The first Mac or Macintosh was introduced in 1984, and the operating system has come long since. Recently, Apple released the latest macOS version, Ventura. The new OS comes with a lot of promise. However, despite Apple’s efforts to improve its products year after year, users are unaware of everything their system can accomplish. Here’s what you must know.
Get a Preview of the File’s Content
Previewing the file’s content before you take any step is a simple feature, and once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder why you ever lived without it.
The feature is dubbed Quick Look, and it is a system-wide functionality. Thanks to this feature, you can peek into the contents of any files on your system before opening them.
Select a file within the Finder window and hit the spacebar to launch a preview window showcasing the file’s contents. Scroll through lengthy Word documents or zoom into a photograph using this functionality.
The feature is convenient and allows you to double-check whether you are sending the right file as an email attachment.
Select Multiple Files Simultaneously
It is possible to multi-select on Mac so you can move, copy, or cut them in bulk. Here’s how to select multiple files on Mac:
- Click on the first file you want to choose and hold the Shift key, then click the last file
- All the files in between those two clicks will be selected
Signs Documents Digitally
Did you know you can sign PDF documents digitally? There’s no need to print, sign, and scan. Instead, sign your name on a piece of paper and hold it in front of your Mac’s webcam. Then, save your signature in the Preview application. So the entire process of signing a PDF document will be complicated in less than a minute.
Add a signature by launching the Preview application and opening the Markup Toolbar. Then, click the marker inside a circle icon and click on the signature option in the toolbar. Next, add your signature using your Mac’s webcam, trackpad, or iPhone. Once you are satisfied with the result, click Done.
After that, you can drag and drop your signature on PDF documents and resize the signature.
Summarize Long Documents
If you are a student, or writer or need to write long documents regularly, you will love this hidden and lesser-known Mac feature. After all, word counts can be constricting, and wrestling with them might be your daily struggle.
Mac users can summarize long documents in seconds without lifting a finger. You can summarize a document by enabling the Summarize feature. Head to the System Preferences application > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > activate the Summarize option.
Highlight the text you want to summarize and then right-click on the text > hit Services > Summarize. Rewriting will be a breeze once you see the salient points highlighted and laid out clearly.
Hide the Menu Bar
There may be times when you require more screen space. But how do you increase the screen space without adding an external monitor or display? One of the most straightforward fixes for this is hiding the menu bar. Go to the System Preferences app > General > Automatically hide and show the menu bar > check the box; the bottom menu will be hidden. The menu bar will reappear when the mouse cursor goes toward the screen’s bottom.
Encrypt Folders
Apple is beefing up security because Macs are not as impenetrable as you may have thought. But unfortunately, there are hackers and cybercriminals constantly targeting macOS. These attackers are using sophisticated techniques and technologies to infiltrate the security and privacy filters placed by Apple.
With recent upgrades, Apple has some excellent approaches to privacy, and one of the best examples is encrypting folders and files on Macs. So encrypt files and folders to protect data from prying eyes.
Open Disk Utility > File > New > Blank Disk Image. Then, you must set the location, size, and name and select your encryption technique. Hit Create.
Annotate PDF Documents
It is a task to edit PDFs. Windows users need to download specific software to edit PDFs. However, that’s not the case with Macs.
On your Mac, one of the cool things you can do is load up Preview. The inbuilt PDF editor and viewer. Here, you can edit and annotate PDFs without installing specialist software.
If you want to add your signature, you can do that too. Write your signature on a piece of paper and hold it up to the webcam. Then, you can add it to the document.
The Bottom Line
These are some fantastic things your Mac can do. You might already know most of them, and if you didn’t, you know now and can make the most use of your system.
