“Fear no more: there’s ways to make finding shortcuts easier,” Evans writes. “Bring out your inner power user!”
Evans covers:
• Dashboard
• One keyboard command to rule them all
• Launchbar
• One more incredibly useful keyboard command
• Shortcut lists
Full article here.
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7th at 7am PDT / 10am EDT. Apple is widely expected to announce…
Today, Apple TV+ unveiled the trailer for season four of its heartwarming, critically acclaimed comedy series “Trying,” starring BAFTA Award…
Vision Pro is now suffering from waning enthusiasm. Apple needs a true low-end iPhone to revive growth in a move that…
China’s smartphone sales grew 1.5% YoY and 4.6% QoQ in Q1 2024, , but Apple’s iPhone sales dropped 19.1% YoY in Q1 as…
Apple in recent years has made an aggressive move to expand operations on both the manufacturing and sales front in India. The company…
Dashboard and power user. IMO not in the same sentence.
Much as I like some of the author’s suggestions, I think he missed one serious utility that has been useful for almost 2 decades to anyone who MUST get lots of work done: Quickeys.
Whether it is routine repeated text at the bottom or your email or an 8 step series of events you do over and over in a presentation or graphics program, you simply can not beat Quickeys.
I’ve used it for so long I’ve forgotten when I started, but the company that sells it has changed and is now Startly.
http://startly.com — though http://www.quickeys.com still works
And…add Applescript for the more adventurous.
further, he writes the entire thing from the perspective of a laptop user – how about right clicking with the mouse on the dock icons to force quit? no need for a key when you do this… pretty pathetic list IMO.
I find the best way to use my Mac is with MS’s big ass table. You can map every conceivable shortcut in there including sitting on it to take a picture of your butt which incidentally shuts down your machine.
Huh?
“Click on a thumbnail below to view it in full size and add the dashkard to your Dashboard”
I clicked. I viewed. Nothing was added to Dashboard.
Quicksilver…
I quickly command-H’d that article.
@GRH
Follow the instructions in the purple box on the right of the page you clicked into. You need to be using Safari and use the ‘File>Open in Dashboard’ command. This works for any webpage BTW.
MW=good
Let’s not forget Quicksilver, the indefatigable system utility.
I’ve never used Dashboard very much, but I like having a few of the smaller widgets on my Desktop all the time.
You can do so by first giving this command in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
to activate “Dashboard development mode.” You have to log out and log in (or just restart). Then run Dashboard and click-hold the widget you want (like you are dragging it); use the keyboard command for Dashboard to exit Dashboard and let go of the widget (you can also use the keyboard command for Spaces or Exposé to exit Dashboard). This basically drags the widget from Dashboard to your Desktop. I have the iCal, Clock, and Weather widgets at the bottom corner of my secondary display. Note: The widget will “float” above windows.
To drag a widget back onto Dashboard, click-hold on the widget and press the keyboard command for Dashboard, then let go. You can turn off “Dashboard development mode” by giving that same terminal command with NO at the end instead of YES.
@ Burrell
Bought QuicKeys (QK) the first day it was introduced and haven’t been without it since.
I have tried the others. However, for me, being able to enter my lab and automate a series of actions on 3 Macs running on 5 screens, couldn’t be simpler without QK.
Everytime Apple updates the Mac OS, the first thing I look for is an update/reviews* for QK.
As GM found out a few decades ago, the largest readers of Chevy ads were Chevy owners.
* http://www.macworld.com/article/151341/2010/05/essentialutilitiesmacros.html
@Burrell and @Macaday
Add Keyboard Maestro to QuicKeys and Quicksilver.
Also Default Folder.
Besides that, what I use the most all day long as a graphic designer and songwriter/musician are 1) navigation through folders with arrowkeys plus Command, Option, etc., and 2) two-finger swiping on a MacBook trackpad.
@ken1w
thanks for the tip. will actually use widgets now. t
He missed some of my fav key combos…
cmd f3 – moves all windows out of the way showing the desktop…I use this constantly
cmd shift 3 – takes a “print screen” of the entire current screen and places it on the desktop.
cmd shift 4 – Give you a “crosshair” that you can use to take a “screen print” of just a small part of the screen you select.
I am amazed how many people don’t know about the print screen options and even buy programs to do what OSX does for free. And of course if you don’t know…
cmd c – this copies selected text or objects
cmd v – this “pastes” copied text or objects. This is an important one to know because I have seen the “key” paste work when the “paste” option is dim on a programs menu.
“(Command – Option – Escape)”
Otherwise known as the 3-finger salute for Mac. Funny thing is, unlike CMD-ALT-DEL, I so rarely need to reboot my Macs that I can never remember it. I always have to do a search on the rare occasion that the need arises.
@David Cramer
Good additions & I too use Default Folder.
Because I do a lot of copying of files from my Boot Camp partition back to the OSX partition, I use Path Finder with its dual window setting so I can be very specific in moving files from Win7 to Mac.
@ Mac Daddy
> (Command – Option – Escape)… I always have to do a search on the rare occasion that the need arises.
Well, it brings up the Force Quit window so you still have a good chance to recover from a locked up process without resorting to an unclean reboot.
Unfortunately, on those rare occasions when I needed to use it, it is because I can’t call up the Force Quit window from the Apple Menu or do a right-click on the Dock icon (because the Mac is not responding at all to mouse actions), so I have no way “do a search” (and I can never remember it either)
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> Almost always, I can switch over to a different application and do a force quit on the stuck application from there.
Man… as a power Mac user and a power PC user, I gotta say… Mac users think that they got the market cornered on shortcuts, but the Mac is FAR more mouse-centric than a PC. For example… where is the alt+letter that you can do to initiate ANY command in the menu?
Your typical PC user has to spend FAR less time with the mouse and can be far more productive with just the keyboard.
When a dialog box pops up, how do you select a button with the keyboard?
I love it when people go to the Mac and “discover” Cmd+C.
Seriously, people… Ctrl-Alt-Delete has NOT rebooted a PC since Windows 3.1
Also, what’s with the Cmd+opt+3 vs. Cmd+Opt+4. You’d think it would be a letter… who can remember which one is which?
“Man… as a power Mac user and a power PC user,”
“what’s with the Cmd+opt+3 vs. Cmd+Opt+4”
Power user, huh?
Well, then, go into System preferences>Keyboard and then Keyboard Shortcuts, click on Screen shots and then change the key equivalents to whatever you want.
Kabo: ur so right! I wouldn’t trade my Mac for anything and think OSX is far superior Windows but I’m flabbergasted how Apple sometimes ignore the most obvious things, small things that should be easy to implement. Is this some childish behavior because Windows had it first?