One of the best things about the Mac is consistency. That lets you take something you know about one app and use it in another app. There's no better example than the Mac's Edit menu, and its stalwart menu items Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. The keyboard shortcuts for those are always the same, regardless... Continue Reading →

Most dialog boxes have a Cancel button, which you can click by pressing esc (Escape) on the keyboard. That's an easy key to hit as it's usually at the top left corner of the keyboard. The "default button" (the one that's either heavily outlined, or blue) can be triggered with Return or Enter. Enter is... Continue Reading →

When browsing web pages, tapping the spacebar scrolls you down one screenful. Shift-spacebar scrolls you back up. This works in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Way easier than using the mouse or trackpad.

Simplest way: ⌘-Shift-3. Result: time-stamped image, on your desktop. The image is the entire screen, including the menubar. If your Mac's volume is turned up you'll hear a camera shutter sound, for those of you old enough to remember when cameras made a sound when you took a picture. You can edit the image if you'd... Continue Reading →

⌘-B makes selected text bold in many programs, including Mail, Pages, Microsoft Word, and InDesign. It's one of the standard shortcuts. If the text is already bold it will probably become "unbold" if you press ⌘-B again. You should try it.

You probably already know that ⌘-P brings up the Print dialog box. You probably also already know that pressing Enter (or Return) on the keyboard is the same as clicking the Print button (because it's the default button, indicated by being blue). But maybe you didn't know that you don't have to wait for the... Continue Reading →

Shift-Option-K, pressed all at once, produces the Apple logo (). It works in most programs, with most fonts. Certainly works in Mail and Pages and Word. It's just another character, so feel free to make it larger, change its color, etc. For example: 

If your keyboard has an Eject key you can bring up the Sleep/Restart/Shutdown dialog by pressing Control and Eject together. Here's how it looks. No need to go to the Apple menu to do it. Just Control-Eject. This shortcut was discovered with the help of Charlie the Cat, who was pressing down on the Control... Continue Reading →

⌘-I toggles italics on and off. Works almost everywhere. Highlight some text, hit ⌘-I, and the text becomes italicized-- unless it was already italicized. In that case, the italicizing is removed. Of course you can hit ⌘-I before typing something. If you do that, whatever you type after that is italicized, until you either hit... Continue Reading →