Tips, Tricks & More

Last Updated: November 3, 2018

(Works with up to Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.5) Note: Although most if not all of the functions are still available with the latest Mac OS Sonoma, the location in the menu settings where they can be found have changed.

1. Emoji and Symbols - Press and hold control & command and then space bar on any input field, like I did on this Google Site or on any document and you can do this! 😱

2. Menu Bar - Press and hold command, drag icons to rearrange. A neat little trick to customize your MacBook Air.

3. Notification Center - Slide two fingers (without clicking) from right to left to bring up the Notification Center. This gesture works best when you begin on the aluminum body and then make your way onto the Multi-Touch trackpad. Here you can modify your notifications by pressing "Edit". You can customize your display to show your day at a glance, weather forecast, quickly send a Tweet or whatever best suits your needs. 

4. Copy and Paste - You might be thinking, what is so special about Copy and Paste. If you have an iOS device such as an iPhone or iPad and if you are signed in with an iCloud account on both devices, you can copy on one device and paste onto the other. (This feature might not work on a public or school network.)

5. Multi-Touch Gestures -  I could spend a whole day on the Multi-Touch Gestures that can make your daily routines easier, but this one is amazing and requires the time. Do you want to be more productive? Have you ever had to close or minimize multiple windows just to get to your desktop? Try this...without clicking, start at the center of your Multi-Touch trackpad using your thumb, index, middle and ring finger do a "pinch out" gesture. To return, "pinch in" using the same fingers.

6. Three Finger Drag -  I personally do not like to physically click on the trackpad. I see it as a mundane and archaic gesture that has been embedded into our psyche. With that said, "clicking and dragging" is an antiquated gesture. Instead, you can drag windows around by dragging (without clicking). Go to System Preferences - Accessibility - Mouse & Trackpad - Trackpad Options - Enable Dragging, choose "three finger drag" from the menu.

7. Tap To Click - As mentioned, I do not like to click, instead, try a tap gesture. Go to System Preferences - Trackpad - Point & Click - Tap to Click with one finger. 

8. Split View - Do you want to have to windows open at the same time without having to manually arrange them? Click and hold on the green button in the upper left hand corner to activate. Now simply click on the other window you want to share half the screen with.

9. Finder - Have you ever lost a file in the vast sea of documents on your computer, not knowing where to find it and end up having to redo your work? Use The Finder, it is super intelligent! It has the ability to look for specific words you are searching for within a document, even a .pdf file! Just type in a key word or phrase and see what happens! Click on the magnifying glass icon on the menu bar, type in your key word or phrase, but do not press enter. Wait for Finder to do its work. You will even see an image of a file that contains your key word or phrase. Once you find what you are looking for, click on the file to open it up. Remember, Finder can look for everything and anything in your Mac. Try it!

10. Siri - Intelligent Personal Assistant anyone? You can ask Siri to play a song (if owned on iTunes). You can ask Siri to open Pages, ask the weather forecast, set a reminder, etc. Try it now by clicking on the Siri icon located on the menu or dock. 

"Here are some of the many other things you can ask Siri to do. For more examples, ask Siri ”What can you do?”

• "Show the PDFs in my Downloads folder.”

• “How much free space do I have on my Mac?”

• “Play the top 40 jazz songs.” 

• “What’s the weather in Lake Tahoe?”

• “Show me all of the files I shared with Cecilia last week.”

• “Search the web for images of the Eiffel Tower.”

• “Find tweets from....”

• “FaceTime Victoria.”

• "Add Laura to my 10 AM meeting.”

• “Show my photos from yesterday.”

• “What time is it in Monterrey, Mexico?”

• ”Find coffee near me.”"

11. Zoom In - There are multiple ways to manipulate the zoom in/out controls. First you will need to activate the settings. Click on System Preferences - Accessibility - Zoom - Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom. Now that you have activated the zoom in/out feature, press and hold the following: 

Zoom In: Command & Option (both at the same time) - Then press the += key to zoom in 

Zoom Out: Command & Option (both at the same time) - Then press the += key to zoom out

Note: The zoom in feature will focus itself upon where you have the mouse pointer. If you move the mouse pointer while zoomed in, you can focus (while zoomed in) on other areas of the screen.

12. Screen Shots - This feature comes in very handy. There are two ways to take a screen shot. 

Whole Screen - Press and hold: Shift, Command and 3

Selected Portion - Press and hold: Shift, Command and 4, with the cross hairs, select the area of the screen you want with your trackpad by highlighting.

When you take a screen shot, you will hear a camera click. Remember tip # 5? Try it to access your desktop. This is where you will find the screen shots you took. They will be in a .png (picture) file. You can now insert the picture into your document or webpage as needed. 

13. YouTube on Safari - I ran into this one by accident, it is not mind blowing, but helpful nonetheless. While browsing on Safari and if you are on Youtube, to make the screen go Full Screen, simply press the letter F. To minimize, press F again.

14. Keyboard Brightness - I see it all of the time, a backlit keyboard whilst the lights are on. There is no need for this, save your battery! Press F5 until you have turned off the lighting. If you are in absolute need of backlighting press F6 to turn back on.  I often find myself burning the midnight oil, I like to adjust my settings to give me backlighting, while conserving battery. You can follow these steps. Go to System Preference - Keyboard - Activate "Activate Keyboard Brightness in low light" and "Turn keyboard backlight off after __secs of inactivity" (I set mine to 5 secs). By doing this, you will notice that the keyboard will illuminate while typing and turn off on its own after the selected pre determined time. If you are in a low light setting, you obviously can't see they keyboard, no problem, all you do is move the trackpad and just like Harry Potter, "Lumos."

15. Night Shift - As I mentioned in tip #14, I often find myself working late into the night. This is obviously not recommended! If you find yourself in the same predicament, you may have a hard time going to sleep once done working. There can be many factors for this, but the color temperature of the screen might be one.  Your MacBook Air has the ability to change it's color temperature to a warmer setting and reduce the amount of blue light. You can try it to see if you like this feature and adjust your settings to what best suits you. 

1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Displays.

2. Click the Night Shift tab.

Or for a quicker option you can follow tip #3 to bring up the notification center and you will see "Night Shift" at the very top. Click to turn on

16. Signing PDF's in Preview-  I saved the best for last. Think of it as a bonus, the crème de la crème. Have you ever had to print out a .pdf file only to sign it and then find a way to scan it and then e-mail or worse yet, fax it to someone?  First, that is not the "green" way. Second, it is time consuming. Third, what if you can't find a pen! Now think about End of Year Certificates, how many did you have to sign? Don't you wish you could you sign it digitally only once?

Do you remember how to use the Finder (Tip #9)? Try it. Look for "Preview", press enter: Click on Tools - Annotate - Signature - Manage Signatures. 

You have two options, you can use the Multi-Touch trackpad to enter your signature with the trackpad (It will take some practice, use the entire trackpad and you can delete as many times as necessary) or you can scan your signature off of a piece of paper by utilizing the built-in camera. Be sure to click on any key to "record" the signature. 

Try it now by downloading the certificate below, opening it the file using Preview and signing it on your MacBook.

Note: This feature only works when using Apple's Preview, not Adobe Reader or Google's built in PDF Viewer. If you are on Google Chrome or FireFox, it's ok, download the file and then open using Preview.