Five Ways to Make Your Mac Life Easier
These five things help me out so much.
Have you ever gotten frustrated at things that should be easy but aren’t? Or better yet, scratched your head thinking “There has got to be an easier way about this!” Well, me too. All the time. So over the course of the year or so that I’ve had my Macbook, I’ve compiled some resources/tips/tricks that have saved much time and countless hair follicles. Here are the top five things that every Mac user must add or know about.
Some of these also work with Windows computers, especially the browser ones.
ONE
Alfred
If you haven’t used Alfred yet, then drop everything you’re doing and get on this. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Alfred is a tool that provides shortcuts to just about anything you might want to do on a Mac. It’s like Spotlight on steroids, and more versatile. I could write an entire article on the endless joys of Alfred (heck maybe later this week). But among its most prominent features, Alfred lets you open up any app, file, folder, or task you want.
I recommend you spend some time in the Alfred preferences menu and the launcher itself. You may wonder how this differs from Spotlight (because Spotlight can also do all of that, I guess). This is where the Alfred Powerpack comes in. With the Powerpack, you can utilize Alfred workflows which, as the name suggests, pack a pretty powerful punch, much stronger than Alfred itself. My favorite workflow is called “Spotifious” — a super easy way to control the Spotify app through user-selected keyboard shortcuts. I now basically never go to the Spotify app after having started my playlist. The Powerpack does cost some money, but it is definitely worth it.
- Type: Productivity App
- Price: Free for the limited version, £17 for a Single License Powerpack
- Link: https://www.alfredapp.com/
TWO
BetterTouchTool
BetterTouchTool, or BTT as it is commonly abbreviated, is an invaluable tool when it comes to shortcuts, just as Alfred is. However, BTT is a much different mechanism. Essentially, BTT lets you create a shortcut to anything you want to do, whether it’s a keyboard, trackpad, mouse, Apple Remote, etc (not every single device, but they have a surprising range of choices). For example, I made a shortcut on my trackpad to quickly quit a program by double-tapping with four fingers — the equivalent of CMD-Q. The one I use the most is probably tapping/pressing with three fingers; I made that into the equivalent of a middle click. This lets me open any link in a new tab in Chrome/Safari, but also lets me quickly close a tab by three-finger-tapping on the tab. You’d be surprised how much time you save by using one click instead of two (one to right click, and one to open in a new tab). The combinations are near endless for what you want to do, and the app itself is completely free. Highly recommend you check it out.
- Type: Productivity App
- Price: Free
- Link: http://www.boastr.net/
THREE
OneTab
If you’re not a fan of Chrome, go ahead and skip this one.
Too many times, I’ve had the problem of too many tabs open, to the point where it looks like this:
OneTab helps solve that problem by putting the tabs in this form instead:
OneTab lets you open whichever one you want to work on at a particular time, and send any number of tabs back into the OneTab page when you’re done. It also lets you keep several groups, move tabs between groups, and name your groups to organize your workflow better. Plus, it saves memory because Chrome instead now only has to keep one tab open instead of several. A very invaluable resource.
- Type: Productivity Extension
- Price: Free
- Link: https://www.one-tab.com/
FOUR
Password Recovery
Have you ever stored a password and forgotten later what it is? If for whatever reason you need it, then there’s a simple trick that will show it to you. Starting with something like this:
Highlight the password, and right-click. Then select the “Inspect” option. Something will pop up that will probably look very foreign to you. In case you wanted to know what it is, it’s HTML, the backbone of every website on the web. In that HTML sprawl, you will see something along the tune of
<inspect input=”password” … >Go ahead and double click on the code. It will let you edit it. Change “password” to “text” and voila! You should see what the password is.
FUN FACT: if you change the type to “image”, then your password will appear in the code itself, towards the end of that block. But otherwise, completely useless to do so.
*Note: Please don’t use this technique on someone else’s computer. That would be illegal. This is meant to be used only if you forgot your own password.
- Type: Tip/Trick
- Price: Free
- Link: N/A
FIVE
SMC Fan Control
SMC Fan Control is a must have for every Mac User who wants to be careful of his/her computer overheating. I often use live streams, and live streams often require serious computing power. SMC Fan Control sits comfortably in my menu bar, and not only shows me my CPU temperature, but lets me change the fan speed in order to somewhat control the temperature.
In terms of the actual levels:
- 30–50 is your average, day-to-day usage. Absolutely OK for the computer to be in this range.
- 50–60 means you’re doing a little more serious computing, which is also OK as long as you don’t have this 24/7.
- 60–70 means you’re still OK as long as you don’t maintain this temperature for longer than a short while.
- 70–85 means you’re in dangerous territory, and routine usage of your Mac in these temperatures is bad for the long-term health of your computer. OK in short bouts, as in for a video, or 3D editing project.
- 90+ means that you need to be done with whatever you’re done as soon as possible, as this is the temperature where hardware will become severely affected.
Very much recommend to all who care about extending their Mac life.
- Type: Resource
- Price: Free
- Link: http://www.eidac.de/ (although Google is your best friend here, in case that site is down for whatever reason.)
THANK YOU
If you’ve gotten this far, then I have to thank you, as this is my first Medium Article, written on the one subject I actually have enough knowledge about to write an article about. I love anything that makes life easier, especially computer life, and have finally found a place to share the best of what I’ve found and used. Hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me.
