5 Shortcuts to Use More Often

I love shortcuts. Though I don’t use as many as some people do, I still use a few ALL the time. Here are some of my favourite.

Most of them are keyboard shortcuts so here’s a little help for those of you who get confused:

Spotlight

Command + Spacebar

More than a shortcut this is a revolutionary tool. If you’ve ever tried to use finder to search for something on your mac you’ve probably given up on searching ever again. Spotlight however is much better at this type of thing. You can search for anything in spotlight and it organises the results by type (if you’re really ambitious you can even change what it displays and the order in your spotlight preferences).

It’s so quick and easy that I don’t even use my dock to open applications anymore, I just start typing the name of the application in spotlight and hit enter when it finds the right one.

It also has some great features built into it:

1. It can do basic math:

2. and dictionary searches:

Find Something

Command + F

I use this in almost all the programs on my mac. I find it to be particularly useful on long wikipedia pages where there is something specific that you need to find out: for example you’re on the Spice Girls wikipedia page and need to find out when ‘wannabe’ was released? With the this shortcut you just Command F and type ‘wannabe’ in.

In your Browser

My favourite in browser shortcut (if you use Mail or an application for your email) : highlight anything then Right click > Services > New Email with Selection. This is really great for emailing links.

Then there are some standard shortcuts that you may already know:

1. Open a link in a new tab: Command + click
2. Add to your Bookmarks: Command + D

Screenshots

I take screenshots all the time (for obvious reasons) but you should too. It’s really easy and it helps when you want to remember something or if you need to send something to someone quickly. If you use evernote (which you should – read my blog post about why) then you can also easily embed screenshots into your notes.

Command + Shift + 3 takes a picture of your whole screen
Command + Shift + 4 allows you to draw a box around what you want to picture and only then takes the shot

Copy and Pasting the Good Way

Shift + Option + Command + V (in this order because its easiest to press this way)

So everyone knows the regular commands for copy and paste (Command + C/V) but whats really annoying is when all the formatting from the text you copy gets pasted into your document. If you want to paste the text so that it appears with the same formatting as your document then use this little trick (Its not as difficult to use as you think).

An example from MS Word:

I hope everyone also knows undo – Command Z. I use it at least every hour!