eMobs

So, everyone knows that you can do basic calculations in Spotlight, but beginning with macOS High Sierra, you can take that a step further: unit conversions. You can do specific unit conversions if the need arises, say, “13 stone in pounds” but, you can also just type in the amount and unit you want to convert, and your Mac will suggest not just the likely conversion, but also a handful of alternatives. Type in '$1299' and you'll immediately be told what that is in pounds Sterling (based presumably on what's set as your native currency in the Language & Region pane of System Preferences), and then when the window folds down to show more results, you'll see Euros, Yen and so on.

Way back before macOS Sierra launched in 2016, the Mac’s ability to listen to you and talk back was already impressive through Dictation. However, that’s been completely topped by Siri’s arrival on Apple’s Mac lineup. You can either hold down Command and Space for a couple seconds, or simply click the Siri button on your Dock or Menu Bar, and summon the same Siri you’ve grown accustomed to on your iPhone.  And, if you have a newer Mac, like the 2018 MacBook Pro, you can just say ‘Hey Siri’. And, as a bonus, this version of Siri is much more useful. Beyond the questions you may usually ask, like the weather or who’s playing in the playoff game, Siri on macOS High Sierra can toggle system functions like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or even pull up individual files stored on the system, based on what you tell Siri about the file. Siri can even launch or close apps for you as well as store the results of your queries inside the Notifications area of the OS for later use. Just press Command+S...

We know no self respecting Mac fan actually wants to run Windows. But sometimes it comes in handy, whether to play the latest games or run some niche piece of software that has no Mac equivalent. You can either run Windows alongside macOS with a virtualization app like VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or VirtualBox, or partition your hard drive to install windows on to run it full bore on your hardware using Boot Camp Assistant (in your Utilities folder).

For Windows users, taking screenshots can be a chore. You can either use the PrtSc key to capture the entirety of your display or use the Snipping Tool to snatch but a portion.  Of course, some keyboards aren’t compatible with the shortcut and opening a separate app to take a screenshot is a bit of a hassle. Luckily, on a Mac, the process is streamlined. It’s simple, to take a snap of your entire screen, simply press Shift + Command + 3 at the same time, and the screenshot will be stored on your desktop. If you just want a portion of the screen, the shortcut is Shift + Command + 4 with the same output directory. To only capture an individual window, you can press Shift + Command + 4, then hit space and click the window you’re trying to capture. Lastly, if you have a fancy new MacBook Profeaturing the Touch Bar, press Shift-Command-6 to take a snapshot of that little OLED strip.  No matter the case, taking a screenshot on a Mac requires nothing more than memorizing...

The menu bar has been a fixture on the Mac since it launched in 1984, but since OS X El Capitan, you can hide the menu bar. Open System Preferences, go to General, then click "Automatically hide and show the menu bar." When you tick this box off, the menu bar will reappear as you glide your mouse arrow towards the top of the screen, allowing you to get at all your menus.

In addition to all the letters and symbols you see on your keyboard, you’d be surprised at the bewildering array of special characters you can type on your Mac.  You may already be familiar with typing accents such as for café (in which case you type either Option+E then E again or, on OS X 10.7 or later, hold down the E until you get extra options) but you’ll find there are many, many more. Go to the Edit menu of most apps and you'll see Special Characters at the bottom. This panel gives you access to a huge range of symbols you can drag into your documents.  Not all apps or operating systems support them, but these are mostly part of the cross-platform Unicode standard. There are probably more than you see at first, too; click the cog to reveal more. Emoji (those fun, colourful characters available in OS X 10.7 or later) are a notable exception to this cross-platform world. They're not Apple-only, but your recipient might not be able to see them.

