43 Mighty Mac Tips

We love the Mac, but some of its helpful features are near-invisible. Let’s start saving time. (After all, we love that as much as our Macs.)

- Alan Stonebridge

Do you ever think “There must be a better way to do this simple thing”, but you’re at a loss over how or where to do it?

Welcome to the club! Even people who’ve used Macs for years miss out on invaluable shortcuts that can, over months and years, help you do things faster and more comfortably. Here, then, is an assorted collection of indispensible techniques that make Mac life even better.

Much (but not all) of what you’ll learn here makes use of the modifier keys: ß, ≈, å and ç. You’ll have seen those symbols throughout your Mac’s menus, where they tell you the key combo to press in future for instant access to the adjacent item. They’re used for many more things beyond menu shortcuts though. As well as knowing which keys to hold down, you need to know where to then click or drag. Allow us to help…

1 Encrypt a USB drive

Back up the drive, then open Disk Utility, select it on the left and click Erase. Set its scheme to GUID, format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) for the broadest macOS compatibility or APFS (Encrypted) for 10.13 up, confirm, and set a password.

2 Accidental trashing

It’s especially easy to delete an important file when trying to free up storage space. Select one in Finder, choose File > Get Info, tick Locked in the top group and then close the Info window. Finder will want confirmation if you try to put the file in the Trash.

3 Quickly close windows

If you’ve opened a lot of tabs or windows in an app and want to close them all, you needn’t press ç+W repeatedly. Instead use ≈+ç+W to close all at once. If any docs haven‘t yet been saved at all, you’ll be asked to confirm what to do with them.

4 Quickly quit apps