macbook

macbook

We’re onto part three, and in this post, we want to explore some underappreciated features.  It’s easy, in my opinion, to forget about some of the Apple features that frankly, make our lives so much easier.  These are features that have either been forgotten about or just haven’t received much attention from Apple.  But they exist in order to make your lives easier.  What are they?

Universal Copy and Paste

Universal Copy Paste

In iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Apple introduced a universal copy paste feature. If you copy and paste something on one device, you can paste it into another.  In order for this to work, you have to be signed into your iCloud account.  The theory is – if you copy something on your iPhone, you’ll be able to paste it into your MacBook.  Genius right?  This is just one reason why I love the Apple ecosystem so much.

Menu Bar

If you hold down the Command key, you can use your mouse or trackpad to rearrange the icons of the menu bar at the top of your screen.

drag and drop text

Dragging Text

You can highlight text on your Mac and then hold down with the trackpad or a mouse to drag that text into another app. If you drag text to the desktop, it’ll create a new text clip document.  Which does sometimes make my life a heck of a lot easier. Sometimes I write things in one app, but I need that information in another app.  Having this functionality makes my life easier.

Split Screen

To quickly access the split-screen multitasking mode on your Mac, click and hold the mouse cursor over the green button in the upper left-hand corner of any app window.  This is something else I use.  Maybe it’s because I’m trying to multi-task a few things at once, but having the ability to split my screen into two definitely helps.

emoji

Emoji

To insert an emoji into any document or message, hold down the Control and Command keys and then press the spacebar to bring up an emoji menu interface where you can choose an emoji.

Picture-in-Picture

When you watch a video on your Mac click on the Picture-in-Picture button that’s in the bottom right of the video player (it looks like an arrow pointing at a separate screen). If there’s no Picture-in-Picture button, you can hold down Control and then double-click on the video to open up a shortcut menu. From there, you’ll have a separate video window that can be moved and resized.

preview signature

Signing Documents

If you are using Preview to view a document there are actually tools for inserting a signature. You can create a signature using a finger on the trackpad of your Mac, which is a handy way to sign digital documents. What more could you ask for? I mean, honestly. No longer do you have to print, sign and then scan something back into your computer.  Having this functionality makes a big difference, especially since some of the Apple products aren’t touchscreen.