Mac Running Hot? Tips And Tutorials For Mac
Here are some very useful keyboard shortcuts for OS X. Quickly turn off display Ever had a coworker peeking over your shoulders while you were at work? It can be quite annoying. I can’t offer to change human nature, but here’s a keyboard shortcut that will help. To quickly turn off your display and blank your Mac screen hit the following keyboard combination: Ctrl + Shift + eject The moment you hit this key combination your screen will go blank. To switch your display back on just move the mouse on hit some keys on your keyboard.
Preview most files on your Mac using Quick Look. Click the file once to select it, then press Space bar. Your Mac is a powerful system that is waiting for you to ask it do to even more. Let's explore what it can do.
Zoom in and out of your display To zoom into your Mac’s display hold down the Ctrl key and scroll the mouse up and down. You can do this on the trackpad by using two fingers and sliding them up and down. I find this useful at times when I want to look at something in greater detail, and especially when I want to make an online video appear in full screen.
Quick reboot There are a number of ways you can reboot your Mac, and well, being a Mac it does not usually need frequent reboots. However, in case you ever feel the need for it here’s a keyboard shortcut to reboot your computer.
Hit the following key combination: Cmd + Alt + Ctrl + eject Mind you, be careful with this one. It will immediately begin the reboot process and not ask you before going ahead. Log out To log out use the following keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Q This will log you out of your current session. Put your Mac to sleep I rarely shut down my MacBook.
I just shut the lid and it goes to sleep, and stays in this state of hibernation until I open the lid again. The MacBook seems to handle this really well, it recovers real quickly from the sleep and it also seems to preserve the battery. To put your Mac to sleep you can use the following shortcut: Cmd + Alt + eject 6. Take a screenshot of your screen To take a screenshot of your entire display hit the key combination Cmd + Shift + 3. This will capture whatever is on your display and dump it in an image file on your Desktop folder. You can optionally take this screenshot and instead of saving it to a file you can save it to the clipboard so you can paste it somewhere.
For this use the key combination Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 3. Take a screenshot of an application window I the previous tip we learned how to take a screenshot of the entire display. You can also take a screenshot of a single application window. This is particularly useful when writing about applications. It saves you a lot of time in that you do not have to trim the image.
To do this hit the key combination Cmd + Shift + 4 + Space Bar. Enter the first three keys and then hit the Space Bar. Hover over the cursor over the application window that you want a screenshot of and click on it. It will save the screenshot as a file on your Desktop folder.
Mac Running Hot Tips And Tutorials For Macbook Air
Like with the previous tip you can also just save the screenshot in your clipboard by using the key combination Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4 + Space Bar. Take a screenshot of a selected area So you can take a screenshot of your entire display and of an application window. The folks at Apple didn’t stop there. You can also select an area that you want to take a screenshot of.
When you hit the key combination Cmd + Shift + 4 you can click an drag your mouse over the area of which you want a screenshot. The screenshot is saved on your Desktop folder as an image file.
Like with he previous two tips you can use the key combination Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + 4 to save the screenshot to the clipboard.
Ever wonder how much free space is available on your Mac's hard disk or partitions? It's easy to check in OS X. Plus, if your Mac is running Mac OS 10.7 or later, the interface shows which types of files are taking up the most space, a feature that could help you track down space-hogging files and applications. Note: Your startup disk should have some free space available - ideally 10% of the disk should be free. Mac OS X needs this space to operate. If you are running out of available space, it's time to delete some files or install a new hard drive. (For instructions, see the related articles below.) Checking Available Hard Drive Space on Mac OS 10.7 or Later If your Mac is running OS 10.7 or later, here's how to check to the available hard drive space on your Mac:.
From the Apple menu, select About This Mac. The window shown below appears. Click More Info. The About This Mac window appears.
Click Storage. The window shown below appears. Use this window to check how much hard drive space is available on your Mac.
The startup disk is shown at the top of the list; other partitions are shown below. Notice that you can see how much of your hard drive space is being consumed by audio files, movies, etc. This information could be useful when your hard drive is nearly full and you need to delete some files. Checking Available Hard Drive Space on Mac OS 10.6 or Earlier If your Mac is running Mac OS 10.6 or earlier, here's how to check to the available hard drive space on your Mac:. Switch to the Finder, and then open a new Finder window. From the sidebar, select your hard disk by clicking it once, as shown below.
From the File menu, select Get Info. The window shown below appears. The window shows the disk space available on your Mac's hard drive.
Unfortunately, there's no slick interface like the one in 10.7 or later, but at least you'll know whether or not you're running out of space on your hard drive. Related Articles. Meet Your Macinstructor, the author of, has been a Mac user for over 20 years. A former ghost writer for some of Apple's most notable instructors, Cone founded Macinstruct in 1999, a site with OS X tutorials that boasts hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month. You can email him at:.