Stahp Making with the Clicky-ClickyImproving Your Mac Productivity!

Julian Dunn

June 2014

Some Handy Global Mac Shortcuts

• Command-Space – open Spotlight

• Virtual desktops

• Ctrl-Up to zoom out (hot corners do this too, but I find them irritating)

• Ctrl-Left/Right to go to other virtual desktops

• Move windows around your virtual desktops

• Turn on extra options to get Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+5 to go to specific desktops

• Command-Shift 3, 4 – screenshot

• Option-Command-D – get rid of Dock

• Lots more in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts

The Command Line!

• Use Spotlight to start the Terminal

– it comes with all Macs

• Scary Unix! Looks like MS-DOS!• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng

Learning the Command Line

• Many programmers use the command

line exclusively

• Even if not, you can use it to save time

instead of using the Finder!

• Some command-line basics:

• ~ is your home directory (/Users/you)

• tab completion and history

• ls, cd, mv, pwd

• man – open manual pages for commands

A better terminal than Terminal: iTerm2

• iTerm2 – www.iterm2.com

• Looks a lot like Terminal, but more

customizable

Handy Mac-Specific Things

• Applications are actually in /Applications

• Each app is a directory called .app

• "unzip –l" to look inside zip files

• "open" to open a thing with the associated app

• e.g. "open xyz.pdf" will open Preview, "open ." will open current directory in Finder

• USB keys, DVDs, network drives get mounted under '/Volumes'

• e.g. your USB disk is "MY USB KEY", you get a '/Volumes/MY USB KEY'

• "diskutil –eject /Volumes/MY\ USB\ KEY" is like dragging it to the trash (note, "\" needed to

escape spaces)

Alfred

• The most awesome productivity application evah!

• www.alfredapp.com - basic version is free

• Basically, adds Option-Space shortcut to Mac, and lets you do really powerful

things

• Try it:

• Install Alfred

• Option + Space

• "airspeed of an unladen swallow" – then Enter to search Google, Command-2 to search

Amazon, Command-3 to search Wikipedia

• or "maps 363 Broadway, New York, NY"

• or "1 + 2" – and Enter to copy result to clipboard

Alfred PowerPack

• http://www.alfredapp.com/powerpack/

• £17, is that about $30? (Let's use Alfred to find out…)

• Additional features not in regular Alfred

• Custom workflow example

• What it looks like behind the scenes

Dash – Docset Browser

• http://kapeli.com/dash

• Immediate & offline access to many documentation sets

• Ruby

• Python

• Arduino

• Funny, I didn't see Processing

• Alfred integration!

Other Tools I don't have experience with

• AppleScript

• Others that people use?

Thank You!Subtitle – Arial 20pt