windows because it cannot do this simple thing for me. [...]

102. Cool things you can do on a Mac « The Picune Blog said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 05:30

     [...] read more | digg story [...]

103. Yehudit said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 07:30

     You can also drag text from one Cocoa app to another. Actually you can do this with some oehr apps too - I can drag selected text from a site on Firefox to a Mail window, frex.

     I can also drag a browser tab from Safari to Firefox and it opens in Firefox. And the reverse. (Not sure if this is a Mac-only thing but it’s cool.

104. Mac Reference Sites « Mike Radomski said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 12:39

     [...] I found a couple of really nice Mac OSX sites. I was researching security standards for my department’s MacBook Pro’s when I came across informit.com’s Macintosh Reference Guide. The guide has many tips and HOWTOs on just about every topic from installation to security to troubleshooting. This page that should be in everyone’s bookmarks! That is, if you own a Mac. The other site that I found helpful is Silver Mac’s Cool things you can do on Mac. It has a couple of tips that makes owning a Mac really cool. [...]

105. Chris said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 16:58

     Print screen is all you need for a screen capture in windows.

106. tramp said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 19:10

     the invert thing is perfect for working late at night. less eyestrain.

107. squeak said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 20:43

     I always assign f1 to turn on Zoom f2 to zoom out and f3 to zoom in..
     makes some of them quicktime movies easier to watch…
     (do this in System Preferences/Keyboard) …

     also, most moving graphics (genie effect..etc) slow down when activated
     while holding the shift key down..when I show people these functions
     slowing them down helps them understand what is going on (rather than
     look like spifffy magic)

108. detronizator.org » archive » Cool things you can do on Mac said: Sun, 10 September 2006 at 21:21

     [...] I suggest to take a look at SilverMac: Tips&Tricks for your MacOSX . [...]

109. Matt Yohe said: Mon, 11 September 2006 at 02:02

     You can also sleep/wake your Mac with your Apple Remote. To sleep it, just hold the Play/Pause button for 5 seconds. To wake it, press play once!

110. ARTbird309’s Blog » Article » links for 2006-09-11 said: Mon, 11 September 2006 at 11:24

     [...] » Cool things you can do on Mac » Silver Mac (tags: mac osx apple tips howto reference software) [...]

111. Aaron Kraskovich said: Tue, 12 September 2006 at 11:17

     Old…. very old stuff.

112. links for 2006-09-12 at edsmiley.com said: Tue, 12 September 2006 at 14:33

     [...] » Cool things you can do on Mac » Silver Mac (tags: apple cool osx mac maxosx) [...]

113. Stand alone said: Tue, 12 September 2006 at 15:23

     One of my new favorite shortcuts select any word in any program, and hit cmd+shift+L to google it. opens in your browser. Fancy.

114. Gijs said: Tue, 12 September 2006 at 20:40

     Sure, Print Screen is all you need in Windows.
     But in newb-mode, I’d expect a button labeled as such to send stuff to the printer, not to take a screenshot. So the OSX key combo isnt all that weird, it just lacks ‘legacy keys’ such as Scroll Lock, Print Screen and Pause/Break.

115. Command-Tab » Dock Trick said: Wed, 13 September 2006 at 00:20

     [...] (Credit to Marco for his comment on the Cool THings You Can Do on a Mac article) [...]

116. OSX Essentials » Impress your friends » Blog Archive said: Wed, 13 September 2006 at 15:26

     [...] I’ve just read this great article on the cool things your mac can do over at silvermac.com. This article will provide you with some cool info that will let you impress almost everyone you know. I know it impressed me. [...]

117. catharsis » my weekend said: Thu, 14 September 2006 at 06:28

     [...] esoterica: cool things to do on a mac why is America 1.5 years behind on cellphones? worst analogies ever written from high school beautiful pictures. [...]

