hotkeys

Research has shown that frequent use of a computer mouse may contribute to repetitive motion injuries. KeyCue for Mac claims to teach users how to replace the mouse with keyboard shortcuts, but its limited functionality and its price make it less useful than it could have been.

A 30-day free trial version of KeyCue for Mac is available, but it costs $29.99 for the full version. The program downloads quickly but despite having its own installer, proved difficult to set up. We had to try the installation several times due to the program claiming it could not install while … Read more

OS X is a multiuser operating system so each user can tailor the system for his or her own needs without interfering with another user's workflow. With this setup, not only can multiple people use a system, but an individual can also configure it to have multiple work environments.

For example, if you use your computer for two jobs and would like to keep all work for one completely separate from another, then one option is to use multiple user accounts for this. Alternatively you might like to have a separate user account for testing purposes if you've … Read more

As with most e-mail clients, Apple's Mail program supports multiple accounts so you can access all of your e-mail from one program, and as such it is not uncommon for people to have different accounts configured for work, home, and other activities that they would like to keep separate. While convenient in some respects, there are times when composing messages using multiple accounts can have you redundantly selecting the account to send from.

By default Mail should use the current selected account as the "From" account when replying to a message, so managing replies or forwarding messages … Read more

As OS X has progressed in development Apple has included more and more speech services options, including enhancing the text-to-speech features with smoother and more realistic voices, and also making this service more globally available to applications. In addition, Apple has provided a dictation service in Mountain Lion to allow conversions of spoken words back to text.

If you use these services, you may find it convenient to create hot-key shortcuts for them. The Dictation service has a default hot-key option, but the Text to Speech option does not, and by default requires you to select a body of text … Read more

Apple reversed scrolling in OS X Lion and called the feature "natural scrolling." Not everyone liked the change, but it could be turned off. There are some people that do like the new scrolling direction and even Google has added reverse scrolling to Chrome OS. If you're a Windows user and would like to try out reverse scrolling, here's how:

Step 1: Install AutoHotkey on your Windows PC.

Step 2: Launch AutoHotkey, and when prompted to create a sample script, click the Yes button.

Step 3: When the sample script appears in Notepad, paste the following … Read more

Using keyboard shortcuts to run various commands and application functions in OS X is one of the easiest ways to enhance your workflow and speed up how you use your system.

For instance, while you can always click the red button at the top-left of a window to close it, or even select Close from the File menu, you can speed this up by using Command-W (as seen in the File menu) to quickly invoke this function on the foremost window. By using this shortcut coupled with the mouse, you can move windows around and then click them followed by … Read more

If you extensively use your Mac, you might regularly end up with many windows and tabs open on your screen at once, and organizing your workflow around these windows can sometimes be a chore. To help in this process, Apple has included its Expose and Spaces features in OS X, and in Lion has implemented a combination of these two options called Mission Control, but these graphical approaches have limitations.

If you have too many windows open, sometimes you might need to preview them before closing them, and while you can use Mission Control and similar tools to browse through … Read more

The system menu in OS X holds the various commands that are available for performing tasks in your current application.

For many of the commands that are commonly used, Apple and application developers have bound them to keyboard shortcuts (listed next to the menu item) so you can perform the same command with a keystroke instead of needing to access the menus.

When browsing through the various system or application menus, you will see that in addition to the commands with built-in keyboard shortcuts there are a number without shortcuts. These are generally less-common commands; however, there are some that … Read more

As with previous versions of OS X, Apple has updated and refined a few of the keyboard shortcuts that allow you to navigate and manage files and applications. Some of the updated shortcuts have to do with new features in the Lion operating system such as the Resume option for applications and organization of the Finder, but others are enhancements to features that have been around in OS X for a while such as copying and pasting of files.

Move files instead of duplicating them

The first is a feature that has been missing in OS X for a while, … Read more