MacOS Tips and Tricks

Setup and Usage

Look thoroughly through the System Preferences and Preferences dialogs of the apps you use. There are lots of useful options (e.g. in Finder) that can be toggled.

Customize the toolbar of many of Apple’s MacOS apps by right clicking on the toolbar and clicking “Customize Toolbar…”. Can also toggle option to show icons, icons+text, or text only in Finder. In Finder you can also drag applications or folders to your toolbar.

Finder

Select the file (in Finder or on the desktop) and press Spacebar to get a view without having to open an app (mainly useful for quickly seeing pictures or 3D models).

Quick rename files using Finder by selecting multiple files, right clicking, clicking rename, and you can very quickly batch-rename a bunch of files using find & replace, appending or prepending text, etc, from the GUI.

Also in Finder, it’s useful to activate “Show Path Bar” and “Show Status Bar” under the View menu bar item. Path bar is more useful than status bar, but it’s nice information to see. Another handy tip is Shift+⌘+P to toggle a preview pane which makes looking through a large directory of images much nicer.

Cut and Paste of files is less intuitive than in Windows or Linux. Instead of ⌘ + X & ⌘ + V, you ⌘ + C to copy then ⌥ + ⌘ + V

Hold the option key when in menus to see alternative options to what is presented. For example, clicking on a file in Finder and then clicking File in the menu bar shows you “Move to Trash” as an option. If you hold the option key after clicking File, you will see “Delete Immediately” (keyboard shortcut is ⌥+⌘+Delete.

Use Shift+⌘+. to toggle showing Hidden Files (dotfiles) system-wide.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Tiling Windows

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts
Add a new App Shortcut
Type “Move Window to Left Side of Screen” and assign the shortcut (e.g. Shift + ⌘ + ←)
Type “Move Window to Right Side of Screen” and assign the shortcut (e.g. Shift + ⌘ + →)
Type “Zoom” and assign the shortcut (e,g. Shift + ⌘ + ↑)

Easy Typing of MacOS Symbols

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text
Add a new replacement
Type something like “cmdsym” under the “Replace” column and copy-paste or type the replacement symbol (e.g. ⌘) under the “With” column.

Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Launching Any App

Open Automator
Create a new Quick Action
At the top, select “Accepts input from no sources”
Add a “Launch Application” action
Select the application
Save the Quick Action
Go to Keyboard Shortcut settings > Services, scroll down to General
Add your shortcut

Useful Applications

TinkerTool, FREE - For when you want the extra customization options, but don’t want to have to go to the command line to do them

ImageOptim, FREE - GUI app to optimize images very easily

BeagleIM, FREE - A pretty decent XMPP app which supports OMEMO

IINA, FREE - A media player with a nicer interface and more MacOS integration than something like mpv

CheatSheet, FREE - A simple app that shows you all the keyboard shortcuts you can type at any given moment, useful for learning what you can do with the keyboard

My Customizations

System Preferences

In General: Show scroll bars always, click in the scroll bar to jump to the spot that’s clicked, default web browser chromium
In Dock & Menu Bar: Size to ~1/4, automatically hide and show the dock
In Clock: Use a 24-hour clock
Spotlight: Uncheck “Show in Menu Bar”
In Security & Privacy: Turn on Firewall, Under Privacy > Apple Advertising, turn off Personalized Ads
In Keyboard: Use F-keys as standard function keys, under Shortcuts: Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls
In Mouse: Uncheck natural scrolling
In Displays: Scale my 4K display to have as much space as 1080p
In Sharing: Check Remote Login and Allow full disk access for remote users

Other

Install homebrew to get eloston-chromium, keepassxc, mumble, lagrange casks
Install BeagleIM from App Store (for XMPP)
Download and install IBM Plex fonts (Mono, Serif, Sans)
Download and install NetNewsWire (RSS Reader)
Added keyboard shortcuts for tiling windows
In Finder: Sidebar: Check all items, Advanced: Show all filename extensions, Keep folders on top in windows when sorting by name, Under View: Show path bar and status bar
In Terminal: cursor: underline, when the shell exits close if the shell exited cleanly, disable audible bell, disable visual bell only when sound is muted

Other Notes

A bit of a song-and-dance to launch ungoogled-chromium.app because Apple likes to scan unsigned apps for malware. From an inexperienced-user perspective, this might make sense, but it is also a pain the butt for the rest of us and potentially a privacy concern. (Song-and-dance: Open the App, go to Security and Privacy in Settings, General Tab, click the lock icon, click OK in the opened app dialog window, create an exception in the settings window)

Syncing between iPhone and Mac via iCloud is very nice for notes, calendar, safari tabs and bookmarks, and any other data you’d like to share. Especially useful for the keychain where you have a built-in password manager shared with all your devices.

As long as you’re not sharing a ton of photos/videos/large files through iCloud, 5GB goes a long way and upgrading to the next storage tiers is not expensive.

Automatic iCloud backups of things like Documents makes it very hard to lose things by default unless you turn such syncing off and don’t set up Timeshift or something similar.

Automatic switching between dark and light themes is very good. Even the default desktop background changes and even third-party apps respect this preference.

Honestly, Apple keyboard is not bad at all. Nice and crisp key feel even though there is short travel. Easily better than modern Thinkpad keyboards, maybe not as good as the T430 or Core 2 Duo-era MacBooks (which is one of the best I’ve used). Plus, of course you get the keys labeled with MacOS functions.

Finder is decent enough. I tweaked the settings to show my home folder in the side bar as well as to open the home folder when finder is opened. I can see what Apple is doing trying to hide most of the filesystem away from general users and making them only aware of their Documents, Pictures, etc. Even though I disagree with that choice, I’m glad they make it easy for advanced users to show more. Also, it has tabs and split panes which Windows Explorer still doesn’t have?

Safari is a pretty decent web browser. It integrates with the Apple ecosystem very well, as expected, and has a basic level of tracker blocking built in, but Adblock extensions would have to be downloaded from the App Store. I downloaded ungoogled-chromium instead because I want uBlock Origin and better website compatibility.

Also See

Here are some more resources with great tips and other information: