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Ultimate Guide To OS X Yosemite: Tips, Tricks And How To Guides
The ultimate guide to OS X Yosemite featuring tips, tricks and user guides –– updated weekly
When Apple released OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” last fall it was the most radical shakeup to the Mac’s desktop operating system in over a decade. Gone were the glossy buttons and scrollbars that had so dominated the UI and in came flatter elements and translucencies inspired by iOS. But Yosemite is so much more than just a reskinned OS. At its heart it’s made up of over a hundred new features–some major, some small; all cool.
Yet many people don’t know about 90% of these features. That’s where this guide comes in. We’ll be updating it every week to show you the latest and greatest tips we’ve discovered and the ones that our readers have discovered too. And we’d love to have you contribute. If you’ve got a favourite Yosemite tip or trick let us know about it in the comments.
This guide is broken up into sections. The thought behind this is simple: if you want to know something specific simply click one of the topics below and it will take you straight to that page. We’ll be adding more topics over the coming weeks and months, so be sure to either bookmark or check back regularly to see what’s new.
OS X Yosemite: Safari
One of the most radically redesigned apps in Yosemite is Safari, Apple’s web browser. Safari has been around a long time, but its latest incarnation adds a ton of cool, hidden features that show it’s a browser built for the modern age. Just what kind of features? We’re glad you asked.
Safari: Manage Tabs
One of the biggest new features is something tabbed browser users will love: the ability to manage all open tabs in one location. This specific feature addresses a huge problem that traditional tabbed browsing has brought: the more tabs you have open, the harder it is to tell which tabs are which in the tabbed bar. This is why Apple has created the all-new Tab view. Here’s how to use it:
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With multiple tabs open in Safari make a pinch gesture on your multitouch trackpad.
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(alternately) If you don’t have a multitouch trackpad, select View>Show All Tabs from the menu bar.
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When you do either of the above the current page you are viewing will shrink back and reveal the Tab view: a page made of thumbnail grids–each one representing an open tab in your browser window. If you have multiple tabs open from a single website, they’ll appear as pages stacked on top of each other. From the Tab view screen you can do the following:
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To close a tab, click on the X in its thumbnail.
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To launch a tab, click on it and its page will spring forward.
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To create a new tab, click on the empty tab thumbnail with the + in it.
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Below Safari’s tab thumbnails you’ll also see any tabs you have open on your iPhone or iPad. Click the name of the tab to launch that web page in Safari on your desktop or click the X next to the tab’s name to remotely close that tab on your iOS device.
Safari: Share A Link On Social Media Right From Safari
Safari in Yosemite offers a new powerful Share menu that allows you to share a web link to your social media channels just by a few clicks. Here’s how:
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When on the web page that you want to share click the Share button in Safari’s toolbar. It looks like a box with an arrow pointing up.
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From the Share menu, select the social media site you want to share the link on. This could be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or more.
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The webpage will shrink down to a thumbnail and it will be inserted in a share window box that appears. If you’ve chosen to share the link on Facebook, for example, you can now write some text to go along with the link and select which group of your Facebook followers you want to share the link with.
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Click Post and your link will be shared.
There are a few things to keep in mind when using Safari to share links. First is that the thumbnail that shows in the share window popup will not appear in your post. This thumbnail is just so you can see the page you are sharing. Also note that you’ll need to have entered in your social media login details in the main Internet Accounts pane in System Preferences. You can find it by going to System Preferences and clicking Internet Accounts, then finding the social media account you want to enable and enter in your username and password.
Safari: See Entire Website URLs
Safari in Yosemite is all about saving space and having a clean, minimalistic design, which is why Apple had decided that the full URL of websites won’t be shown in Safari’s address bar by default. This might not bother some people, but others like to see the exact URL they are viewing. Thankfully, it’s easy to change this:
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From Safari’s menu bar click Safari>Preferences.
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Click on the Advanced tab.
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Next to where is says Smart Search Field, click the checkbox called “Show full website address”. Now the full URL of every website will be displayed.
Michael Grothaus
10:49, 6 May 2015