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Secret OS X Features and Shortcuts (Part 2)

9/12/2013 3:24:25 PM

See numbers in big type

Have you ever wanted to jot down a phone number from the screen but found it difficult because you had to keep looking back and forth from screen to page?

This is just the kind of thing Apple’s engineers think about making easier. In TextEdit you can simply highlight the telephone number, right-click it and select ‘Large Type’. This works in Mail messages too, although you might also be able to hover the mouse over the phone number until an arrow icon appears and click it, selecting ‘Large Type’ from the menu that appears. Note that this works only for messages you’ve received in Mail and not for ones you’re composing.

This also works when using Calculator, letting you view the result of calculations - right-click the numbers on the LCD screen and then select ‘Large Type’.

In each case, the text will then be displayed in large floating text that fills the width of the screen. To get rid of it, just click anywhere.

Check the health of apple online services

iCloud not working for you? Just visit www.apple.com/supportI system status to see which Apple services are up or down. Unfortunately, iCloud reliability figures aren’t quite as stellar as Apple aficionados would have you believe, so bookmarking the site isn’t a bad idea.

Create multiple inspector windows

In some of Apple’s own apps, like those in the iWork or iLife suites, a separate pop-out window is used to let you view and change settings. This is called the Inspector, and it usually appears on either the Cmd+ I or AIt+ Cmd+ I keystrokes.

What’s not obvious is that you can have two or more Inspector windows visible at any given moment. Just hold down Alt and click one of the icons in the inspector’s tab bar.

Although Microsoft Word has something similar in its Toolbox window, this trick doesn’t work there, unfortunately.

Rip music from video files

Want to separate the audio from a movie clip so you can listen to it on your iPod or iPhone? Your Mac has it covered with its built-in tools. Just open the clip in QuickTime Player, which is in the Applications list in Finder, and then click File> Export and select ‘Audio Only’ from the Format drop-down list. This will create an .m4a file compatible with all Apple devices and computers. Just import it into iTunes in the usual way, by double-clicking the new file.

Need the files in MP3 format for your music player? Just use an app like MediaHuman’s Free Audio Converter: www.mediahuman. corn/audio-converter.

QuickTime Player can extract the audio from a movie file — useful for those music videos

QuickTime Player can extract the audio from a movie file - useful for those music videos

Tear off tabs

Some OS X apps, such as Safari and terminal, make use of tabs. The standard keyboard shortcut in such apps to create a tab is Cmd+T. In most cases, the tabs can be ‘torn off’ to create a new program window containing just that tab - just click and hold the tab, drag down, and then position the new window where you want before releasing the mouse button.

Convert reminders into calendar events

Ever created a To Do in the Reminders app but then realized it’d work better as a Calendar event?

Just drag and drop it from the Reminders app onto the Calendar app window. However, this must be done a special way: click and drag at the right of the entry in the Reminders list (just to the left of where the ‘j’ icon appears). If you click and drag anywhere else, OS X will assume you want to edit the text of the To Do.

This doesn’t work the other way around, however; dragging an event from the Calendar app onto the Reminders window won’t turn it into a To Do. Dropping an event onto Reminders’ Dock icon appears to work, but nothing actually happens clearly a bug!

You can open multiple inspector windows in apps like iWeb or iPhoto, allowing quick access to core tools

You can open multiple inspector windows in apps like iWeb or iPhoto, allowing quick access to core tools

Make Launchpad useful

Launchpad is one of Apple’s big new features in recent releases of OS X but it’s a love-it or hate-it affair. One way to make it potentially more useful is to alter a secret setting to make the icons bigger or smaller.

By making the ¡cons in Launch pad bigger or smaller, you can customize and make useful what is otherwise a feature many dislike

By making the ¡cons in Launch pad bigger or smaller, you can customize and make useful what is otherwise a feature many dislike

Let’s say you want to change the grid size to three rows by three columns of app icons, which will make for significantly bigger icons. Open a terminal window (open Finder, select the Applications list, and then in the list of applications double-click terminal within the Utilities folder), and type the following two lines, the first of which refers to the number of icon rows and the second of which refers to the number of icon columns:

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 3 defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int 3;killall Dock

To make the icons smaller, we simply increase the grid size. Increasing the grid size to 10x10 icons will shrink the icons significantly into a compact layout but still leave them usable. It can be done as follows by typing these two lines into a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 10 defaults write com.apple. dock springboard-columns —int 10; killall Dock

To restore the default icon sizes, again open a terminal window, and type the following two lines:

defaults delete corn.apple.dock springboard-rows defaults delete corn.apple.dock springboard- columns; killall Dock

Sleep your mac with a remote

If you have an Apple remote control, you can put your MacBook or iMac into sleep mode from a distance away by pointing the remote at the computer and then pressing and holding the central Play/Pause button for three to four seconds. Watch as a series of comic book-style Zs appear on the screen to indicate snoozing!

The Mac can be woken from sleep in the normal way — usually by hitting a key on the keyboard or moving the mouse/touching the track-pad although you can also click the Play button again on the remote.

Create a ‘drives’ stack in the dock

Here’s a neat little trick that will add a new stack to the Dock that, when clicked, will display any storage attached to your computer (things like USB memory sticks, FireWirel Thunderbolt drives and SD cards). As an added bonus, it will also show any installation .dmg files you currently have mounted.

To set it up, open a Finder window, and hold down Shift+Cmd+G. In the dialogue box that appears, simply type Nolumes. Then click Go.

Ignore the contents of the Finder window. Instead, look at the title bar, where the folder name is listed. Click and drag this to the stacks area on the right of the Dock. The other stacks will slide out of the way to make room for it. Don't worry you're not copying the folder. You're just creating a shortcut.

You can create a ‘stack’ on the right of the Dock that will instantly allow access to any removable store, like USB sticks

You can create a ‘stack’ on the right of the Dock that will instantly allow access to any removable store, like USB sticks

See who you've emailed

Want to see a list of people you've emailed over the last, say, two or three years and in date order, to boot? Open Mail app, then click Window > Previous Recipients. In the window that appears, click the 'Last Used' heading.

You can also select one entry (or several using the usual Shift/ Cmd clicking) and click the Add to Contacts button, to create an entry in the Contacts app using their name and email address. Note that you don't get the chance to further edit the new card, although if you then double-click the entry in the list, you'll open Contacts with the new card showing.

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