10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows...
Being the sort of guy who likes to use keyboard shortcuts rather than having to reach for the mouse all the time, I felt a bit hostile once I got my new Macbook Pro. I knew how to do task X or Y on Windows with a few keystrokes, but having moved to Mac OS X (read 10 not X, as I made the mistake!), I found myself feeling annoyed that I didn't know my way around the OS smoothly.
So I searched the Internet to find out about some of the more obscure shortcuts. Below I've listed and explained some shortcuts that a new Mac user, especially those coming from a Windows environment, may not be aware of. It's definitely made my life easier, hopefully you're a new mac user, these will be of use.
1. Forward Delete On a Windows computer, the Backspace key deletes from right to left, where as the Delete key is used to delete from left to right (i.e. forward delete). But on a mac, there is no delete key (at least not the MBP). So at first I found myself clicking everywhere on emails to delete! So the solution: Fn+Delete. Simple!
2. Expose with F9 I found it annoying that I had to click Fn+F9 to bring Expose up. If I clicked F9, it would change the keyboard light intensity. So, the hardware F9 and the sofware F9 have to be swapped. This is how: Go to System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse, click the Keyboard tab and check the box that says "Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features". Now when you press F9, it will bring Expose and when you press Fn+F9 it will change the keyboard light intensity. This is the same for the other keys like volume and display brightness. For example, the volume increase is situated on F5, which is used as the refresh button in browsers in Windows. By ticking the box mentioned above, you can use F5 to refresh you browser now!
3. Right Click Windows users love their right click button! It just doesn't make sense to have a computer without it! Well... Macs don't! They have what is called a contextual menu, and it is evoked by control clicking. Now there's two things you can do: First one works in Firefox (I couldn't get it to work in other programs or in Finder). All you do is click and hold and very soon the contextual menu appeares. You can do that anywhere: links, tabs, bookmarks, etc. Other method, which works everywhere is done as follows. First, go to System Preference > Keyboard and Mouse. Go to the Trackpad tab (assuming MBP) and click the "Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click". Now if you two-finger-click on the trackpad, the right click menu appears! So convenient, specially when combined with two finger scrolling.
4. Tab key Again, whenever I faced a dialog box with buttons, I used the tab key to navigate between the buttons. On a webpage, this was also true. On a mac, you'll probably get confused, as the tab key doesn't do that! Again, head over to System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse, then go to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and click the radio button at the end saying "All controls". Now you can use tab to move around just like windows! Still one thing left... say you have the shutdown dialog box and you use the tab key to navigate to Sleep, if you press Enter, it will shutdown, even though the blue highlight is around the Sleep button. You have to press the Spacebar instead! Confusing at first!
5. Shutdown shortcut Speaking of the shutdown dialog, you can bring it up using Control+eject. In Windows I used Win Key+U, then U again.
6. Maximise button and what it does So you press the green maximise button, but it doesn't maximise? Well, the button only maximises as much is neccessary. So, say you are reading a PDF document. If you zoom in on your document and then press maximise, you will see that the window will become large enough to hold the whole document. And if you zoom out and press the green button again, it will shrink to fit it. Again, different to Windows and needs some getting used to!
7. Alternative to minmise We saw what the maximise button does, what about the minimise button? Well, it "sucks" (as I like to call it) the document to the dock. What is the point of minimising? To clear your screen, to get rid of clutter. So, you can try these two alternatives depending on the need. Either press F11 to see the desktop, or press Command+H to hide the current window, which is what I tend to do.
8. Moving menu bar icons In Windows you can't move the task bar icons (or I don't know how), but on Mac, you can Command click them and move them around. Neat!
9. No Ctrl+Al+Delete ? I always clicked that well known combination to see my RAM and network usage and see what applications are running. On the Mac, go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. Also, you can click Option+Command+Esc to bring up the Force Quit menu, if you need to quit any application that is not responding.
10. Cool shortcut combo To finish off, I'l give a cool (relatively) shortcut combination. Clicking Control+Option+Command+8 will turn the screen in some sort of high contrast mode, but more like an X-ray screen! Try it, it's fun! Hopefully, at least there has been one tip that has been useful to you. Please share other tips and tricks that you know in the comments. It is always interesting to learn new things.
Update: This article has been translated into Japanese at netafull.net. Visit here to read it.
Comments
Another keystroke combo to cycle through running apps is Command-Tab. If you use it to switch to another application, pressing it again will flip back to the previous app. Very handy especially if you have several apps open, but there are two you are using currently in a project or task.
Macs are gay
I'm a lifetime Mac user, so these "tips" are pretty basic and I don't think I would classify them as "tips". I'm pretty amazed at the little things that switchers are concerned about doing on their new Macs. These are the sort of things that once the mindset shifts from a Windows mindset to a Mac mindset, some of these sort of things will be irrelevant.
