macOS Tips

Posted on 2017-06-18 by nbloomf

I recently started using macOS on a MacBook Pro supplied by my work, after about 10 years of using various flavors of Linux and FreeBSD. So far it’s been a little like visiting Canada as a USian; most of the time I recognize the language, and to a first approximation the basic infrastructure is the same. But if you look closely there are some fundamental differences that occasionally come out in ways both subtle and not. :)

This post is a place to dump the little things I learn about how to tweak macOS to my liking. Of course the act of writing them down means I’ll be less likely to forget them.

Mission Control

Manage multiple desktops.

ctrl-up: Open Mission Control.
ctrl-left and ctrl-right: Switch among desktops.
If a window is alone on a desktop, putting it in full screen makes it really full screen.
Split view: to tile two windows on a desktop, click and hold full screen button (green).

Keyboard Shortcuts

ctrl-F2: Move focus to the Menu Bar. (Useful when using full screen or split screen.)
shift-cmd-4: Take a screenshot. Change default screenshot folder to ~/foo with the following shell commands.
```
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/foo
killall SystemUIServer
```

Finder

Set $HOME as new window defaut location in Terminal > Preferences.
cmd-shift-.: Show/hide hidden files.

Filesystem

Network shares are mounted to /Volumes

My Favorite Add-ons

Bash

source ~/.bashrc: reload .bashrc in an existing session