It might be the 21st century, but we're still using squiggles on a piece of paper to agree to all manner of things. If you are emailed a PDF to sign, though, you don't have to faff about printing it, signing it, then scanning it back in: you can actually sign it right in Mail. Drag a PDF into the email you’re sending, hover over it then at the top right you’ll see a little button appear.  Click it, and you get a range of Markup options, including one for signing documents. What’s more, you can either add your signature by holding a signed piece of paper up to the webcam on your Mac, and it does a fantastic job of cutting it out of the background or by drawing on your trackpad.

In OS X releases before Yosemite, renaming a group of files at once either meant third-party software or rolling your own rename script using something like Automator or AppleScript. These days, however, you can just select a group of files then select Rename either from the right-click contextual menu or from the drop-down button marked with a cog icon in Finder windows. When you do, you get the option of adding text, replacing text, or applying a format such as a name and an automatically incrementing counter.

In various places in OS X and macOS you see the option of sharing things to friends and contacts from a little Share button that looks like an arrow going up out of a box. The best bit, though, is that Macs keep track of how and to whom you most often share stuff. So, if you're in the habit of sharing funny links with a friend and AirDropping files to a colleague sitting next to you, these options will get stuck to the bottom of the share menu to make it easy to pick those options next time.

Working with two windows or apps side-by-side became much easier since OS X 10.11 El Capitan, thanks to Split Screen view.  By holding down a left-click on an app's green maximize button in the top-left hand side, you can then drag it to be positioned on the left or right-hand side of the display. You'll then need to pick a second open window or app to snap to the opposite side. Split Screen obscures the launcher and OS X's Menu Bar, so you get a bit more screen real-estate and fewer distractions. Dividing the separating line between the two apps lets you make them smaller or larger, which can come in handy for keeping an eye on live information such as sports scores at one end while being productive on the other.

Even though you could theoretically import photos from your iPhone or DSLR manually via a pair of Finder windows, an easier way to do so is by using Image Capture.  The long-standing feature isn’t new to macOS, but it has been overlooked by an overwhelming number of Mac newcomers.  In it, you can choose to import all of your camera’s photos at once, directly to the folder of your choosing, or better yet, you can pick and choose which photos to store on your Mac while deciding whether to keep or delete the originals one by one. What’s more, you can also connect wirelessly to a scanner to import scanned documents or photos to the directory of your preference. You can also link your camera to any macOS application that you want.  So if you want Photoshop to open every time you connect your iPhone, Image Capture can be configured to make that happen.

Preview is an incredibly powerful tool, and it’ll only get more powerful in macOS Mojave. Beyond letting you, well, preview PDFs and images, Preview allows for a ton of annotations for PDF that are compatible with Adobe’s PDF app, Acrobat, which is used by Windows users and companies, making it easy to share annotated documents with colleagues, regardless of the platform they use. Make sure the Edit Toolbar is visible (from the View menu) and you'll see you've got options for drawing shapes, arrows, speech and thought bubbles and more.  There's also the option to highlight text in different colours, strikethrough some text, add notes and type some text into boxes.

As a Mac user, you ought to be accustomed to everything being beautiful. After all, the graphical user interface has been a selling point for Apple computers since the original Macintosh.  So, of course, you don’t want your experience hindered by ugly desktop icons that can easily be replaced with the images of your choosing. Actually doing this is easier than you might think. No, you don’t need to download a sketchy third-party program to change the thumbnail images that appear when you save important stuff to the forefront of your computer.  Instead, just right click the document and select ‘Get Info’ then copy the preview image you want to use in Preview (or your preferred image editing app). After that, click the existing document thumbnail in the ‘Get Info’ window and press Command + V to paste the icon from your editor to the file info window. Voilà, your files are now way prettier and easily recognizable!

One of the most under-appreciated apps on macOS, Preview is hugely powerful, and even for us at TechRadar, it can perform tasks that we’d usually be stuck using a more expensive and elaborate app such as Photoshop for. Trust us: open an image in Preview and poke around the app’s menus and interface to see just what it’s capable of. For example, you can crop your image. Draw a selection with the regular Rectangular Selection tool then either hit Command+K or choose Crop from the Tools menu.  Alternatively, show the Edit Toolbar and make a more complex selection either with the Instant Alpha tool or use the Smart Lasso.

