Full transcript of “10 MacBook Tips & Tricks I wish I knew YEARS ago!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 As I make this video, we are literally a handful of days away from Apple announcing what will probably be the biggest redesign of Mac OS in years, which we now think is going to be called Mac OS Tahoe. That's all exciting and everything, but I still think there are loads of tips, features, and settings in Mac OS that the average Mac owner has no idea about. And in this video, I'm going to share 10 of them with you. Okay, let's get into it. There's a really useful feature on your Mac that lets you create multiple desktop spaces and switch between them, which can be especially handy if you're working on a smaller screen like a laptop. Let's say that you've got a few apps open and arranged just how you want them, but now you need to jump into a completely different task using different apps. Instead of closing anything or rearranging your current windows, you
0:45 can create a second desktop space. Start by pressing F3 on your Mac keyboard to enter mission control. If you're using a non-Apple keyboard or F3 doesn't work, you can press control and the up arrow instead. At the top of the screen, you'll see your current desktop listed as desktop one. Over to the right hand side, there's a plus button. Click that to add a new desktop. Once you're in desktop 2, you can open and arrange a new set of apps. Then, whenever you want to switch back to your original setup, press F3 or control and up again and just click on desktop one. You can jump between your different desktops as needed without disrupting your workflow. When you're finished with a particular desktop, go back into mission control, hover over the one that you want to close, and click the small cross that
1:31 appears in the corner to remove it. Let's say that you're working in pages and you press command and S to save your file for the first time. A finder window will appear, probably defaulting to the pages folder within iCloud. But if you want to save it somewhere else, instead of manually navigating through folders, there is a quicker way to do it. If you already have a Finder window open showing the location where you want to save the file, just go to the top of that Finder window, grab the folder icon that's next to the folder name in the title bar, and drag it directly onto the save window that's appeared in Pages. The save window will immediately jump to that location. Give your file a name as usual, hit save, and your document will be saved exactly where you want it. This example uses pages, but the same trick works in any app where you get a save
2:18 dialogue box. Your Mac has a handy weather widget that was added in the latest version of Mac OS, which lets you see the current weather conditions right in your menu bar. By default, it'll show the current temperature and a quick summary of the conditions. If you click on it, you'll get a compact widget with more detail, like what's expected in the next few hours and how the weather currently feels. You can also tap again to open the full weather app for even more detail. To turn this on, go to system settings, then choose control center from the sidebar. Scroll down to the section called menu bar only, and next to weather, choose show in menu bar. Have you ever noticed how in my tips and tricks videos, my desktop is always clean and immaculate with absolutely nothing on it? I'd love to say that's because it's how I am all the time, but the truth is there's a little
3:05 button I can press when I'm screen capturing that hides all my desktop junk. Problem is, when I'm done screen capturing, all the junk is still there. And I hate that. I find it so hard to focus and get work done. That's why I use Clean My Mac, who are sponsoring today's video. So, Clean My Mac is a Mac cleaning tool, of course. But it isn't just a basic cleaner. It gives me full control over my system. It helps me actually clean up my Mac instead of just hiding everything. It all starts with a scan and you just press one button to get going. Let Smart Care do its thing and follow the easy to understand steps to start fixing any issues that it finds. I use it to clear out system junk, duplicates, huge forgotten downloads. I even use it to scan for malware. And what I love most is the menu app. It lives in my menu bar and gives me real-time stats on CPU, RAM,
3:52 battery health, and more. I use it to free up memory, quit heavy apps, or boost performance with a single tap. Now, if they would just create something that cleans up my house as effectively, I would be very, very happy. If your Mac is starting to feel it needs a reset, try Clean My Mac today with a 7-day free trial. You can get 20% off, but there's no code, so you have to click the link in the description or the pinned comment to get this offer. Here's a Mac tip that's specific to YouTube. When you're watching a video and the creator has added chapter markers, you can use a keyboard shortcut to jump between those chapters. Just hold the option key on your keyboard and then use the left or right arrow key to skip backwards or forwards a chapter. Really useful if there's a specific part that you want to jump to. Why not give it a try now with
4:38 this video? Although, if you skip ahead, don't forget to come back and finish this tip off. If you right click on any file on your Mac and choose get info, a window appears with lots of useful details about that file. But if you then use the arrow keys to move to a different file in the Finder window, that info window doesn't update. It just stays stuck on the original file. To view info for the next file, you have to close the first window, rightclick the new file, and choose get info again. But there is a much faster way to do this. If you're working through multiple files, rightclick the first file, then press and hold the option key on your keyboard. You'll notice the get info option changes to show inspector. Click on that. The window that opens shows the same information. But here's the benefit. When you move through the files
5:25 using the arrow keys, the inspector window automatically updates to reflect whichever file is currently selected. So, if you're dealing with a long list of files, this makes checking the information much faster and easier. Spotlight search is a really handy way of searching for almost anything on your Mac. Just press command and the spacear to open it, type what you're looking for, and work your way through the results. The only problem is that it can sometimes be a bit too broad, which means finding the right result can take longer than it should. But there is a simple way to narrow things down. Before you type your search term, add kind colon followed by the type of file that you're looking for. So if you're searching for something in your emails, you type kind email followed by your keyword. If it's a folder that you want, type kind folder.