118. AppleConvert said: Thu, 14 September 2006 at 13:44

     These are really cool tips. I recently bought a Macbook and loves it. But I’m having real trouble doing work related tasks on it, mostly b/c I can’t find menu mneumonics (those little underlines in the menubar you see in Windows).

     for example in MS Office Windows versions, you can press Alt-F, which drops down the file menu, the bottom of which lists the most recent files you opened. So you’d do say, Alt-F, 1 for the last file you opened. Another example would be in Excel you do Alt-D, F, F for autofilter. (something anyone in Finance/Consulting might do 100+ times a day…).

     To do the same AutoFilter in Mac version of Excel, I’d have to do
     1: Cmd-F2 to gain focus on menu
     2: press D for “Data” menu item..
     3: Press F,
     4: right Arrow to get to “AutoFilter”, then Enter

     is there a faster way? the above keyboard combo is so cumbersome that I might as well use the mouse. Yes you can try to assign your own keyboard shortcuts but there are just too many of these Keyboard combos to assign.. .for example Alt-DS for sort, Alt IND to define name ranges…etc

     advices would be appreciated. . just dont say use the mouse!!

119. osxnation.com » Blog Archive » Impress your friends said: Thu, 14 September 2006 at 16:45

     [...] I’ve just read this great article on the cool things your mac can do over at silvermac.com. This article will provide you with some cool info that will let you impress almost everyone you know. I know it impressed me. [...]

120. » More about screen capturing in OS X » Silver Mac said: Thu, 14 September 2006 at 18:29

     [...] In January 2006 I wrote an article about some cool things you can do on your Macintosh computer. One of the things I discussed was screen capture in Mac OS-X, and in many comments, both on Digg and my website, I’ve noticed that number of people didn’t quite understand its full potential. Some Windows users’ comments go along the lines of ‘In Windows you just press “Print Screen” on the keyboard, how’s that for a cool feature?’ or even ‘Print screen is all you need for a screen capture in Windows.” [...]

121. Kevin said: Fri, 15 September 2006 at 09:54

     I found a website with a document I wanted to print, but the document on screen is dark green with white lettering. Printing it wastes ink and creates a doc that is hard to read or annotate. Wow, thought I, Invert Screen is just the ticket. The online site inverted to a much more readable black on white page; alas, when I printed, it still came out white lettering on green background!

122. Cool things you can do on a Mac « Brad’s Blog said: Mon, 18 September 2006 at 22:40

     [...] read more | digg story [...]

123. BDog said: Wed, 20 September 2006 at 12:03

     Adrian Bool,
     Just do grayscale and invert at the same time.

     Nick,
     Disable the shortcut in Keyboards & Mice prefpane.

     AppleConvert,
     Download Butler. Create a keystroke. That is what you want. Then give it a keyboard shortcut.

     Kevin,
     If you take a screenshot of the inverted display, then print it, it will print inverted.

124. BDog said: Wed, 20 September 2006 at 12:06

     Kevin,
     I take that back.

125. Max said: Fri, 22 September 2006 at 20:04

     Well, in windows if you want to save a webpage, you do save as and save it. As simple as that. And if you want to include it in an email, just drag and drop it the same way.
     I have to be honest, I bought a mac to give it a try and it is not any better than a pc. It is good, very good, looks good. But it closes doors to so many things that you can only do on pc’s.
     I am sure on the other hand you can do a lot of things on a mac you can’t do on a pc but…
     Well I am not gonna take the mac back to the apple store even though I have to say, yes i like it… but I wanna do use all the softwares that never seem to be compatible with a mac :(

126. Anton said: Tue, 26 September 2006 at 08:09

     Max,
     you could use all the software you are missing with parallels desktop,
     btw, what software do you miss?

127. csaba j said: Wed, 27 September 2006 at 01:59

     Hi.
     Well, i have a question. How can I do that cool thing on my MacBook, to get rid of the ridiculous startup sound? I mean without muting the overall sound before shutting it down the previous time. I just want to take that BAAAANG sound out of there (or replace it with something more pleasant, maybe).
     HELP please.
     thanks!

     PS: you can also mail me at bacsasixsixsix on the yahoo.

