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Working with a Mac is usually very efficient and pleasant, since Apple does a lot right with the macOS user interface. For real power users, as Apple likes to call them, the operating system has keyboard shortcuts and other shortcuts that you can use to speed up your work even further.
The problem is that these are not collected anywhere and therefore you only get to know one or the other trick when you read about it somewhere or are made aware of it by an acquaintance.
In this post, I would like to share the top seven tips that will help me in my daily work with Mac.
1. Hide window of current app
This function used to be called “parent key”. This is a handy keyboard shortcut that hides the currently focused app and all of its windows on Mac. Handy when the boss comes in and you don't want him to see that you're reading Sir Apfelot.
To hide the app, press CMD + H and to show it again just click on the app icon in the dock.
2. Show invisible files in Finder
With the default settings, macOS ensures that certain files that are not important or interesting for the normal user are simply invisible. In some cases, however, you need to be able to see such files. With the key combination CMD + SHIFT + . (period) you can make these files visible in the Finder and with the same key combination they become invisible again.
3. Customize folder icons
Every folder in macOS looks the same: chic blue. If you like it a little more creative here, for example to be able to see directly from the icons to which customer or project a folder belongs, you can easily adapt the icon of your folders.
To do this, find a new icon file with the .INC extension. Then you mark the corresponding folder and open the information window for this folder with CMD + I (or with the right mouse button). Next, drag the ICN file onto the folder's icon in the info window.
If you only have a JPG or a PNG, you can also proceed as follows: Open the file in the preview app, mark the entire area, press CMD + C, go to the information window of the folder, mark the icon in the window and press CMD + V. This will paste the clipboard graphic into the folder icon field.
4. Emoji shortcut when entering text
Emojis are now often used in short messages, but on the Mac I always had a bit of trouble with the little pictures because it wasn't that easy to enter the emojis.
Fortunately, there is a keyboard shortcut that gives you a box with all the emojis: CMD + CTRL + spacebar. The emojis used recently can also be found at the top of the panel, which is extremely useful.
5. Move files with ALT key
When working with files in the Finder, you can either right-click or use the shortcut CMD + C to copy them. However, if you want to move files instead of copying them, you can use the shortcut CMD + ALT + V for pasting instead of the shortcut CMD + V. This cuts the files from their original location and pastes them to the new location.
6. Join videos with QuickTime
If you just want to quickly merge two video snippets and save them as one video file, you can do it with the on-board tools of macOS. To do this, open the first video in QuickTime and then simply drag the second video onto the window. QuickTime then appends it to the second video and File > Save saves the combined video.
7. Always display folders at the top of file lists
If you have opened a folder with many subfolders and files in it, you can sometimes find your way around faster if all folders are displayed at the top and only then all files. To do this, click the Finder icon in the Dock and choose Finder > Preferences from the top menu. Then click on the "Advanced" icon and tick the "Show folders at the top: When sorting by name in windows" option.
Of course, sorting only works if you have selected either List or Columns for the folder view in the "Display" option and "By Name" for sorting.
