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Mac 101: Using the Up Arrow in Finder
It's no surprise to most Mac users that you can use arrow keys to navigate through Finder windows. Arrow-key presses work in all three window styles: icon view, list view and column view. What many new Mac users don't realize though is that there are Command versions of these arrow keys. When viewing folders using icon view or list view, both Command-Up-arrow and Command-Down-arrow play a special role. Command-Up-arrow moves you up to the parent folder of the currently-displayed folder. So if you are in, say, /Users/ericasadun/Pictures/Family, Command-Up-arrow would take you to /Users/ericasadun/Pictures. Press Command-Up-arrow again and you move to /Users/ericasadun. You can check your current folder by command-clicking the icon at the top of the folder window. Command-Down-arrow only works when the selected item is a folder, and, like Command-Up-arrow, only in icon and list views. Pressing Command-Down-arrow opens and selects the current folder. So it essentially does the opposite of Command-Up-arrow. It moves you further down in the folder hierarchy as opposed to Command-Up-arrow which moves you up the folder tree. These are useful shortcuts to have at hand when you prefer to use the keyboard to navigate through your files rather than the mouse.
Mac 101: Keychain
The Keychain on your Mac is a little application buried in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. I say buried because I think Keychain is sadly neglected by most users. Here are some things you can do with it: Save web page passwords Save login info (aside from websites, like your IM logins) Save protected notes (secret stuff) This 101 will be a little longer than usual, so I can show you how to use Keychain to store passwords and other secret things. Later, in our Secure Your Mac series, we'll talk about making a good password so all these things stay private. Full details on how to easily use Keychain after the jump.
Mac 101: change keyboard modifier keys with a Windows keyboard
You may recall that one of Apple's slogans when the Mac mini was released was BYOKM-bring your own keyboard and mouse. Well a lot of those keyboards will of course be Windows keyboards, and while they work fine on a Mac, there's one particularly annoying thing. For some reason the keyboard Windows key is mapped to the Mac Command key and the keyboard Alt key is mapped to the Mac Alt or option key. The reason this is a problem is that on a Windows keyboard the Alt key is right next to the spacebar (where the Command key is on a Mac keyboard). So if, like me, your keyboard shortcut muscle memory is to the key next to the spacebar then all your shortcuts get messed up on a Windows keyboard. Fortunately, there's a simple solution to this problem in the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane. There if you click on the "Modifier Keys..." button you'll be taken to a dialog where you can easily remap the keys. So to make a Windows keyboard work like a Mac keyboard just change the option key to the command key and the command key to the option key as follows:
Mac 101: Shift + F5 Autocomplete
Reader Goobi wrote in reminding us of this neat little trick which I thought would make a great Mac 101. As you know OS X has a system-wide spell checker. What Goobi reminded us about is that you can access that spell checker to autocomplete words in any Cocoa text field (this only work in Cocoa applications). All you have to do is type a few letters and then hit Shift + F5. This will generate a drop-down list with all the words in the spell check dictionary that start with those letters.A great way to use this is for words that you have a hard time remembering how to spell. For example, I can never remember how to render 'bourgeois' correctly. So here I just type in the first four letters, hit Shift + F5, then scroll down.
Mac 101: Reset your Mac OS X password
We've all done this.* It's time to install something or run Software Update, but first we've got to enter our password. What was it again? Oops.You can reset your password with the CD (or DVD) that came with your Mac, but if you don't have it, try this tip from Hackszine. Restart your machine while holding down the Command Key (or "Apple Key") and the "S" key. This will start your Mac up in "Single User Mode."Now it's command line time.** Don't worry, it's just three lines: #sh /etc/rc #passwd yourusername #reboot Ta-dah! You may return to what you were originally doing. Just write that new password down first.*Well, not us, but, you know...our "friend."[Via Lifehacker]**Update: this post has raised some understandable security concerns among our readers. Our own Mike Rose had this to say:"Not this caveat, from a commenter at Hackazine: if you have a FileVault-protected home directory, you cannot use this hack. Changing your password from the command line will render your home directory completely inaccessible, probably permanently."
Mac 101: Get rid of that Apple watermark in iDVD
I do not spend too much of my time (free or otherwise) in the wilds of iDVD, however, last week I found myself needing to make a DVD for work. What better program, thought I, than iDVD to get these movies onto a DVD! It worked like a charm, and within 30 minutes I had a very slick looking DVD but there was one little problem. This DVD I was making had nothing to do with Apple, its products, or its technology and yet there on the lower right hand corner was an Apple logo watermark. It was out of place, and I wanted to get rid of it.Luckily, it is very easy to get rid of that watermark. Simply go into the iDVD preferences and you'll find the option right there in the General section. Uncheck 'Show Apple logo watermark' and you're good to go.Simple? Yes, however, sometimes the most difficult thing about a program is knowing the options that are available. Go forth and make watermark-less DVDs!
Mac 101: Spring-loaded folders
Dragging a file from one folder to another is one of the Great Innovations of Modern Times. It's like the web, or sporks. But sometimes it's a hassle: what if you want to drag a file to a folder...inside another folder? Dum dum dummm...In comes another Great Innovation of Modern Times: the spring-loaded folder. This allows you to drag a file to another folder through a folder hierarchy. Makes no sense? Give it a try: Click and hold a file to drag it. Move the file over a folder and wait a few seconds. The folder opens. Still holding the file, drag it over another folder. That folder opens. Repeat as necessary. Release the file when you're in the folder you want, and all the excess folders close out. You can make the process even quicker by hitting the spacebar key when you're hovering the file over the folder, instead of waiting those few second for the folder to spring-load itself.Nifty, eh?[Update:] Two more great tips from readers in the comments (they could do this job for me): From serenity: "Another simple one is that you can change the time it takes for the folder to "spring" in the Finder preferences." Hit Cmd+Comma to open Finder Preferences. And another from aptenergy: "Also, if you drag your item out of a folder that's been spring loaded, it will automatically close." Thanks guys!
Mac 101: Mimic Stacks in Tiger
Here's a simple trick that will let you approximate Leopard's "Stacks" feature in Tiger (without all the cool eye candy, of course).Lifehacker suggests moving your documents folder, a download folder, etc. into the dock. Then right click that folder (or Control-click or simply click and hold...whichever you prefer) to see that folder's contents.That's fine, but if you want to get fancy, create a smart folder to live in your dock. I made one to mimic Steve's collection of recent images: From the Finder's "File" menu, select "New Smart Folder" Set the criteria to be "Created = Today" and "Kind = Images" Give your folder a descriptive name (like "Today's Images"), save it and drag it into the dock! Now you have a folder that will automatically populate itself with all of the images you create on a given day. I clicked the folder window's chicklet (upper right hand corner) to give it more of a "Stacks panel mode" feel by eliminating the toolbar and sidebar.Yes, this only the most modest approximation of the most superficial functionality of stacks, but it's the best we have until October.
ChangeShortName updated to 1.3
A few weeks ago, in discussing some things not to do with your Mac, one of our commenters asked why changing the shortname (the abbreviated version of your username you see in Terminal, as the name of your 'home folder' or in Get Info windows) is such a nasty bit of business on Mac OS X. Shouldn't it be easy as pie, on the 'computer for the rest of us,' to make this quick and trivial modification? Well... it isn't. In part due to Mac OS X's UNIX heritage and in part due to NetInfo (a chunk of the NeXT operating system that hopefully won't be around forever), the shortname gets tucked away in a lot of tricky wee places, and getting them all updated manually is a path to disaster.Fortunately, as Scott mentioned way back in ought-five, there's a somewhat easier way: James Bucanek & Dan Frakes' handy-dandy and free ChangeShortName utility. This tool, now updated to version 1.3 and featuring an all-new Cocoa interface, will give timid people the strength to do what must be done and change your shortname for you, as an absolute last resort. Seriously, you are not allowed to use this program without reading the included (and well-written) manual, and you should heed the FAQ that asks "Q: Should I be scared of ChangeShortName? A: YES." The authors suggest learning to live with your hella lame shortname, or creating a new account and migrating your data instead of changing the name; if something goes wrong in the process, your efforts at account aesthetics might render your machine unusable. You've been warned!Thanks Dan & James
Mac 101: Launch at startup, the Login Items tab
Everybody has programs that are pretty much always open (Mail, iTunes, Quicksilver, etc.), so it's good to have them launch automatically at startup. There are a couple of different ways to do this. If the program is already running you can hold down your (left) mouse button on its Dock icon and choose "Open at Login" from the pop up menu. However, the best way to manage these is in "Login Items" tab of the Accounts Preference Pane in your System Preferences. Here you can manually add login items. In fact, in addition to adding login items (just by clicking the plus sign), you can also remove anything you don't want (with the minus). It's useful to scan the list periodically and remove anything you don't commonly use (sometimes developers, e.g. Adobe, will put things in there without asking). Removing these unused items can free up system resources for more useful things. But be careful that you do not remove anything important (basically if you don't know what it is, don't remove it). In addition to adding applications to the login items tab, you can also add Volumes to mount on login, including network mounts. Just mount the network drive first in the Finder, then after hitting the plus sign select it and it will be placed on the list, as you can see for my WebDAV mount above.