128. Corpt said: Wed, 11 October 2006 at 04:16

     Hi guys,
     If you take a screenshot on a Mac while in Inverted mode and then flip back to non-inverted mode, the screenshot also inverts back to normal. Anyone got any tips on how to stop it doing this? (If there are any). I don’t need it that bad, so don’t beat yourself up about it.

129. Dave said: Fri, 17 November 2006 at 09:46

     Hi,

     I want to know how i can switch between windows (when i am browsing with Safari), because when im using cmd-tab, it just switches between programs….
     Thats the only thing i really like about Windows….

     Thanx!

130. Adrian Bool said: Fri, 17 November 2006 at 10:05

     Dave,

     Try Command-`

     aid

131. Macca said: Fri, 17 November 2006 at 23:37

     Also in safari you can flick between tabs by pressing and holding cmd shift and then arrowing left or right depending which way you want to go through your tabs.

     macs rock… but i hate iphoto and mail.

132. Primal said: Sat, 18 November 2006 at 23:42

     @Aid…

     Seems that for me, command

133. Primal said: Sat, 18 November 2006 at 23:44

     @Aid…

     Seems that command-\

134. Primal said: Sat, 18 November 2006 at 23:50

     damn….

     wordpress isn’t taking the symbol :-pp

     so third time’s a charm :-)

     @ aid…
     for me command-< seems to do the swithcing between windows in the active application

     dunno if it has anything thing to do with other international settings….

     GG

135. Primal said: Sat, 18 November 2006 at 23:54

     …and consecutively

     command-shift-< to cycle in the opposite direction

     GG

136. TC said: Sat, 25 November 2006 at 06:11

     If you hold the Option key and then scroll with you mouse in firefox it takes you back and forth in your browsing

137. Black Strobe said: Sat, 25 November 2006 at 12:22

     Here’s another for people that use tabbed browsing. If you have a bunch of tabs open and want to cycle through them with you keyboard, try this: cmd + (number e.g. 1 or 2 or 3 to cycle through 1st, 2nd and 3rd tabs respectively).

138. Primal said: Sat, 25 November 2006 at 19:52

     Strange, hopping between differente tabs I use command-shiht-arrow left or right.
     If I do command + number it loads the page from my bookmarks bar

139. Erik said: Mon, 27 November 2006 at 14:34

     ummm….you can do the exact same thing (text clipping) on a windows computer…..by the way

140. Fairly said: Fri, 1 December 2006 at 18:29

     None of this is new. A small investment of $20 for a Pogue would have revealed all of this. For us with more sense it did. For others who can’t find anything interesting to write about there’s the article.

141. ecker said: Tue, 5 December 2006 at 13:35

     ok, so nice, but the simple thing i try found on internet is:

     start screen-saver in welcome login window, you how this is possible.
     if user stay away wend mac os x are booting, the welcome wait for
     type user/pwd, is possible enable countdown script to start a screensaver??

     sorry me english not good like your tips/site…

     is this..

142. Katalina said: Tue, 26 December 2006 at 11:33

     Coolness ! These tips are fun .. and useful; thanks! I just got my new mac computer for christmas and i really like it . It`s the 20 inch .. it`s so fun ! And to think, I never liked mac computers before !

     Thankies !!
     -Katalina

143. Jon said: Sat, 30 December 2006 at 03:34

     These are really cool! Just letting any of you with the new mighty mouse know if you don’t already, If you press one of the side buttons (and hold it down) , all of your windows seperate and if you hover over one it jumps to the front.

     Thanks again,
     Jon

144. casimir said: Tue, 2 January 2007 at 16:34

     @ csaba j
     use StartupSound.prefPane
     http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/StartupSound/index.en.html

145. csaba j said: Sun, 14 January 2007 at 02:56

     thanks casimir.
     I downloaded it already and tried to use it but i could not run it… In the end it turned out that the downloaded file has the zipped extension but in fact it is NOT a zipped file :)) It works now.

146. not said: Tue, 6 February 2007 at 15:10

     o well thats is very good for you i just did that too.