A few follow-ups to some of the "tips":
1. Forward Delete: Mac laptops have a smaller keyboard so they don't put the extra delete key on the board. Instead of adding clutter (like so many Dell and HP notebooks do), Apple uses the key combo described above to accomplish the forward delete. However, desktop Macs (iMac, PowerMac G5, etc.) come with a full keyboard that includes the forward delete key just like any desktop Windows computer.
2. Expose with F9: I like this tip. I will probably do it now that you mention it. I like that Macs are so customizable and unrestrictive. Alternatively, Expose lets you setup "hot corners" on your screen so that you can simply move your mouse into that corner of the screen to invoke Expose (or a screensaver). You can set this up in the System Preferences>Dashboard & Expose.
3. Right Click: Every application on my Mac has right-click functionality. On my PowerBook, I just use the two-finger method described above. If you don't like that, then you can always hold down the control key while clicking to bring up the contextual menu immediately.
4. Tab Key: In some applications, instead of tabbing the blue highlight over the button that you want to execute, you can just type the first letter of the option you want. For example, in Photoshop, when you close a document that hasn't been saved, it prompts you if you want to "Save" the document, "Don't Save", or "Cancel". The default selection is "Save" so if you hit return it will save. If you want to "Don't Save" you can simply press the "D" key on the keyboard, or if you want to "Cancel" then you can press the "C" key. Again, this doesn't work in EVERY application, but probably about 75% of the ones I use.
5. Shutdown Shortcut: On Mac laptops, you can simply press the power button once and it will bring up the shutdown dialog box. As mentioned in tip 4, you can then press the first letter of the action you want (i.e. "R" for restart, "S" for sleep, return for shutdown). I don't know if it's a Macbook thing vs. a PowerBook thing, but control+eject doesn't do anything for me.
6: Maximize button: It's not really a maximize button. I've always thought of it as a "zoom" button, but I could be wrong. Some applications it does "maximize" the window to full screen, but others it does what you have described.
7. Minimize button: This is an excellent navigational strategy that you have described. I use both of these shortcuts all the time and couldn't live without them. Sometimes, though, instead of showing the desktop or hiding the app, I'll just want to switch between two different apps. This is where the very useful (and pretty) command+tab comes into play. It's the Mac equivalent to the Windows alt+tab.
8. Menu Bar Icons: Yeah, it's nice to have the ability to put the menu bar icons where YOU want them, not where the OS wants them. The same with the Dock which functions much like the Windows task bar when switching between apps with the mouse. Just drag the icons where you want them on a Mac. Windows... well, you just have to open the apps in the order you want them to be on the task bar.
9. No Ctrl+Alt+Delete?: No, there isn't an equally easy way to get to the Mac equivalent of the Task Manager. However, I want to take this opportunity to make sure that Quicksilver gets installed on EVERY Mac. This is the single most useful application for a Mac. It puts all of your apps at a few keystrokes distance. At first, you'll use it as an app launcher, but once you start playing with it, you'll soon learn that you can do almost anything on your computer without taking your hands off of the keyboard. It's free, so you have nothing to lose by installing it and trying it out. For example, to see the Activity Monitor, you would just invoke Quicksilver (accessible from any app using a key combo you specify, I have set mine to command+space), start typing "Activity Monitor" and usually by the time you type "Ac" it finds and highlights Activity Monitor, then you just hit return/enter, and it opens up the Activity Monitor.
10. Cool shortcut combo: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I haven't found a use for it yet. :)
Win + u brings up the screen reader, shutdown is alt + f4
@Chris "It also bugs me that when I have a file highlighted in the Finder, I can’t just hit the Delete key to delete it."
You can hit command+delete to delete a finder item.
[...] Martin hat mir gerade einen nützlichen Link geschickt. Dieser Blog-Artikel gibt 10 einfache, täglich anwendbare Tipps, die es Ex-Windows-Usern leichter machen, sich zurecht zu finden. Hier die interessantesten Punkte: [...]
If you want to really challenge yourself to learn a lot of key commands in each app, you can install KeyCue. Once installed, you can hold down the command key for a few seconds in any app, and it will display a list of all available key commands for the current app.
Try this link for www.apple.com shortcut documents:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
If you want to become a Mac power user, this is a very good place to start reading:
http://www.macosxhints.com/
this is a super helpful post, thanks!
p.s. it's spelled definItely, not definAtely (think of the word 'definite' and then add '-ly' to make it an adverb -- not comin' down on you, just tryin' to help)
[...] from “The Authentic Fake!” Being the sort of guy who likes to use keyboad shortcuts rather than having to reach for the mouse all the time, I felt a bit hostile once I got my new Macbook Pro. I knew how to do task X or Y on Windows with a few keystrokes, but having moved to Mac OS X (read 10 not X, as I made the mistake!), I found myself feeling annoyed that I didn’t know my way around the OS smoothly. So I searched the Internet to find out about some of the more obscure shortcuts. Below I’ve listed and explained some shortcuts that a new Mac user, especially those coming from a Windows environment, may not be aware of. It’s definately made my life easier, hopefully you’re a new mac user, these will be of use. [...]
