OS X Yosemite Top 10 Hidden Features

Top 10 Hidden Features of OS X Yosemite

Yosemite is here with a bunch of new features, but a few of the best things are hidden away. Here are 10 hidden features you might not have noticed yet. 

10. QuickType Anywhere

Yosemite has a iOS 8-like QuickType feature. When you're writing in any Apple app, just press the ESC key to bring up suggestions for the next word. 

9. Flyover in Maps

If you want to take a quick tour of a city, Apple's added its 3D Flyover feature to Maps. Just type in the name of a supported city, click the 3D Flyover Tour button, and off you go.

8. Remotely Close Tabs on Your iOS Device

Accidentally leave an embarrassing tab open on your iPad and need to close it remotely before someone sees it? Just load up Safari on your Mac, hit the new tab page, and click the X next to any tabs you want to close.

7. Mute Message Threads in Messages

You can now mute conversations in the Messages app just you like can on iOS. Simply click the Details button and select Do Not Disturb.

6. Shift-Click the Dock to Move It

Don't like the dock on the bottom of the screen? Shift-click the divider bar on the dock to move it to one of the other sides of your screen.

5. Record iOS Screens

You can now record your iOS device's screen. While not particularly useful for most of us, it is a cool feature if you want to make videos of whatever you're doing on your iPhone. Unfortunately, you'll need to connect your iOS device to your Mac with a cable, then load up any recording program to find your iOS device listed as a camera.

4. Convert Currency in Spotlight

Spotlight can now do unit conversions. Type in the amount you want and the currency you need to convert it to and Spotlight does the rest.

3. Input Signatures via Trackpad in Mail

On top of the old ability to input your signature using your iSight camera, you can now use the trackpad on your MacBook to sign documents. Just load up any document in Preview (or using Markup on Mail), click the signature button, and choose the trackpad option. 

2. Share Your Screen from Messages

Screen sharing is even easier in Yosemite. If both users have Messages, you can click the Details button and select the screen sharing icon to instantly share your screen with someone. This should make tech support a little easier for everyone.

1. Dark Mode

Yosemite now has a Dark Mode for when you're working late at night. Just head to System Preferences > General and click the "Use dark menu bar and Dock" button. Both will go dark and be a little easier on your eyes.

Top 10 Mac OS X Tips

Ever watch someone who really knows how to use a Mac and OS X? Sometimes it just seems like magic how they can make windows move, images appear, apps launch, and all kinds of cool stuff—and their fingers never even seem to leave the keyboard. I can’t claim to know that many Mac tips and tricks, but I do have a bunch of tricks up my sleeve that you might find useful. Some of these are pretty common and a few a little obscure, but they will all do something great that you bring you a step closer to being a Jedi Master of your Mac.

Yes, padawan, here are my top 10 Mac OS X tips:

1. Shift-Click Maximize Button to Fill Screen

You know the red button on a window is close and the yellow one is minimize and the green one is maximize, right? Okay, so you also know that some apps (like Chrome and Word) don’t fill the entire screen when you click the maximize button. Sure that’s find most of the time, but sometimes you actually want the window to fill the screen. Next time you want the current window to fill the entire screen, just hold down the shift key when you click the button. Poof! Big window!

2. Terminal Tricks—Purge

One of the essential tools in a Mac Jedi’s toolkit is Terminal. Oh Terminal, such power you hold over the entire system. A lot of people are a wee skittish about using Terminal. All the horror stories of people typing rm * in the wrong place and wiping out their Mac will have that effect on people. Okay, fair enough, but here’s a simple command that will…well it’s pretty cool. The command is “purge” and it does one very simple thing—it frees up RAM on your machine. As your Mac is running and you’re launching apps, surfing the web, and all the normal stuff you do on your Mac, RAM (memory) is allocated to do that. Sometimes when an app has been running for a while it doesn’t release all the RAM it was given, even if it doesn’t need it any more. Before I learned this tip I would just reboot my Mac if RAM was running short (and I had quit all the apps I didn’t need), but with purge… Purge forces apps to release RAM they might be holding on to (that they don’t need). All you need to do is launch Terminal from your Utilities folder and type “purge” (no quotes) at the prompt and hit return. It’s 100% safe and can get back a bunch of RAM. I’ve gone from a few megs of few RAM to a couple gigs in a few seconds! (Important: While purge is running your Mac will be unresponsive for a minute. Don’t worry! This is normal and okay!)