147. Ryan said: Thu, 8 February 2007 at 06:08

     You can also shut down a mac by pressing Cmd+Ctrl+power button.This feature works great if your mac is frozen or if you want to restart faster.

148. JARED said: Mon, 12 February 2007 at 09:03

     I JUST RECENTLY SWITCHED FROM P.C. TO MAC, AND I LOVE IT. I NOW HAVE A SAYING! ONCE Y0U GO MAC THEIR IS NO GOING BACK. I SPENT THE BIG BUCKS AND BOUGHT THE MAC PRO WITH THE INTEL QUAD 3 GHZ, 2 GIGS OF RAM FOR NOW BUT I WILL BE UPGRADING. I ALSO TREATED MYSELF TO A HIGHT DEF 23 INCH APPLE MONITOR. THEN I BOUGHT A BASIC MAC BOOK FOR THE ROAD ALTHOUGH I MUST ADMIT I THINK I AM GOING TO GO AND GET THE MAC PRO TO REPLACE THE MAC BOOK. NOT THAT I DON’T LIKE THE MAC BOOK. I HAVE ONLY HAD MY MAC’S FOR TWO AND A HALF MONTHS. I WAS WITH MICRO-CRAP FOR 15 YEARS AND JUST GOT SICK OF FIXING THEM, REBOOTING, REINSTALLING THE OS AND LOOSING EVERYTHING I HAD NOT RECENTLY BACKED UP. I JUST COULD NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE.

     NOW I WATCH THE VISTA THREADS SINCE MICRO-CRAP ULTIMATE DISASTER HAS COME OUT AND SURE ENOUGH THE COMPLAINT THREADS ARE POPING UP LEFT AND RIGHT.

     ANYWAY ABOUT THIS PAGE I FOUND, THANK YOU TO THE AUTHOR WHO WROTE ABOUT THE COOL STUFF. I KNOW THEIR IS ALOT MORE FOR ME TO LEARN.

     WHEN I SPENT AROUND TEN GRAND AT THE APPLE STORE, THEY SAID I WOULD NEED CLASSES TO LEARN THE TIGER OS. TO I BOUGHT THE STORE MEMBERSHIP. WELL LONG STORY SHORT, I AM A COMPUTER NERD AND HALF AND IN ABOUT THREE DAYS I HAD THE BASICS OF THE TIGER OS DOWN AND NOW IT IS OVER TWO MONTHS LATER AND I AM FINALIZING FINISHING LEARNING THE REST OF IT, SUCH AS IMOVIE HD AND IDVD. I AM PRETTY MUCH A SELF LEARNER.

     THEIR IS ONE THING I CAN’T FIGURE OUT THOUGH, A PROGRAM CALLED OMNI OUTLINER. I HAVE READ UP ON IT ON APPLE’S HOME PAGE AND HAVE SORT OF A CLUE BUT I AM STILL LOST AS TO WHAT IT IS REALLY FOR.

     I HAVE BOOK MARKED THIS PAGE, SO I COME BACK IN A FEW DAYS TO SEE IF ANYONE HAS POSTED. AND FOR THE COOL STUFF I LEARNED TODAY.

     THANKS A MILLION.

149. SGX said: Mon, 19 February 2007 at 17:54

     Wow these are intresting tips!!
     That saying :ounce you go mac their is no going back” is completely false - I built a computer for 1,500 dollars that is equivalent in power to a 3,500 dollar iMac and I have Windows XP, OS X 10.4.8 and Vista RTM Ultimate (64bit) all installed nativly and im very happy to switch around. I go into mac for basic internet searching and listening to music, I go into XP for advanced internet research that requires downloading files and gaming, I use vista for everything I use mac for and also for testing. I have to say my favorite os is still XP. There is not a single good game you can put on a mac and im not used to many of it features and i could work faster in xp.

150. Kyle Korleski said: Sat, 17 March 2007 at 12:20

     Can’t use that dictionary feature.

151. eddienosbod said: Sat, 14 April 2007 at 18:33

     I don’t usually write to forums like this but have found this site really helpful.