Just switched to Mac a week back. Thanx a lot for these shortcuts.
One thing that annoyed me was that the resize can only be done from the bottom-right corner. It drove me nuts.
I found a solution though and it works gr8.
App name is WindowDragon, just google it.
Nice advise, might be what I need for in order to switch from Windows to mac.
also, if you hold option and click on the maximize it will actually maximize. Option also tends to mean all, so if you option click the close button on a window it will close all the windows in that program, same with minimize.
[...] After seeing Apple’s latest earnings I can’t even begin to imagine the benefit blogs are playing to Apple’s bottom line. Here is the latest great article for the layman on switching to a mac from windows. In a month this article will have great pagerank and potentially send thousands of dollars in promotion Apple’s way. [...]
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Having just switched a couple of days ago to Mac (Macbook :D) and I have been thrilled with it as i'd hoped!
The blog is so useful, although many i knew as most people would i spose, Its so handy to learn some new ones nice and easily! Apple should compile something like this! Apple+Space was one i just didnt know and sure speeds up the already fast process of using spotlight :D
Toddy
[...] “The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… [...]
This is very very useful!! Thank you!
[...] “The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… Switching to MAX OS X, some help. (tags: osx keyboard shortcuts howto help mac) [...]
Thank you for the additions to the shortcuts, I learnt some new ones, which is great!
And thanks Nicola for correcting the spelling mistake!:)
Casey Sousa, thanks! I'm sure these tips would be basics for pro users like yourself, thanks for the extra (pro) tips you wrote!
Apple DOES have a right-click feature - you just need to buy a two button mouse. I use a Kensington PilotMouse Optical. Obviously this doesn't work with built in laptop hardware.
As for Macs being so terribly slow with their horrible kernel compared to Windows, um... I think that someone who programs exclusively for Windows will find that there are different optimization techniques for BSD UNIX (the Mac's real operating system) than for Windows; and perhaps that person chose the wrong machine.
I personally find that the Mac lets me get things done that take much longer under Windows, the one exception being using Internet Explorer on sites designed for it vs Safari. But my big benefit is from getting rid of TWO machines, a Mac G4 and a big Athlon-powered PC, and replacing them with a single 30-watt Core Duo machine that doesn't make a sound, and runs Windows (via Parallels) just as quickly while still letting me use all those great Mac programs (and I do NOT mean .Mac, iPhoto, or Mail! but BBEdit, etc.)
I second QuickSilver.
I know you're looking for keyboard shortcuts, but there are two mouse-related shortcuts that I've found indispensable. First, to send a window to the dock, simply double click on the title bar at the top. Also, to totally hide an application that you're currently running, just option-click anywhere on the desktop. All of the applications windows disappear from sight and the dock, until you reactivate the application.
Great pointers.. Although I'm still on the fence of switching. But not just yet!
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Thank you for your help. I knew it was possible to tab through, but all my Mac buddies didnt know. Great post, found some cool stuff out.
-Recent Convert
[...] “The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… Why the Mac works the way it does, particularly when you’re used to Windows. Some interesting weirdness explained. (tags: apple blogging computers cool guide list lists mac macbook osx tips tricks tutorial tutorials windows keyboard) Social Bookmark- SelectBlinkList del.icio.us Digg it Furl ma.gnolia Netvouz RawSugar Shadows Simpy Spurl Yahoo MyWeb Filed in: del.icio.us | No Comments » [...]
ilove mac!
Great tips...I've been using a Mac since 1984 (and Windows since 1992) and I still learned a few things! One thing I wanted to point out was that hide and minimize do slightly different things. Minimize literally minimizes the window clicked on into the dock, where you can see an iconized version (try minimizing Quicktime player while a video is playing for fun). Hide, on the other hand, literally hides all windows for the current app while the icon for the app itself still remains visible in the dock (regardless of whether or not you've added it to the dock).
I know the PC-Mac transition is a hard one on Windows veterans, but eventually the Mac becomes even easier to use than a PC. There's always doubts and questions about anything new. I, personally, have had many switchers asking me for some tips -- even the simplest things like how to empty the trash.
The most repeated questions were about where they could find an x app for the Mac, so I made a list for any switchers that are interested in getting some of the best for the Mac (and who knows... it may even help some Mac veterans).
The list can be found here:
http://www.macrecon.com/2006/08/14/the-ultimate-mac-list-for-free-apps-a...
