Your favorite mac tricks

[1337 b4k4]

I'm trying to compile a collection of mac tricks and put them into a nicely organized and freely downloadable format. Yes I know there's macosxhints.com but i'm trying to do something with a little less scripts and more just neat things built into the OS. I also want it to be something that's ad free and accesable while offline. I'm also looking for the types of tips that you wont find commonly, like the one that used to exist for the classic OS for recovering from a crash (SM 0 A9F4)

So does anyone have any neat tricks and tips? The more obscure the better.

[Kalli]

This isn't obscure, but I'm constantly pointing it out to people: the Keyboard Viewer.

To make it accessible, open System Preferences. Select International and from there Input Menu. Make sure to check in the box near the bottom of the window marked Show input menu in menu bar. Then check the box marked Keyboard viewer in the scroll menu.

Next time you need a special character, just click on the flag in the menu bar and select the keyboard viewer. It will reveal what characters the different key combinations give and you can even enter them into the currently active program from the viewer.

[Kernel_Panik]

My favorite trick is to get all the computrers in a room to play the same music at the same time. It works by using QuickTime Streaming Server (available free from Apple) to broadcast music from a mac (from my experiences, only a mac can transmit) in a computer lab. Then you get all the boxen in the lab (this works with mac or windows as a reciever) to tune in to the stream. The end result is something like dolby 22.5 surround sound.  

The only problem is that sometimes there is a whole lot of lag.

[grossjo]

Holding shift while closing windows or using expose.  I love this thing.

[Orion]

I don't know if newer Mac do it, but on my revD iMac, if you hold down the option key and select "About This Computer" from the Apple Menu, you get a picture of 1 Infinity Loop, Cupertino CA.

[souless_samurai]

hardware wise, the fact i can soak my keyboard in soapy water for an hour, wipe it down and dry it in the airing cub.... and it still works, and looks all shiney and white stupidly i tried it with other keyboards and they all died, mac keyboards are rather tough to say the least


at least the others belong to the firm i was working for at the time

[TheRealCaltsar]

It's a lot more useful in a Pre-Exposé OS X, but hold down the option key as you switch windows using the dock and it will hide the window you just switched out of.  
Rather useful when you access the desktop frequently.

<EDIT>Open a document in a specific application by dragging it to the application you want to open it.  Say you want to open a .jpg that defaults to Preview.  Just drag it onto the Photoshop (or other favorite image viewer/editor) icon in the dock or in the application folder (or where ever you have it.  It will open that file in the program you dragged it onto.</edit>

Others may come later when I remember I use them...  Most I use so often it's just second nature now.

[Kalli]

Well, the Command-Tab thingy is not only handy for hiding an application that's not on top, but also to quit them. Press Cmd-Tab, keeping the Cmd key depressed and tapping Tab until you've hilighted the desired app, then press Q or H and voila.

Also, you can drag and drop files that are open, and have been saved since last change, in a running application, by clicking on the file icon in the top bar of the application. Let's say you've just written a letter in TextEdit and you want to send it as an attachment in Mail. The file itself is buried somewhere under a few layers of folders, but fear not. You start writing the Mail message and when you want to insert the attachement, simply drag the file icon from the top bar of the TextEdit window onto the Mail message. Presto!

[EggyToast]

If you're using a wheel mouse, you can assign wheel-clicking to Expose.  I use this for moving text around from Firefox into, say, BBEdit, and of course just general use.  

And people complain that OS X has crappy mouse support ;P  click click click!

[Konflict]

Just a little thing, you can do the Apple-Tab (alt-tab) and while having the Apple button pressed down, you can press Q to quit or H to hide, M to minimise. Quite useful.

[RuButt]

ctrl+alt+apple+8

[Draliseth]

ctrl+alt+apple+8

Lol, you knew we were all going to do that, didn't ya?
 

[Shmi]

lol nice.

If you have websites saved to your favorites bar in Safari and want to access them faster, do ctrl-option-cmd and the number(1-7) of the tab. So if Google.com is the third tabbed bookmark in the bar, do ctrl option cmd 3 and itll take you there.

[haunted_i]

Nightvision mode, very nice. The staple of late-night wardriving.

On the Cmd-Tab window (yes, I know it's been referenced to death), the mouse also works over it. Click on a desired app, or just mouseover and release the keys.
Sadly, option-About This Mac doesn't do anything special under Panther.

[TheRealCaltsar]

hmm... Google's your friend when it comes to looking up commands, but I did the ctrl-alt-apple-8 thing anyway.  looks awesome, but froze up the dock...