     One tip I’ve not seen, that I love more than anything, is a special sort of desktop zoom… ITS MAGIC and much better for the eyes!

     Hold down ctrl and caps lock key - using two fingers on your tracker pad push forwards and backwards to zoom into the area of your screen where the mouse is.

     Enjoy! (thanks for the invert facility, fantastic)

     EDDIE

152. CrimsonCrow said: Mon, 16 April 2007 at 11:33

     One does not need to hold caps lock key down. :-)

153. Rufus said: Mon, 23 April 2007 at 02:42

     Get your own free psychiatrist!!!

     Go into terminal and type in emacs, after the introductory screen press shift-esc, then type in xdoctor and press enter. You now have your very own psychiatrist! note: she will say ‘type RET twice’ or something this just means press enter twice. She’s not a very good psychiatrist but she’s very entertaining.

154. questing said: Mon, 23 April 2007 at 17:25

     does anyone know a shortcut key for don’t save? you know, you’re writing an e-mail on Mail, you decide not to send it so you click APPLE + W but you have to go back to your mouse to click don’t save. Is there a better way to do this?

     Thanks!

155. ozY said: Wed, 16 May 2007 at 21:14

     Why doesn’t text clipping work on Safari? Or am i doing something wrong?

156. Mike said: Wed, 16 May 2007 at 22:14

     It works fine, I just tried and ‘clipped’ your comment.

157. Ike said: Thu, 14 June 2007 at 15:26

     The first tip does not work for me! Does anything need to enabled/tweaked to make this happen. All the other tips worked well - great job on this writeup.

158. ArieBelle said: Wed, 27 June 2007 at 12:11

     OMG! You just saved me hours of confusion and frustration. Working in Photoshop I must have hit the wrong combo of buttons… and Poof… I was in Zoom mode with no Clue on earth how I got there. Searching and reading your tips I figured out that all was not lost… and a simple Scroll would put my Mac back right with the world. You know there aren’t alot of sites that come up when you enter “Desktop Zoom stuck” in Google! You’ve saved the day and for that I am ever greatful. Will link and check back for more tips often and tell my newly Mac converted friends about your site as well! Thanks again…

     Oh, and tell that windows guy, that he really has no clue what he is missing. I used windows previously also, but was smart enough to see the error of my ways =)

     AB…

159. Goobimama said: Wed, 4 July 2007 at 21:08

     I know I’m late, but the shortcut for “Don’t Save” in that dialog box is “Command + D”. It is a screwup with OS X, cause every time there’s a different ‘word’ which relates to a particular command like, in iTunes, you have “Move to thrash’, ‘delete from library’, all of which can be done by command+somekey….

160. Aaron said: Sat, 7 July 2007 at 01:58

     For those of you who can’t get the Cmd-Ctrl-D Dictionary feature to work, make sure the Dictionary program is still in the first level of your Applications folder. I had moved it into a subfolder of the Applications folder and the feature didn’t work for me. Once I moved it back to the Applications folder, the feature worked again.

161. Maran said: Sat, 7 July 2007 at 07:36

     Yeah, I have the same question as Corpt….how do you get the screenshots that you take in inverted color mode to stay in inverted color mode? It’s kinda annoying.

162. marmph said: Fri, 20 July 2007 at 03:24

     salespeople at the apple store will not get freaked out when you invert the colors. i tried it.
     :(

163. matt said: Thu, 16 August 2007 at 12:47

     Wow! Great tips! I love them! Any more? I’ve been a Mac user for 4 days now!

164. Aasim said: Fri, 17 August 2007 at 08:19

     thank you all ,,,, i really appreciate these tips which are useful

     GOD BLESS YOU ALL

165. Rohit said: Wed, 22 August 2007 at 05:29

     For the inverted thing to change your mac’s menu bar, what is cmd? I have no idea.

166. Rohit said: Wed, 22 August 2007 at 05:31

     Sorry I mean the invert screen thing!