6:13 If it's a setting, type kind. For PDF documents, kind colon PDF. This filters the results straight away so that you're only seeing the stuff that's relevant and it can save you loads of time. You will need to get used to remembering a few of these, but I'll include a link in the description where you can find a full list of the most useful ones. Give it a try. It's a great way to unlock more of what Spotlight Search can do. By the way, if you enjoy tips and tricks videos for the Mac like this, you should definitely check out my dedicated training hub, Mac Essentials Plus, which is launching in just over a week's time. It's got more than 200 lessons for the Mac. And each lesson includes a quick video, a step-by-step guide, and a downloadable PDF. It covers every aspect of your Mac with new content being added all the time. And if
7:00 you'd like to learn more, just scan the QR code that you can see on screen or follow the link in the description of this video. Most Mac computers come with a built-in microphone. Certainly, every Mac laptop does, and the iMac does, too. But if you bought a Mac Studio or one of the recent M4 Mac Minis, they don't include a microphone. And depending on the monitor that you're using, you might not have a mic there either. That means unless you plug in an external mic, you could miss out on a bunch of useful features on your Mac that rely on your voice. However, if you've got a compatible iPhone, you can use a feature called continuity to wirelessly use the microphone from your iPhone on your Mac, and it works really seamlessly. To do this, you'll need an iPhone that can run iOS 16 or later, which generally means an iPhone 10R or newer, and a Mac that
7:47 can run Mac OS Ventura or later. Both devices need to be signed into the same iCloud account, have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth switched on, and be near each other. On your Mac, go into settings, then general, and make sure that airdrop and handoff are enabled. Then on your iPhone, go into settings, then general, and choose AirPlay and continuity. Make sure that both handoff and continuity camera are enabled. Once you've done that, head back into settings on your Mac. Go to sound, and under the input section, you should now see your iPhone listed as an available input device. That now means you can use any voice enabled feature on your Mac, whether it's Siri, a voice memo in the notes app, or a third party AI assistant like Perplexity or Gemini, without needing to plug in a microphone. If your Mac is a
8:34 laptop, you can check the condition of the battery and get some useful details about its health. Open system settings and select battery from the sidebar. Right at the top, you'll see an option called battery health. This gives you a basic status. Either normal, which means all is fine, or service recommended, which means your battery can still function, but its ability to hold a charge is reduced. Apple doesn't say exactly what threshold they use for this, but it's usually when the battery has dropped to 80% of its original capacity or lower. You can click the little I button to get more information and also turn on optimized battery charging. I recommend leaving that on as it does help your Mac learn your charging patterns to reduce long-term battery wear. If you want to dig a little deeper, click the Apple logo in the top left of your screen, then choose
9:21 about this Mac. In the window that appears, click more info, then scroll all the way to the bottom and choose system report. In the next window, select power from the sidebar. This will show you even more detailed information about your battery, like its maximum capacity as a percentage, its current condition, and the cycle count. That's how many full naugh to 100 charge cycles your battery has gone through. If your Mac is running slower than usual, it might be because something in the background is eating up your system resources without you realizing. Here's a quick way to check. Press command and the spacebar to open spotlight search. Then type in activity. The top result will be activity monitor. Press return to open it. The activity monitor gives you a real-time overview of everything
10:08 your Mac is doing. You can filter this by tabs across the top, but the two that you want to check first are memory and CPU. Start with memory and then sort the list by memory used. So, the other day I noticed that Voice Sync, the app that I use for my teleprompter, was using 5 GB of memory even though I wasn't actively using it. It was just running in the background. If you see anything here that's hogging your system resources, double click on it and then choose quit from the window that appears. Same applies in the CPU tab where you can sort by the CPU percentage to see what's putting the most strain on your processor. There are also tabs for energy, disk, and network usage. But CPU and memory are the most important ones to check if your Mac is feeling sluggish. Let's be honest, dictation on
10:54 the Mac is okay, but it doesn't even come close to the experience that you get with an AI powered tool. And that's why the final tip that I'm including in this video is to use a free AI dictation tool called Talktastic. Just to be clear, this isn't sponsored. They've got no idea that I'm even mentioning them. This is simply a tool that I personally use every day on all of my Macs. The idea is simple. You download it and you can either assign it to your Mac dictation key F5 or if you use an external keyboard like I do, you can set your own keyboard shortcut. I use option and space. When you trigger Talktastic, it takes a quick snapshot of whatever app you're in and combines that with your microphone input to generate a clean formatted version of whatever you dictate. You can then just paste it
11:39 straight back into the app that you were using. I mostly use it to reply to emails or jot down quick notes, but it works across the entire system. So, how you use it is entirely up to you. It's free while in beta, but that might change in the future, but right now there is no charge to download or use it as much as you like. That said, it does work by capturing a snapshot of your screen, so you'll want to review their privacy settings. There is an option to have those snapshots deleted automatically after they're used, which I would recommend enabling. As with any tool like this, just make sure you're comfortable with how your data is handled. So, there you go. 10 tips for the Mac that you may not have known. How about you? Were there any tips in this video that came as a surprise or any tips that you think I should have included? Drop me a comment and let me
12:24 know. And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future. See you on the next video.