Mac 101: Mastering the Save Dialog
The Save dialog in Mac OS X (it's the box you get when you press Command-S) can often lead switchers, and inexperienced Mac users, astray. When you save a document you are presented with a dialog box like the one above (this example is from TextEdit) which is a bit limiting. Do I need to use the drop down menu for everything? How do I save this document some place other than the defaults under the "Where" pop-up menu? Read on to find out how to master any Save dialog box on Mac OS X.
Mac 101: Viewing long file names
Have you ever opened up a Finder window in column view and found yourself confronted with truncated file names? It's quite annoying. Here's a quick fix.At the bottom of the column, you'll see two short, vertical "pipes" (pictured above). Double click the pipes, and the window will instantly expand to accommodate the longest file name in the window. Hooray!
Mac 101: Input Menu and keyboard layouts
OS X has a lot of nice features for "International" users that many folks forget are there, even though some of them are handy for US English users as well. Among these are the many available keyboard layouts in the Input Menu tab of the International System Preference Pane. The Input Menu is designed primarily to give you access to foreign language keyboard layouts which remap your Roman character keys to specialized glyph sets in both Roman and non-Roman languages (e.g. Cyrillic and Asian languages, etc.). In addition to the non-English language support, however, there are other useful things such as support for the Dvorak keyboard layout. Perhaps best of all, by checking the "Show input menu in menu bar" option (see the image after the jump) you get one click access to whichever language layouts you select in the Preference Pane, as well as the Character Palette (for finding obscure symbols and glyphs) and the Keyboard Viewer (which will place a clickable keyboard on your screen). This will place a small flag in your menu bar which will indicate which key layout is active, and when you click on it you'll be able to select from among the available key layouts selected in the Input Menu tab. If you ever have to write in a foreign language using an appropriate key layout can save a lot of time for tying special characters like macra in Latin and breathings and accents in Greek. And if you want to get a little bit adventurous you can even make custom key layouts of your own.
Mac 101: Enabling Built-in Spell Check
Mac OS X offers a system-wide built-in spell checker. Many OS X applications including Mail, Pages, TextEdit, Safari and iChat AV (among others) allow you to take advantage of this feature to find and correct spelling mistakes. To enable spell checking in an application, control-click (or right-click on a two-button mouse) a text field or text entry area. Choose Spelling from the contextual pop-up menu and then make sure that Check Spelling as You Type is checked. If it is not checked, just select it to check it. Selecting it again disables the feature. More after the jump...
Mac 101: Locating files with the Title bar
You've got a window open, any window. A Finder window, say, or in many of the built-in Apple apps like TextEdit. Ever wonder exactly which directory you're looking at? Here's a simple trick that may be new to you if you're a switcher. See the name of your file or folder at the top of that OS X window? It usually has a small icon right next to it. Command-click the name or title in that title bar and OS X will show you the directory tree that leads down to the item you're looking at. And if you click on a folder in that list? Finder automatically opens a new window showing that folder. Very convenient.
TUAW Tip: Showing Desktop Hard Drives on a case-by-case basis
In my recent Mac 101 post, I showed you how to use Finder preferences to hide hard drives, CDs, and so forth in your Finder. Several readers contacted me asking how to display Desktop drives on a case-by-case basis, so here's a quick follow-up post. The secret is that Finder's preferences will show or hide actual volumes, i.e. any item that appears in OS X's /Volumes folder: partitions, iPods, CDs, DVDs, etc. But it doesn't control the display of aliases. So here's what you do. Show all hard drives. Open Finder -> Preferences. Select the General pane and check "Hard disks". Create aliases. Select a hard drive you want to keep on your Desktop. Control-click (or right-click) the drive and choose Make Alias from the contextual pop-up. Finder creates an alias file for the drive. Repeat for each drive you want to keep. Hide the drives. Return to Finder -> Preferences and uncheck "Hard disks". Your hard drive icons go away but the aliases remain. Rename the alias. If desired, return to the Desktop and rename each alias so it looks more like the original item. The arrow that appears at the bottom left of the drive icon indicates that you're dealing with aliases and not the original drive. Be aware that View -> Arrange By does not treat aliases as drives, so your disk may end up in an unexpected position after arranging.Thanks everyone who suggested aliases.