3. Launch Spotlight with Command-Space

Looking for something? You know Spotlight can help you quickly find files, emails, look up words, even launch apps…but do you know that a quick tap on command-space will open up Spotlight on the menubar for you to start typing? Simple as that you can quickly type command-space then something like safari then return and launch Safari…and your fingers didn’t even touch the mouse! Want to turn that up to an 11? Then just download Alfred for free from the Mac App store and do all this and more! Once you do, don’t forget my 10 Awesome Alfred Tips!

4. Drop Files onto the Dock to Open in an App

I like to keep Preview as my default app for opening images. Preview is pretty fast and easy when I need a quick look at something (or just need to resize the image quickly), but when I want to edit an image I use Acorn. So how do I open an image in Acorn? You’re thinking, launch Acorn, go to the File menu… Nope, easier. I have Acorn on my Dock all the time, so all I need to do is drag and drop an image file onto the icon and … Acorn launches (or comes to the front) and the image is opened! This trick works with just about all apps and can save you a ton of time.

5. Custom App Stacks

My dock was getting pretty cluttered. Lots of apps that I “needed”, but you know I didn’t use them all that often. So I made a custom App stack for them. This is a multi-step process:

1. Make a folder somewhere (I made it in ~/Applications which is different than the system-wide Applications folder (see tip 7 for more on these directories).
2. Open your Applications folder in another Finder window.
3. You’re going to make aliases to your real apps in this step. Hold down command and option and drag an app you want quick access to and drop it in the folder you made.
4. Repeat for as many apps as you wish
5. Drag the folder with all the aliases to the right side of your Dock, just to the left of the Trash.
6. Enjoy! That’s it. The folder will have aliases to all your apps!

6. Remove Icons from the Menu Bar

I know we like to have icons on our Menu bar, but sometimes it gets a little crowded. For some icons on your Menu bar (mostly System related ones), just hold down the command key, click the icon and drag it off the Menu bar! Come on, you don’t really need the volume/speaker icon there did you?

7. Get to your Library Folder

One of the “improvements” in Lion was to hide your Library folder from you. Okay, I get it. You shouldn’t need to muck about in your Library very often, but hey sometimes you do. Sometimes you need to clean out stubborn files or something. Here’s the easy way to get to your Library folder (and the Applications folder from tip 5 too). With the Finder active hit command-shift-g and you’ll get a Go to folder: window. Just put “~/Library/” (no quotes) and click Okay. That’s it. For tip five use ~/Applications/ instead.

8. Finder Sidebar

Since we’re talking about the Finder, I’m sure you noticed all those folders and items on the left side of your Finder windows (if not go to the Finder and from the View menu and select “Show Toolbar”). You know you can add your own folders there right? Yeah, just drag any folder to the side and that’s it. Now the cool part isn’t just that you now have one-click access to that folder, but anything you drop onto that folder will be copied or moved there! Nice!

9. Take a Screenshot

Ever need to take a screenshot of something on your screen? Maybe it’s an error, maybe it’s just a graphic, but you need it…but how? Easy. Command-shift–3 will take a picture of the entire screen and command-shift–4 will let you select a part of the screen or a window. Of course if you want to step things up, just download Skitch for free and crank up your screenshots a few notches.

10. Control the Apps that Launch at Startup

You know after a while your Mac seems to be taking longer and longer to finish starting up. Oh you see the Desktop okay, but then app after app loads. You have control over this. Just go to System Preferences -> Users and Groups. Then look for the Login Items button. Yep those are all the apps that launch for me. But if I get tired of waiting for one app or another to start, I just select the app from the list and click the “-”. Gone! Faster startup here I come!

These are just a few of the tricks I have up my sleeve. I’m sure you have a few you’ve picked up over the years.

OS X: How to quit an unresponsive application using Force Quit

Learn how to quit an unresponsive application using Force Quit.

Using the Force Quit feature of OS X makes an application close, even when it is not responsive. 

 Important: Normally you should not need to force quit an app to close it. When an app is forced to quit, any unsaved changes to open documents are not saved, so try these methods to normally close the app first:

1. Choose Quit from the app menu. For example, in Safari, choose Safari > Quit Safari.
2. Choose Quit by right-clicking or control-clicking on an app's icon in the Dock.

