Key Tricks to work Flawlessly with Mac OS X

“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult“, until unless a human being does not try to engage with the environment and understand a process then how would he proceed. It has been said that working with Mac is a little difficult as compare to Windows. Its built-in applications are hard to understand by the novices. It is completely a myth because as a Mac user, I must say that the built-in application in Mac has made the working very effortless and straightforward. Don’t make this myth in your mind and see the below OS X tricks to enjoy working with Mac and avoid this curiosity.

1. How to Access Sidebar items in New Window?

If you are in a ‘Finder’ window and want any item to get opened in a new window then hold down the Command key along with a ‘click’. This command works very well for any Sidebar items; no issues whether it comes under the category of Favorites, Shared, or Devices. This trick is much faster than locating and navigating through system locations.

access sidebar items quickly in new window

2. How to Move Windows?

If you are working among two or three windows and you want to drag any other window without loosing the focus from the current one. Then hold the command key and drag the window from its ‘titlebar’ to another location. This trick will not create any interference in any process going on in the current foreground window.

3. How to open an item in Finder Window Directly?

If you need to find the location of any dock bar item that where it is residing in OS X then simply use the combination of command click to directly jump to the specified location. For example, command click on the ‘Terminal’ application from the dock bar then it will directly prompt to the ‘Utilities’ window enlightening “Terminal.app”

access an item from dock bar into Finder window

4. Replacement of Dock Bar in Mac

In Mac system, dock bar always resides in center at the bottom of the screen by default. Most of us think that this dock bar can not be moved here and there in any direction like left, right, top or in bottom corner. Here are few command strings which can aligned dock bar in any direction and position.

• How to Place the Dock Bar?

If you want to change the dock bar positioning and pin it to the bottom right or bottom left corner then move the dock by dragging to the right or left as you desire.

If you are unable to drag then another easiest option is here. Launch System Preferences either by clicking Apple menu and click on System Preferences or typing in Spotlight. Once the System Preferences window is opened then find ‘Dock Settings’ panel. Try to shift the size bar by holding Shift key as shown in image and choose ‘option button’ respectively among Left, Bottom and Right.

If you are comfortable with Terminal application then launch it (got to Applications> Utilities> Terminal) and type this command string and then drag the dock bar in predefined directions as you want

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning start;killall Dock

“start” by inserting “start” teem in the command string will aligned the dock bar to the top corners with vertical Dock positions or the lower left corner for horizontal Dock position

dock bar aligned in top left corner

dock bar aligned to bottom left corner

“end” by inserting “end” term in the command string will aligned the dock bar to the bottom corners with vertical Dock positioning, or the lower right corner with horizontal Docks

dock bar aligned to bottom right corner

“middle” by inserting “middle” term in the command string will not aligned the dock bar because by default, it sits centered in bottom screen of Mac.

• How to aligned Dock Bar in other earlier versions prior to Mavericks?

If you are running any prior version to Mavericks (like Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) then use this different command (slightly changed in string capitalization)

defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning start;killall Dock

Try the above mentioned tricks and enjoy working with Mac OS X.