Mac 101: Remove unwanted menu extras
Sure, those little icon utility menus on the right side of the screen -- displays, sound, Airport, etc. -- are handy, but do I really need the Displays icon there for a desktop screen that never changes size, or the Modem icon when I've got broadband? While you can deactivate most of these through a parent application or System Preferences, there's a quicker way: simply hold down the Command (Apple) key and drag the offender out of the menu bar and onto a blank area of the Desktop. Poof! No more icon.
Mac 101: Tweaking your keyboard shortcuts
More Mac 101, TUAW tips for the new Mac user and for us forgetful veterans. I often hear a complaint from switchers and newcomers: "Why do I have to use the mouse for everything?" Of course, we all know that there are scores of keyboard commands waiting to be used, but some particularly helpful ones are less than obvious.Check out the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of the Keyboard & Mouse system preference panel. There you'll find my new best friends, "Move focus to the Dock" and "Move focus to the active or next window." With the first shortcut (control-F3 by default; note that on a laptop keyboard, you need to add the Fn key as well, lest you inadvertently mute your sound) you pop up your Dock, and you can select an application with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down the option key and you can relocate the selected app to another Dock slot. It's not a direct substitute for Command-Tab application switching, but it's still helpful.The second option works like a supercharged version of the Command-` window rotation shortcut, cycling through all your open windows in all applications -- similar to the difference between the F9 and F10 Expose options. This is a great timesaver when you've got two or three apps open and you need to swap between them rapidly.Have fun exploring the rest of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane![via Theocacao]
Mac 101: Apple's Mac 101
Welcome back to Mac 101, the TUAW classroom full of Mac tips for beginners (and veterans who might have forgotten them). Commenter Kris noted on a previous Mac 101 post that we hadn't mentioned the obvious: Apple has a collection of basic Mac tips, also called Mac 101. In our defense, we did blog about Apple's version almost two years ago.Apple's Mac 101 tips are organized by topic, walking a novice user through initial setup and various Mac OS X features, as though you were paging through the manual; you can see a complete list here. An accompanying collection, Switch 101, covers hints specifically for switchers from Windows. The level of instruction in the Mac 101 hints? Well... here's the intro to the Ports and Connectors article:On the sides of your Mac are a few small, geometric-shaped holes on your computer that may differ from one another. These are your computer's ports, which are used to connect other devices (aka peripherals) to your Mac. You've probably heard the words "FireWire" and "USB" tossed around at work or your local computer or electronics superstore, but what exactly do these terms mean? This lesson will tell you.Ah yes, the geometric-shaped holes, I've been wondering about those! Elsewhere on apple.com, you'll find the Pro Tips section, mostly culled from Scott Kelby's well-regarded Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips book. We'll pick some winners from this list for a future Mac 101 post.
Mac101: Always Open With
A file icon's stylized display often shows you a relationship between the file and the application that it opens in. For example, an HTML file that stores web page information might display a small Safari compass or a Firefox globe. Word files are marked with a blue W, Powerpoint files with a P, QuickTime movies with a stylized Q. These icon hints indicate which program will open and attempt to read the file when you double-click it in Finder. Many file types can be used in more than one program. For example, you can play MP3 files in QuickTime or in iTunes, you can open a text file in TextEdit or in Word, movies in QuickTime or VLC. Finder allows you to change the application associated with each file. Here's how: Control-click (right-click) any file. A contextual menu opens over the file. Release any keys you are pressing and then press the option key. The menu item that had said "Open With" changes to "Always Open With". Select any application from the Always Open With submenu. Two things happen. First, your file will open in the application you select. Second, Finder updates the file's association so it will always open in that application. Its icon updates, changing to reflect its new "native" application. Say, however, you want all your MP3 files to open in QuickTime or all your text files to open in TextEdit, or so forth. Do this instead. Select any representative file in Finder and choose File -> Get Info (Command-I). Locate the section of the Info pane named "Open with". Select the Application you want to use from the pop-up menu and then click Change All... By doing this, you instruct OS X to change the application association for all files on your computer that share the same type, text, MP3, MOV, XLS, or whatever.