If your app does not close using the steps above, use any of these steps to force the app to quit:

• Switch to another app, such as the Finder, then choose Force Quit from the Apple menu. Select the unresponsive app in the Force Quit window, and click Force Quit.
• Press Command-Option-Esc, then select the unresponsive app from the Force Quit window that appears, and click Force Quit.
• Hold down the Control and Option keys on your keyboard, and click the icon of the unresponsive app in the Dock. Select Force Quit from the menu that appears.
• Open Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder or the Spotlight menu. Select the unresponsive app in the Activity monitor window. Choose Quit Process from the View menu, or click the Force Quit button in the toolbar of the Activity Monitor window.
• If you cannot switch from the unresponsive app, press Command-Option-Shift-Esc for three seconds to force it to quit. This key combination tells OS X to force quit the frontmost app.

Additional Information

OS X automatically relaunches the Finder when it is quit. If the Finder is unresponsive, use Force Quit to relaunch it. Select Finder in the Force Quit Window or Dock, then click Relaunch.

36 Embarrassing Google Street View Sightings

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  1. These Two Suburban Samurai

  Image courtesy of Google

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  2. This Couple Having Sex on the Highway

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  3. This Baby, Alone Outside of a Gucci Store

  Image courtesy of Google

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  4. This Man Picking His Nose

  Image courtesy of Google

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  5. This Naked Man Climbing Out of a Trunk

  Image courtesy of Google

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  6. This Man Having a Lovely Brunch With His Alpaca

  Image courtesy of Google

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  7. This Kid Biking the Wrong Way

  Image courtesy of Google

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  8. This Man, Catching Up on the News

  Image courtesy of Google

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  9. This Drunk Guy Wearing a Crown

  Image courtesy of Google

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  10. This Dog Pooping

  Image courtesy of Google

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  11. This Other Dog Pooping

  Image courtesy of Google

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  12. These People in Strange Masks in the Desert

  Image courtesy of Google

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  13. This Odd Street Toilet

  Image courtesy of Google

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  14. This Shirtless Man Giving His Dog a Ride

  Image courtesy of Google

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  15. This Man Carrying a Sex Doll on the Sidewalk

  Image courtesy of Google

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  16. This Woman Searching for Car Keys

  Image courtesy of Google

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  17. This Public Sex Act

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  18. This Man Peeing on a Car

  Image courtesy of Google

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  19. This Google Employee Cleaning His Camera

  Image courtesy of Google

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  20. This Woman, Doing the Worm on a Sidewalk

  Image courtesy of Google

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  21. These Girls Laughing at Their Fallen Friend

  Image courtesy of Google

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  22. This Dog, Looking Into Your Soul

  Image courtesy of Google

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  23. This Man, Getting a Feel for Today's Weather

  Image courtesy of Google

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  24. This Guy, Stretching His Leg Out the Window

  Image courtesy of Google

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  25. This Guy, Mooning the World

  Image courtesy of Google

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  26. These People Getting Arrested

  Image courtesy of Google

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  27. This Woman Hitching a Ride

  Image courtesy of Google

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  28. These Two Guys Going Really Fast

  Image courtesy of Google

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  29. This Man Drinking Beer and Lying in a Truck Bed

  Image courtesy of Google

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  30. This Dog in a Bind

  Image courtesy of Google

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  31. This Woman Who Forgot Most of Her Clothes

  Image courtesy of Google

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  32. This Shirtless Man Watching a Van Burn

  Image courtesy of Google

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  33. This Tough Gang of Middle Aged Segway Riders

  Image courtesy of Google

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  34. This Car Stuck in the Ground

  Image courtesy of Google

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  35. This Man Being Robbed by Toddlers

  Image courtesy of Google

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  36. This Reindeer, Being a Good Friend

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A nose-picker. A lonely baby outside a Gucci store. A naked German man in a car trunk.

If you're thinking these three people have nothing in common, you are incorrect. With help from Google Street View, we found the link between these beautiful citizens of the world: They've all been captured by Google's cameras and uploaded to the massive project that is Street View.

See also: 17 Illicit Acts Caught on Google Street View

At last year's Google Maps press event, Google announced it had captured over 20 petabytes of data from Street View images. Probability tells us at least some of that data is embarrassing, so we went searching and found the 36 most embarrassing Street View sightings in existence.

Seen any more embarrassing Google Street View photos? Post them in the comments below.