8 Mac Shortcuts and Tricks to 10x Your Life

I wish

I have been an avid Mac and iPhone user since 1997 when my middle school bought the beautiful candy-colored iMac like one below. Did you also get introduced to an iMac at school? Weren't they stunning compared to PCs?

Today, I spend at least 10 hours per day on Apple products. Isn't it essential that I get maximum productivity out of this time? Is there any way I can accomplish 10 hours of work in 9.5 hours?

The last 2 years I have significantly improved my productivity on Apple products because I sought out shortcuts and hacks. Please practice each one as you read through each.

1) Keyboard Text Shortcuts

• Problem: Do you hate typing out your home address, email or phone when texting with someone, filling out forms or writing an email?

• Solution: You need ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’!

1. In your iPhone or Mac Settings, search for ‘keyboard shortcuts’

2. Click on ‘Text’ tab

3. Click on ‘+’

Now, if I start typing ‘usm’ then my full email address will auto-complete. Is not it awesome?.

1. Below is a list of shortcuts I use

   1. Phone #

   2. Email

   3. Address

2) Screenshots

• Problem: It takes too many clicks and applications to take a screenshot

• Solution: Command + Shift + 4 turns your mouse into a crosshair. This lets you click and drag the frame for your screenshot part of your screen.

3) Preview

• Problem: There are 5 similarly named files and you want to take a quick look to see how they differ. It takes too long to open them one by one.

• Solution: Take a sneak peak of 1 or more PDFs, documents or images.

  • Select 1 or more files and then press your spacebar. (Try it now.)

  • Your file is now viewable without opening the file with Preview or Microsoft Word.

  • To close the file, press your spacebar again.

  • You can also quickly view and exit a file by selecting a file, holding the spacebar to preview it and then releasing the spacebar.

4) Spotlight

• Problem: It takes too many clicks to find a file in a certain folder or quickly convert 100 Fahrenheit to Celsius

• Solution: Use Spotlight (Cmd + spacebar):

  • Use it as a search bar, calculator, file search, get weather in Sydney, app launcher, calculate exchange rates…

  • Can do conversions (FYI 100 Fahrenheit is 37.8 Celsius, Spotlight told me)

5) Rename a File

• Problem: To rename a file you need 2 clicks: 1) right click 2) choose ‘Rename’

• Solution: Just 1 click. Press ‘return’ after selecting file

6) Sign documents using Preview

• Problem: You need to sign a PDF. How can you do it easily?

• Solution: Open the file in ‘Preview’ and follow the 3 steps below to easily sign documents.

  

  7) Emoji Palette

  • Problem: You want to quickly nice, bubbly emojis to your emails 😌🤗

  • Solution:

    • Quickly pull up the emoji palette by Control + Command + spacebar.

    • You can search for the emojis and even arrows, characters and math symbols

8) Saved Passwords

• Problem: Do you need to regularly open certain websites or apps (i.e. Bank of America) on your iPhone, making you type and retype your username and password? Is it getting time consuming to type out the full username? Do you wish you could securely store your passwords on your iPhone and unlock them using FaceID?

  

• Solution: iPhone passwords to your rescue. Save your frequently used credentials for emails, apps and websites. Now with just one glance you can login! Remember to save your passwords whenever your iPhone asks.

  

My 2 questions to you:

1. What was your favourite shortcut of the 8 above?

2. What iPhone or iMac hacks do you love to use to maximize your productivity? Please leave it in the comments.

In 2016 Salesforce used to award medals for getting certifications. I was one of the first people to get it. I was proud of myself!