Just hang in there, and you'll find that Macs are great computers.
OMG, THANK YOU. You have just solved my greatest Mac pet peeves.
Since I'm getting my mac on friday this will definitly be a lifesaver! I'm suck a keyboard addict I harldy use the mouse so this will be really useful! Feel free to post the most basic of tips again!!
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About #4, the Tab key. Even after enabling "All controls", Tab still doesn't work as well as in WIndows. It simply won't go through all the controls in a window. It happens in many different apps and it's really annoying.
The real shortcoming not handled here or anywhere is the lack of accelerator keys under Mac OSes. You should never need to use the mouse for routine tasks.
Thanks, these are all great tips.
The one thing I cannot seem to get going on my 2 week old macbook is how to fire an application or document in finder via the keyboard. I can shift+command+a for the applications folder, and k for kismac, but how do you launch the app? The command+enter tip Cory Frug mentioned did not work for me. TIA.
@MrSpocksSon
For launching an app I'd use QuickSilver (you can find it on www.macupdate.com). If you want to launch a file that already has an association with an application (for example, a .doc document to be opened in MS Word), then simply select the file and press Cmd (apple key)+ Page Down key (down-arrow key). This works for me on a PB G4 running 10.4.7, I am unsure if it works on MacBooks or MacBook Pro's.
@MrSpocksSon:
Command(Apple Key) + O (Open)
[...] “The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… (tags: mac osx tips howto windows switch) [...]
[...] Só para completar o post anterior, fica aqui mais um link para mais possíveis switchers: “The Authentic Fake!”: 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… [...]
[...] “The Authentic Fake!” » Blog Archive » 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows… [...]
[...] I got a new MacBook recently after years of being an IBM ThinkPad diehard. I miss my ThinkPad and there is still much use of words a lady shouldn’t use. These 10 tips on switching from a PC to a Mac will be huge. (via Lifehacker) [...]
What about deleting a file directly from a Spotlight window? I know you can use an Automator plugin... I have no idea why you can cmd+delete from the finder, but not Spotlight. That seems completely arbitrary.
the right click trick with the 2 finger selection does not work.
i have a macbookpro, but when i pull up the sys pref = keyboards and mouse, there is no box that says 2 finger tap for supplemental menu?"
how can i change this option?
thanks!
eunice
One more essential: apple+~ to switch from windows in active application, or switch tabs in Flash.
[...] :-) Čia ne iš nusivylimo, o iš atradimo džiaugsmo. Iki šiol vis nerasdavau resursų/laiko/noro išjudinti savo Mac OS X žinias. Tai va, šiandien vienam Nikitos komentaruose radau gerą nuorodą. Ten rašoma apie 10 top patarimų naujam Mac’o naudotojui. Bet komentaruose dar daugybė gerų patarimų. Taigi, kam įdomu, pirmyn. [...]
Thanks for all the hints. I'll soon get my mac and i'm sure that these tips will come in handy.
The apple website offers a page with a compilation of all the standard keyboard shortcuts, but there are so many of them that it's a pain to scroll through all just to find one or two you're looking for. However, if in need, here is the link for it:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
[...] More neat keyboard shortcuts can be found at hyperreality.wordpress.com… , thanks to Dominik Herrmann for the link (www.blogaholic.de/blog/2006/07/31/10-tipps-fur-leute-die-von-windows-zu-...) [...]
[...] Duración: 38 minutos Ligas: Revista Mac Fácil (enviada por Odiseo) 10 Ways to Improve Your Technical Skills (enviada por Coca, quien le agregaría: escuchar Byte) Boxers con bolsita para iPod (enviada por Odiseo) Teclado multimedia con iPod dock (enviada por Odiseo) USB Ass Cooler For Your Chair (vía Gizmodo) Picasa Web Albums Uploaders para Mac Como crear un disco de inicio con un pen drive (USB) Hamachi, a zero-configuration virtual private networking application (enviado por Daniel Obregon) Videopodcast de Daniel Lezama: Midi en Video Feedburner 10 tips for new Mac users, switching from Windows (enviada por Beny Mandujano) SYCTI de México, Hardware para usar su Skype con aparatos telefónicos tradicionales vía USB. [...]
Hello,
I am desperate to get arrows on the main section of the keyboard. On Windows fn + k is equivalent to down arrow, fn + u is left arrow and so so. This is so essential to keep the fingers on the keyboard. Even better, I have never seens a windows machine with a keyboard offering the shortcut... laptops, desktops, it is always there. I have not been able to reach that with iMac 17'' os x 10.4.7. At best partial solutions that work only with cocoa app... Ukele did not help me much to remap those arrows...
Thanks
Thanks to all who have answered my questions. Both options mentioned above worked perfectly.
Thanks again.
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