167. Mehrad said: Tue, 4 September 2007 at 10:01

     Wow i just bought the macbook pro with the nvidia geforece 8600gt and i must say…WOW…i love it…i love the ilife 08 its soooo cool.one question tho guys…my friend tells me there is this trick where u put ur finger on the trackpad and just go diagonal across it…and the page will minimize (the whole screen) and come back to normal position when u go diagonal again….down anyone know this trick?

168. Lars said: Thu, 13 September 2007 at 10:26

     Hey! great trick but, why nobody on earth read the user’s manual that comes with the mac? I mean, when you First turned on your brand new mac, you just stay looking on it while it configures? i read the manual, it took me about 15 minutes and i learned all this things so I’m using this tricks since the very first minute of using it!
     I was a Windows user, i switch yo mac os and i WILL NEVER GO BACK, this Os is so much better!
     About the user’s manual, i think there in the USA the manual doesnt include this tricks isnt it?… i live in south america and all these trick are in the manual…. well I think I know every trick you’ve posted on here, so if anyone knows another please type it here!!! :D

     Sorry the bad english but I’m Chilean, and here in Chile we speak spanish! you could try posting in spanish to evaluate your spelling :D

169. Lewis said: Wed, 31 October 2007 at 22:51

     LOL I did the invert colours on all the Macs in an Apple shop last year, then ran.

170. Adrian said: Fri, 2 November 2007 at 07:59

     Regarding the comments made earlier about “saving power” on laptops with the inverted display, due to “black pixels” not using any power. That is incorrect.

     With LCD technology, dark pixels actually require a voltage for polarisation. Whereas, light (or clear) LCD pixels do not require an applied voltage, are not polarised and allow light through.

     btw… I’m a OS X user and these are some pretty cool tips.

171. Troy said: Wed, 7 November 2007 at 06:16

     Adrian it sounds like you are saying that pixels with color don’t require power and black pixels do? That doesn’t sound right at all. Please elaborate.

172. andrew said: Wed, 14 November 2007 at 15:15

     for some reason invert screen doesn’t work with me? running tiger on a macbook…

     have moved around the apple applications to different folders, but that shouldn’t make a difference (it did with dictionary though, thanks to a comment above).

173. andrew said: Wed, 14 November 2007 at 15:55

     oops, figured it out–i had disabled universal access keyboard shortcuts! silly me

174. lisa said: Tue, 20 November 2007 at 08:04

     anybody know how to get those multiple desktops going? I understand I can switch desktops–which is something i really wanna learn how to do.

175. David said: Tue, 27 November 2007 at 00:19

     Great tips. Loving the Zoom (ctrl and scroll on a mighty mouse).

176. Erik said: Thu, 13 December 2007 at 08:54

     About the screen color invert function: this can be used as a workaround to turn of the flash in Photo Booth, which is not possible to do in the application itself.

     If you take a picture in Photo Booth with the screen colors inverted, the screen will “flash” black instead of white. Quite useful imo, since the flash sometimes make pictures unnecessary light and pale in the colors.

177. Lisa M. said: Fri, 14 December 2007 at 01:28

     I am a new mac user, and I love your site. So full of information.
     These tips are super. I had no idea. Now I love Mac even more!

178. daniel said: Fri, 14 December 2007 at 22:19

     Here’s one i found with a bit of key board mashing. press and hold cmd-alt-shift-tab and it automatically takes you to the bottom of the page. Very useful if you need to get there quickly.. have fun

179. daniel said: Fri, 14 December 2007 at 22:30

     About the previous comment of mine if you do that when you are at the bottom of the page, then it takes you to the top.. good huh. Enjoy

180. roberto said: Mon, 24 December 2007 at 15:26

     DOES MAC HAVE A SCREEN TEXT GRABBER UTILITY??
     In a finder window (list view), you have a list of files with a creation or modification date. Does anyone know a way to copy the file name and the rest of the info given in the columns? I need to to be editable text, not just an image. There are several applications (text grabbers) able to do it in Windows, but I found none for the Mac.
     Suggestions VERY appreciated, thanks.
     By the way, I tried using windows though Parallel Desktop, but then I find out that Windos gives me a different (and wrong) modification time!!!