One unique thing Macs can do that other computers can’t is remember all of your passwords and vividly recall them back to you using an Apple feature called Keychain.  The built-in software that accompanies Keychain is called Keychain Access, wherein the lot of your private details are stored. You’d be surprised, but the area this comes in handy the most is with Wi-Fi connections. If you ever find yourself in an unfamiliar place, or even if you’ve just forgotten your own Wi-Fi password, you can use Keychain Access on your Mac to find it.  The process is straightforward: open up Keychain Access by searching for it in Spotlight, search the name of the connection and double-click the iCloud Keychain corresponding to the SSID you’re looking for. From there, click ‘Show password’ and enter the Keychain password that you set earlier. You’ll then be greeted by the elusive Wi-Fi password that you’re far too anxious to ask for. For future reference, however, it’s healthy to talk ...

Keyboard shortcuts are great for saving time, but you're not limited to just the shortcuts put in by developers; if there's a particular menu option you use all the time that doesn't have a shortcut, you can create it yourself. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts. Click the + button to add a new shortcut. You can choose which app you want to apply it to from the drop-down list, but you must know the exact name of the menu command to type into the next box, including the correct case and any special characters such as ellipses.  Lastly, choose a unique key combination to invoke the command, then click Add.

Automator is a tool built into OS X that enables you to build your own workflows of commands, making complex tasks much easier in the future.  Use it to build your own little apps that perform a specific task, to make a workflow to modify batches of files, or to create new Services, which are functions you can access from a right-click. You could use Automator to rename a large number of files, to convert images to a different file type, to turn text files in a folder to audio files, and much more. To create something in Automator, open it, then choose what type of thing you want to create: each is useful in different circumstances, so click on them to see descriptions. Select the one you want and click Choose (or open an old Automator file). Start creating the steps of your workflow by dragging Actions from the left-hand side of the screen to the empty space on the right-hand side. Actions are categorised by application and file type, or you can search for something at ...

One really easy way to view someone else’s screen or even control their Mac over the internet which is invaluable if you’re trying to help a relative troubleshoot their computer problems, is to launch Screen Sharing by searching for it with Spotlight then entering the Apple ID of the person you’re trying to contact. If you or they don’t know it, just have them look in the iCloud pane of System Preferences. And, while you’re in that screen, make sure they have Screen Sharing enabled in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. They'll be asked to grant you permission to view their screen, and they can also then click on the screen sharing icon in the menu bar and grant you the ability to virtually, remotely control their mouse and keyboard too.

When someone sends an SMS, a text message in the original mobile phone sense to your iPhone, it appears in a green bubble rather than a blue one, as would be the case if someone sends you an iMessage. Before Yosemite, SMSs would only appear on your iPhone where you'd have to peck out a reply, but now you can have them come into your Mac or other iOS devices when they arrive so you can reply to them from there too. Your iPhone needs to be running iOS 8.1, but once it is, and once you're signed into your iMessage account that also has your phone number linked to it both on your iPhone and on your Mac or other iOS devices, turn on the Text Message Forwarding option under Settings > Messages on your iPhone. 

If you’re like us, you take screenshots all the time – whenever you see something important, funny or interesting that you need to save for your records, or even share with your friends.  Unfortunately, on macOS Mojave your screenshots are defaulted to save as PNGs, but you can change that. If you want to save your Screenshots as JPGs, head into Terminal and type ‘defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG’ then hit enter. Once that’s done, the change will go into effect once you restart your Mac. If you can’t wait that long, you can force the change to go through by typing “KillAll SystemUIServer” and hit enter and the UI will restart. If you want to go back, you can type “defaults write com.apple.screencapture type PNG” and then follow the same steps to go back to the default.