Five Mini Mac Hacks
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by Chris Lesinski Kick off the new semester with five little shortcuts that'll turn you into an instant Mac fanboy. Five simple shortcuts, no installation required. Follow along:
Simple Screenshots: There's a way to take a screenshot of the whole screen, but I don't care about that one. With Command + Shift + 4 you can draw a box around something on your screen and crop it just to that. I usually use this in lieu of printing receipts or flight information -- stuff like that. Instead, it just hops on to your desktop. This is also good for grabbing pictures or video frames from a site that won't let you right click.
The Speedy Start-Up: I have several programs that are scheduled to start as soon as I boot up my computer: Quicksilver, SizzlingKeys, Actiontastic, iCal -- just to name a few. There are countless others that start without my authorization (Microsoft AU Daemon -- it makes me cringe). For a fast start up to check a quick email or the weather, hold down Shift while the OS is loading. It'll stop all of those programs from running and get you right to a blank desktop. Also handy if you'll just be using a RAM-intensive program like Final Cut Pro. Things like the Dashboard won't suck your speed.
Target Drive Mode: Turn your Mac into a firewire hard drive. Forget all that messing around with networking and file sharing ports -- this is the easiest way to do a file transfer. Boot your computer while holding down T and it'll dumb itself down to just a Hard Drive. Plug in a 6-pin Firewire cord and you're a target disk jockey.
Quick Delete: I didn't know about this until just a few days ago. You know how you can't delete a file by simply highlighting it and pressing "Delete"? It's Command + Delete. Wow. And press Enter to rename it.
Move a Background Window: Hold Command while you click and you can move a window without bringing it to the front. This is really handy if you're copying something from one window to another and you need to reposition it without causing a chaos collage of windows.
Reader Comments (3)
the last hack somehow doesn't work
Hmm... I don't know why that would be. I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.11 -- perhaps others are different? It only works on inactive windows in the background and you still have to click the part of the window that would normally move it. Also, be sure that you're using the "apple" key.
make sure for the last one that you're clicking onto the top or bottom bar, you cannot just click anywhere on the window.