25 macOS Tips & Tricks You Need to Know!

There are dozens if not hundreds of macOS shortcuts and tricks to streamline your workflows and make it easier to use your Mac, but many of these shortcuts are easily overlooked or forgotten.

In this video, we asked MacRumors readers on Twitter and YouTube for their favorite, most useful macOS tips, which we've compiled below. Some of these are more basic and will work for all users, while others are a bit more advanced. Check out our video to see them in action, or read through the guide for a quick overview.

[fangzhi_zhao]

⌘⌃␣ for quick emoji typing.
⌘T for quick tabs
⌘W to close a tab

[tharunbabu]

in the spotlight, once you find the file, if you want the location press cmd+r to get into the folder of that file.

[AnthonyGii]

You can rearrange the app icons in your Menubar (the bar on the very top of your screen) by holding down CMD and dragging them!

[mr_oscy]

watching this video: hmmm I’ll use theses finishes the video: forgets 90% of them

[txkos]

OMG!!! Thank you for the Options setting for Hot

[TyNicholsen]

Option(alt) + Shift + Brightness/Volume for smaller adjustments

[pgreenx]

Click "F" while watching You Tube to go direct to full screen!

[MichaelQ]

CMD-L and then CMD-Enter duplicates the current URL into a new Tab.

[hibhaven]

I have been using a Mac for almost a decade now and consider myself good at such tips, but I still learnt a few new ones. Thanks.

[carlosspct]

I use many of those keyboard shortcuts through my Magic Mouse simply by creating gestures with BetterTouchTool, like a 2 finger swipe up to open Finder, 2 finger swipe down to Cmd+W, 3 finger swipe down to Cmd+Q, and so on. We can even create gestures for specific apps, as a 2 finger click to duplicate a layer in Photoshop or whatever you want. For me, it’s the #1 trick that makes macOS so much better and faster.

[TheAudacitytoPodcast]

Here are a few tips I love on macOS:

1. Drag a file or folder from finder into any Save or Open file dialog box and you'll be taken to that location. If you drag a file, an Open dialog will select that file for opening and a Save dialog will enter that filename.
2. Drag things from Spotlight. Hit Cmd-Spacebar to open Spotlight and conduct a search. You can drag out images, files, folders, and more. Plus, combine this with my tip #1 and you can drag files or folders from Spotlight into Save and Open dialogs!
3. Hold Shift when pressing volume up or down to either mute or make the volume sound. It does the opposite of your system default.

[benjohnsoncreative]

Oh my gosh, so good! I just made my first ever Mac hacks vid, but this one is NEXT LEVEL. I have been using a Mac for 15 years+ and I had no idea about the tilde key window swap feature. That is absolutely life changing when operating in photoshop. Thank you for putting this together so much value! 🤘🏻

[Robin_S]

Finally a Youtube clip with good tips!! Well done, thanks!

[nicksull]

cmd+tab is great but if you're like me and have a heap of apps open and skip past the one you need - adding shift will reverse the direction

[AL-jbbl]

this was great! I just got my first MacBook Pro and this was so helpful 😊

[AshyB]

Thank you so much. I’ve been a Mac user for over 20 years and you’ve shown me something new!!! 👍🏼

[jameskachan]

Dragging a file/folder from Finder into the "save as/export" dialog box updates the folder location where the file is being saved to to match what was dragged in. A file dragged in will also change the saving file name to match and overwrite that file dragged in from Finder.

Right clicking a file name that is centred in the top title bar of almost any app will bring up a file tree showing where the file is stored, clicking into the tree will open finder to that location.
Left clicking a file name in the title bar will allow for a quick renaming.

Holding ⌘ after a spotlight search will take you to the item's folder and location, not open the item.


Some useful keyboard and typographic stuff:

Shift+ Return will type a "Soft Return" meaning a line break without a full paragraph return - also useful to add line breaks when return normally sends a message inside a chat or message box.

⌥+ a letter key (twice) will type accent characters é for example

• Centre bullet is ⌥ 8
— Em Dash is ⌥ ⇧ -
– En Dash is ⌥ -

[jaakkorinne]

Double click the bottom of the vertical scroll bar in column view in a Finder window, to resize that column to be wide enough that all filenames are fully visible.

[walididrissik]

best tips & tricks I've seen so far. thanks a lot !

[kevinshaw]

Ever need to flip flop two letters? Like changing "form" to "From"? Place your cursor between the two letters you want to flip and press Control+T. This saves keystrokes having to delete and retype.
Forward delete a character with FN+Delete. Forward delete a word with FN+Option+Delete.