181. benbo said: Sun, 20 January 2008 at 02:29

     a great way to access hidden functions of your mac is to download Mac Pilot. it is a free download on “apple.com/downloads”. Is is like a better version of system preferences

182. Evan said: Thu, 13 March 2008 at 05:06

     At the replies to MacMonkey’s statement about cut and paste:

     At glibberish (”However, given how scattered I get, I’m glad Cut doesn’t work–too risky. “) and Craig Phillips (”Probably because its file desctructive if you don’t paste and log out or suffer a BSD on Windows and that doesn’t jibe well with the Mac philosophy… (”like where’d my file go dude”), you apparently don’t know how Windows does cut and paste in explorer. It’s not nearly as dangerous as you make it out to be. When you cut a file, the file doesn’t actually go away; it just gets marked so that when and if you paste it, Windows moves instead of copies it. So if you forget about it and copy something else to the clipboard, or if the system goes down, your files will remain in their original location.

     This is a *little* inelegant because it works a little differently than other places where you can cut and paste (where cutting removes it immediately), but I think the utility of being able to more easily move files around far outweighs that.

     Finally, I like the reply from Michiel (”Am I missing something here? Afaik it IS possible to copy & paste a file within the finder without dragging”) who apparently doesn’t know the difference between ‘copy’ and ‘cut’.

183. phil said: Sun, 23 March 2008 at 04:14

     i dont know about any of you, but im using a logitech keyboard with my mac (10.5, but worked with tiger as well) and it has a print screen button, and if i hit it it acts as a screen capture button. dont know if it will work with any other non-apple made keyboards.

184. John Peterson said: Sun, 23 March 2008 at 05:32

     Hey! Nice website. I knew these tips, but had forgotten CMD-Shift-4 Space for window grab. Thanks! Your website has been very helpful to me!!

     John Peterson

185. Carradee said: Sat, 29 March 2008 at 02:39

     As someone who’s grown up with Macs, only the first two were new to me. Thank you for telling me how to reverse the prank a coworker pulled on my computer. I could tell what had happened, so I Googled it and found your post.

     Thanks!

186. ugh said: Tue, 1 April 2008 at 16:18

     for cut and paste why not jusy command+c and command+v???

187. trademark registration said: Thu, 10 April 2008 at 16:55

     I’m betting that the invert thing looks awesome on a black Macbook. Hehe.

188. Eh? said: Tue, 29 April 2008 at 07:23

     I have the same question that KP said ages ago. And I don’t think it’s been answered yet but… sorry if it was.

     “I like the invert color feature, but on my PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, I only get the inverted colors for a split second, then it goes to inverted greyscale. Is there a system preference or something?”

     I have the same problem except that I own a different Mac. I was unable to find the exact name of the model (although honestly I only looked for about a minute) so here’s a picture:
     http://www.macologyuk.net/images/all%20macs.jpg
     Mine is the Mac on the top left with the swivel screen and the round speakers on both sides.

189. Meh said: Fri, 2 May 2008 at 08:45

     Cmd-Opt-D pulls up and hides the Dock if no one has said that yet

190. that guy said: Wed, 14 May 2008 at 08:01

     Hehe… the other day i went to the local Apple Store and did the Invert Screen on all of the new computers…
     The sales people were not too happy…
     Imagine a bunch of fat sweaty guys in fancy shirts freaking out and button mashing untill the store manager came in and restarted the computers…

191. that guy said: Wed, 14 May 2008 at 08:03

     And the Invert Screen function is good for when you’ve been looking at the sleek polished white appearance of your Mac all day and you have a headache… and its fun to play Guitar Hero while inverted…

192. José Figueroa said: Sat, 28 June 2008 at 10:08

     i have one… kinda stoopid but…

     if you dont want the POP sound when unmuting or turning down or up you computer’s volume you can use shift-Volume Up, shift-Volume Down, shift-Mute and it will not POP at all.

     =D

     hey thanx for the post… some things here i had forgotten ’bout

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