Monday, March 6, 2017
10 ways to get more out of Yosemite
10 ways to get more out of Yosemite
Yosemites Spotlight shows you everything
You can now Spotlight search for just about anything. Try searching for a recent film and you will get movie showtimes, iTunes Store links, trailer previews, Wikipedia information and links to any documents on your Mac that mention that particular movie (Calendar events, Mail and Messages that mention it).
The new Spotlight isnt just physically more central; its going to become a much more fundamental part of the Mac OS X experience.
Network Disconnection
Want to disconnect from a wireless network? Prior to Yosemite this was a bit of a hassle involving either switching off Wi-Fi entirely, or delving into System Preferences.
On Yosemite all you need do is hold down Alt (or Option on some keyboards) and click the Wi-Fi icon at the top right of the screen. Beneath the name of the currently in-use Wi-Fi base station will be a disconnect option. (This option also appears when you connect to an iPhone/iPad via Personal Hotspot, although in this case there’s no need to hold down Alt/Option because it appears in the main menu.)
Recording output
Ever needed to create a tutorial or walkthrough for something on iOS? Or do you just fancy projecting your iPhone or iPad screen onto your Mac’s display?
Previously the only way to do so was complicated setups involving AirPlay mirroring and third-party software. With Yosemite all you need do is attach the device to your Mac via USB and then open QuickTime Player. Then select File > New Movie Recording.
QuickTime will default to your Mac’s iSight camera (assuming it has one), but click the small down arrow alongside the record button and your iPad or iPhone will show-up as an option.
Of course, you haven’t got to record anything, and can simply expand the QuickTime Player window to full-screen for some cool game-play mirroring! You can also select the New Audio Recording option in QuickTime Player to record only audio via your phone or tablet’s microphone. (Sadly, recording video/audio in this works only with Lightning connections and not the older iPod-style cables.)
iCloud free space
In Yosemite a detailed view of the free space available in your iCloud account can now be viewed by clicking the iCloud option in System Preferences, and looking at the bottom of the window.
Hover the mouse cursor over each block in the bar graph to see a tooltip showing what that block represents.
Highlighting in brown or pink
Okay, so this is a really small detail, but it’s one worth knowing if you truly like to personalise your Mac’s interface! Open System Preferences, click the General icon, then look under the Highlight Color dropdown list.
You’ll find Brown and Pink have been added as options in Yosemite. The colour formerly known as Gold has also been renamed Yellow, and most colours are a touch duller than previously. All that glitters…
Flat, flat, flat
Flat, flat, flat. That’s the mantra for interface designers at Apple right now. At Apple’s HQ nobody is able to drive anywhere because even the car tyres are flat.
Not your taste? Open System Preferences, click the Accessibility icon, then ensure Display is selected at the left. Put a check alongside Increase Contrast.
The effects will be visible immediately, and this alternative look and feel has been compared to the plain and simple appearance of very early releases of Mac OS from the 1980s. (Plain colour wallpapers also might help if the translucency effect annoys you, and don’t forget the “Dark” UI option under the General section of System Preferences.)
Better annotation
The always-useful Preview app has gained a number of new annotation tools in Yosemite. To access the new tools, click the Toolbox icon at the right of the toolbar, alongside the Search field. The tools are:
Sketch: The pen icon lets you roughly draw a shape, which will then be autocorrected to its nearest canonical shape — draw a circle around something, for example, and it’ll be converted to a perfect circle. A floating toolbar will appear briefly offering the chance to switch back to your rough sketch. Note that this tool replaces the ability to hand-draw circles and squares — although see the next item in this list.
New shapes: Yosemite lets you add stars and polygons to images or documents, in addition to straight-up rectangles and circles. Click the shapes icon and a dropdown list will appear. Shapes are now dropped onto the canvas and you can move them around by clicking and dragging. Blue handles on each allow resizing but note the smaller green handles on each, by which the shape or nature of the item can be adjusted — dragging the green handle on the polygon lets you adjust how many sides it has, for example, even allowing you to create triangles.
Shaded mask: At the bottom left of the shapes dropdown list that appears when you click the shapes icon on the toolbar is the new mask tool. It lets you define an area of the image for highlighting. It does this by making the rest of the image shaded. This is confusingly similar to the Crop tool on some image editors, but totally unrelated.
Loupe: If you need to magnify an area of the image to show detail, you can place a loupe at that spot. This tool lives the bottom right of the shapes dropdown list, as mentioned above. You can place loupes over the top of each other to further magnify the image. Again, it might seem this is simply a magnifying tool offered by Preview to help with editing, but each loupe you place is saved-out with the image, and other items can be placed over the top of them.
The new tools in Preview are actually part of Yosemite’s Markup feature, featured prominently within Mail and used to annotate attachments (click the arrow at the top right of any image/PDF mail attachment). In actuality, however, Markup is available system-wide, and not just in Mail. This can be demonstrated by adding a picture to a TextEdit or Stickies document — the same Markup option will appear at the top right of the image (although curiously the Notes app is an exception to this rule).
Preview files
Finder has always offered a preview pane as part of the Columns view mode. As you might expect, this showed a preview of the currently clicked-upon file.
In Yosemite the preview can be activated inany view mode – icon, list, column, or Cover Flow.
To activate the preview window, click View > Show Preview. Alternatively, tap Shift+Cmd+P.
Click the same button or hit the same keyboard combo to hide it again.
Website update feeds
Back in the old days, Safari had the ability to tune into news feeds (that is, it was compatible with RSS/Atom update feeds provided by some websites). Unfortunately, the feature was then pulled in OS X Mountain Lion.
In Yosemite its back, and integrated very neatly with the Shared Links feature that pulls links from your friends Twitter feeds. Just click on the RSS/Atom link on any web page and youll then be asked if you want to add the site to your collection.
To view Shared Links, click the Sidebar button on the Safari toolbar (next to the back/forward icons), and then click the @ icon. Note that shared links, regardless of their source, are sorted by the date and time they were posted.
To unsubscribe from a site, again click to show the Sidebar in Safari, then click the @ icon, and click the Subscriptions button at the bottom. Click the X icon to the left of any site you want to remove.
Get Java
Considering the security risks presented by the Java Runtime add-on, Apple has perhaps wisely removed it entirely from Yosemite - even if you already had it installed in Mavericks.
However, this decision stops certain apps from running. There’s a twist in the tail, however, because simply installing the latest Java release from Oracle might not provide the solution.
Certain apps like Minecraft and Adobe Photoshop CS5 require the version of Java provided by Apple, even though this is a little ancient. The solution is to install both Apple and Oracle’s versions, and the two can exist in harmony side-by-side. Apple’s Java can be found and installed via here, while Oracle’s up-to-date version of Java can be found here (select to download the JRE version).
Sign using your trackpad
If you’ve got a finger and a MacBook or Magic Trackpad then you can now sign PDFs within Preview. Admittedly, the signature you come-up with is only likely to be a representation of the real thing, but it might be enough.
Start by clicking the toolbox icon at the top right of the Preview toolbar (next to the search field), and then click the signature icon beneath (sixth from the left).
Then click Create Signature, ensure the Trackpad tab is selected, and then click to begin as directed. When you’ve finished you can select the signature from the menu, then drag it to wherever you want it to appear.
If you intend to make good use of this feature then you might want to use a touchscreen stylus, which will works just as well on a trackpad as it does on an iPhone or iPad. (A biro wont work, so dont try it!)
Available link for download
