Education Technology Services (ETS) » OS X Tips

Photo Booth

reteraok — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:37:27 +0000

Need to take a quick Photo Booth picture without the 3-second delay? Hit OPTION while clicking the shutter button below the picture. Voila!

Quitting an Accidentally Opened App

reteraok — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:35:11 +0000

Do you sometimes click the wrong icon when choosing an application from the dock? Instead of waiting for the application to launch before quitting, use this handy shortcut. As soon as you the wrong icon, right click on it (or CTRL + click), and select force quit. This will allow you to kill it before it slows down your system. If you aren’t quite as quick and the application has started loading, sometimes the contextual menu will say QUIT instead of FORCE QUIT. To avoid this, hold the OPTION key and right click (CONTROL + OPTION + click), and FORCE QUIT will appear.

Scrolling up or down in a web browser

reteraok — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:04:34 +0000

Need an easy way to scroll down or up in a web browser without using a mouse? Here’s the tip for you. To scroll down in a web browser (ie. Safari and Firefox), press the SPACE BAR. Continue to press the space bar to view the entire webpage. To scroll up, press the SHIFT and SPACE BAR.

Volume Adjustment Without Sound

reteraok — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:42:14 +0000

Have you ever needed to adjust the sound during a presentation but had to subject everyone to sound alerts when doing so? A great tip is to press the “Shift” key with the volume adjustments keys. This allows you to adjust the volume without the sound!

TechNotes Mar 08

cyreyes — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:27:26 +0000

TechNotes_Mar_08

Command-Tab Part II

reteraok — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:01:09 +0000

Thanks to Nate Javellana for this tip: When you use the Apple key and TAB key to scroll through applications that you have opened, you can also quit an application from the same menu. While continuing to hold the Apple key on your highlighted application, you can hit Q to quit.

Get Rid of Duplicate Songs in iTunes!

reteraok — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:14:37 +0000

Here is a really cool feature in iTunes that is often overlooked: “Show Duplicates”. This is especially good for people that download music from multiple sources and don’t take the time to check each song that will be downloaded. (I’m guilty of this!)

To have iTunes display a list of all duplicates, go to VIEW > SHOW DUPLICATES. You can then choose what to do with them. You can press SHIFT and CLICK to select songs in consecutive order or you can press COMMAND (APPLE) and CLICK to select songs not in a random order. Then hit DELETE. iTunes will then ask you to move files to the trash or keep them at your iTunes folder. You can decide what to do.

Have fun organizing your music!

Command-Tab

reteraok — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:31:29 +0000

This keyboard command allows you to quickly access your open applications and documents. Simply click and hold the APPLE key, then click the TAB key to scroll through the window that appears. When you find the application you’d like to open, let go of the TAB and APPLE keys. Have fun using this new command!

Quick app hiding!

reteraok — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:42:46 +0000

Try this tip: Hold down “Option” (Alt) and click on the desktop or another application and it will instantly hide the first application you were in.

PC Delete key on a Mac!

reteraok — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:09:02 +0000

PC users frequently lament that Macs don’t have an equivalent to the PC delete key. The Mac delete key is actually the PC backspace key. There actually is a delete key on Macs: Fn-Delete. Try it out!