While macOS is built to be simple, there are often times when I see people taking many unnecessary steps to perform basic operations on their Macs. For instance, to find a buried window, some people may resort to shuffling those in the foreground to the edges of the screen, in order to reveal those underneath.
There are many ways to optimize the way you use your Mac, but here are six tips that may help you reduce frustrating and seemingly cumbersome approaches to dealing with window clutter, or locating files and folders that are buried in your hard drive.
Command-drag background windows
If you are working on a document and need to view a window that is partially obscured in the background, as long as this window’s title bar is partially visible, then you can hold the Command key and drag the window. This will keep the window in the background, so you can move it without bringing it to the front and changing your current window arrangement.
I’ve found this particularly useful if you need to just nudge a window around slightly.
Use Expose shortcuts or hotkeys
For its visual approach, Apple’s Expose feature may be as good as, if not better, than the classic Command-Tab option for switching between applications. With a keyboard shortcut, gesture, or hot corner bound to show all windows (ie, “Mission Control”) or only an application’s windows (ie, “Expose”), you can quickly switch between windows or switch to another application you have open.
You can set up hot corners and key shortcuts for this in the Mission Control system preferences, and then set up gestures (three- or four-finger swipes) in the Trackpad system preferences.
Hide unused applications
The ability to hide an open application and all of its windows is a convenient way to clear clutter from your screen, without interrupting your workflow. You can do this by pressing the Command-H shortcut in most applications to hide it, or by holding the Option key when switching to another application (such as clicking one of its windows, or its icon in the Dock), to hide the previously active window. You can also hide all but the current application by pressing Option-Command-H.
Use Finder’s Column view
If you need to quickly traverse your filesystem, you can do so in the Finder by using Column view (press Command-3 in any Finder window to switch to this view). This view will give you full access to your directory trees with only the arrow keys. Simply press the up and down arrows to select files and folders in the current directory, the left arrow to move up a directory, and the right arrow to move into a new directory.
In addition to arrows, you can start typing the name of files and folders to jump to them. By doing this, if you have the column view arranged by name then pressing a letter on your keyboard will jump to the area with files and folders that begin with that letter. Therefore, if you open a new directory in Column view you can press the “K” key to get to the middle of the list where items that begin with “K” are located, and then further use the arrow keys to navigate.
Launch or switch applications with Spotlight
Apple’s Spotlight search feature can be exceptionally useful for purposes other than finding files. If you go to the Spotlight system preferences and drag the “Applications” category to the top of the list, then you can use it as a convenient application launcher, instead of having to navigate to the Applications folder or peruse through Apple’s LaunchPad interface. To do this, simply press Command-Space followed by typing the first few letters of the program you would like to open, and it should pop up as the first item in the search results. Selecting it will then open this application, or switch to it if it’s already open.
Use copy, paste, and delete hotkeys for managing files
Finally, you can avoid using Drag and Drop features altogether for managing files in the Finder. Instead of arranging two windows side-by-side and then dragging files between them, you can use one window and then select one or more files followed by pressing Command-C to copy their location in formation. Then go to the place you want to move or copy them, and press Command-V to copy, or press Option-Command-V to move (note you can also press Shift-Option-Command-V to copy an item and preserve its permissions).
Using this approach, you can copy a file selection and then forget about having to immediately move them to a new location. You can check an email, or even leave your system and return in a few minutes, and then continue the copying or moving process.
In addition to copying and moving, you can delete files by selecting them and pressing Command-Delete to move them to the trash, following this, you can press Shift-Command-Delete to empty the trash.
To undo any of these actions (minus emptying the trash), you can press Command-Z and the moved or copied files should go back to their original locations in the Finder.