Top 10 Mac Tips and Tricks for Productivity

Published in

Jay’s Blog

6 min readMay 31, 2016

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If you’re a Mac user this list of mac tips and tricks will no doubt help you out. After using a Mac and OSX for a few years, and spending way too much time trying to get things done faster, I’ve assembled this list of tips and tricks to help you day to day with your Mac.

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1 — Launch apps with your keyboard

Every Mac come with an amazing feature built right in called Spotlight, and used in it’s simplest way it can help you start up an app on your Mac really quickly. To use Spotlight you just need to press ⌘+ [space] on your keyboard and you’ll get a small window popup in the middle of the screen. Type the first few characters of the app you’re want and it’ll be highlighted in the list on screen, then just hit [return] on your keyboard.

Some common ones:

mail — Mac Mail
word — Microsoft Word
exc — Microsoft Excel
saf — Safari

Try it now!

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2 — Stop storing things on your desktop

I know this sounds really easy, but it took me years to break this habit. And the main reason I think it’s a bad idea? It’s just too hard to find anything. It’s a bit like the “clean as you go” mentality. When you save a file you’ve started, find a place to store it that makes sense so that you can find it again in the future. My desktop is empty… literally nothing on it. In fact I never even look at my desktop anymore because I know there’s nothing there to see.

OSX gives you plenty of ways to store things in the right place and lets you create folders as you go to save something. No excuses here I’m afraid.

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3 — Learn shortcuts for copy/paste

Copy and paste is by far one of the most common things you’ll do on your computer. Typing an email, filling in a form on a website, sending a message to a friend, putting something on Facebook… all of these things need copy/paste. So because it’s one of the most common things you’ll do it makes sense to learn how to do it from your keyboard rather than reaching for the mouse.

Copy — ⌘+ [c]

Paste — ⌘+ [v]

Here’s another quick tip though. If you want to select the words to be copied, learn to also use the [shift] key combined with ⌘+ [right] and ⌘+ [left] to quickly select the line of text you are working on.

4 — Lean on Spotlight for search

Spotlight is easily on the most powerful features on your Mac. The problem though is that over time we’ve learnt that using search doesn’t work that well on most websites. Google aside, using search on Facebook for example rarely gives me what I’m looking for and so we’ve fallen out of the habit of using search.

However on your Mac Spotlight is an incredible search tool. On your keyboard press ⌘+ [space] to open spotlight and then type what you’re looking for. Here’s some examples:

The first few letters of a friend’s name should find their contact details
A word recently used in an email should find that email message for you
The first few letters of an application should find that application for you (though we covered this already)
Type a work you don’t know the meaning of and you should get the definition
Type part of the name of a file you saved and you should get that file popup

5 — Reorganise your dock

When you first start up your Mac there’s a range of icons on the bottom of the screen for apps that Apple thinks you might use most. However you can easily re-organise those apps to suit what you do every day.

To remove an app: Right click on the icon and choose Options, then Keep in Dock (which should be ticked), or Remove from Dock
To add an app: Launch the application and then Right click on the icon and choose Options, then Keep in Dock (which should be untucked)
To move an app: Click on hold your mouse and then drag the icon to where you want it on the doc

6 — Use a password manager

I’ve been using 1Password for years now and it’s easily the first app I install on any new computer. A password manager makes it easy to do a couple of very important things.

Create random passwords when ever you sign up for a new website
Encrypt and lock away your passwords, credit card numbers, passport details and notes
Automatically login you in to your website using your stored passwords
Synchronise your passwords between your different devices

7 — Use a window manager

One thing I missed when I moved from Windows to a Mac (perhaps 7 years ago now?) was the ability to quickly manage windows on the screen. Maximising and window so it took up the whole workspace was such a common habit and I searched for a way to make the Mac work like that too. A window manager allows you to maximise, minimise and resize your windows really quickly.

On my Mac I can drag a window to the top of the screen to maximise it, or to the left or right edge of the screen to lock it to the left or right half of the screen. This saves time when you need to work with two windows side-by-side.

8 — Filter your notifications

Just like you can on your iPhone or iPad, notifications on your Mac can also be filtered to reduce interruptions throughout the day. Head into System Preferences -> Notifications and choose to hide or show notifications for everything on your mac. You can change the style of notification, the sounds, where they appear… and importantly you can turn them all off too.

Another little trick is to also know how to use “Do not disturb” on your mac. Open the Notifications panel on the right side on your screen, then drag down with your mouse or trackpad and you’ll see a little switch to enable this quiet mode.

9 — Get your backups sorted

There’s nothing I hate more than having to do the same work twice. I just lose all interest and energy if i’ve lost some work and really struggle to make it happen again.

Backup is something that everyone needs to take more seriously and your Mac comes with a great tool called Time Machine to make backups so easy. Just plug in an external drive and follow the prompts. Never lose another document ever again.

10 — Organise your bookmarks

My final tip might be an obvious one, but organising your bookmarks into folders means that you can group your different saved websites together and make things easier to find. In safari you can also add one of those folders to your favourites bar and create a little drop down menu for the bookmarks in that folder.

Such a simple idea but saves so much time when trying to find that obscure site you saved last week.

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Have you got some mac tips and tricks?

Please let me know about your ideas, about how you use your Mac day to day and what you’ve found that works. Just post a comment below.

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