Three-finger drag is the one thing I just can't live without.[0]
Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete)
Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search
Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick toggles
Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of various European languages are usually made by using Option+[key] for the accent, and Option+[key]+letter for the proper letter. The [key] maps are e -> ´, `` -> `` (I'm messing up the rendering of the quotes here despite my best efforts), i -> ˆ, u -> ¨ and some keys Option+[key] directly give a character when it's unique, such as Option+a=å and Option+o=ø, and Option+1=¡ (because it's the key for ! otherwise, which makes sense - and can help with Spanish)
For the longer examples, Option+e+e = é, Option+e+a = á, Option+`+a = à, Option+u+u = ü, Option+i+u = û, Option+n+n = ñ, etc.
Holding Option in menus also shows extra options and their shortcuts (although this is less and less the case outside of the Apple apps themselves). An example using Finder -> Edit and pressing/releasing the Option key[1]
Oh and one more: the app "Stickies", which allows you to have "post-it notes" with color coding and collapsing the note by double-clicking on the title, saving to file, etc. I use it to take quick notes or set casual reminders.
Last but not least, not an Apple app but a very helpful tool I've used to make the gif in this post: Kap is incredibly convenient to records bits of the screen and save to various formats, and it's been improving a lot since its early releases[2] (I have no stake in this, I'm just thankful for such a cool piece of free software)
Nowadays, holding down a key will show a pop-up with all the accent options, which you can then select by mouse or by typing the number under it, much like on iOS. The option route is my preferred one, as it's faster, but the new one is much more accessible to people without keyboard prowess.
Is there a way to shut off the long press functionality? Sometimes I just want to type “byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”, and I have already made the effort to learn accent key combos.
I agree. It's great to see that there are different paths a user can take towards being satisfied.
If I remember correctly, once you hold the key you can also use the number underneath to select the character (as in "long press e, press 2"). I've since disabled that long-hold thing because this allows me faster text repetition (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... in all its glorious uselessness), but I am glad Apple thought about the UX for different types of users there.
Three finger drag is nice, but I wish it worked on any part of the window not just the title bar. Also, there should be a warning that enabling 3 finger drag automatically increases the "Mission Control" gesture from 3 fingers to 4 fingers (swiping up).
Thank you so much for telling us about it, but I expected that I can drag the window anywhere. Turns out I can only drag it where it could also be dragged by clicking normally.
But I turned it on anyway, we'll see if I'll use it.
It also works to do text selection without clicking+dragging, same with moving files or folders. I've mostly stopped clicking outside of browsers thanks to the 3-finger drag option.
The great thing about three-finger drag is when you reach the end of the trackpad, you can lift one finger and put another finger to continue the drag. Tap and drag on Windows couldn't do that.
I think you can actually lift two fingers as soon as you've started the 3-finger drag and it'll continue dragging. If you're quick enough you can lift all three fingers and reposition them, too. They really put in a lot of work into the software behind the trackpad, which is still a major selling point for macbooks in my opinion.
interesting, I've been using quicktime's native screen recording feature. Converting from mov to gif would probably take another tool though, probably ffmpeg
Finder: Cmd+Shift+G to navigate wherever I want (with autocomplete)
Text input: Control+Command+Space for the emoji list and search
Text input (switching keyboards for Japanese input): Control+Space for quick toggles
Text input (accents in my native language): all the accents and letters of various European languages are usually made by using Option+[key] for the accent, and Option+[key]+letter for the proper letter. The [key] maps are e -> ´, `` -> `` (I'm messing up the rendering of the quotes here despite my best efforts), i -> ˆ, u -> ¨ and some keys Option+[key] directly give a character when it's unique, such as Option+a=å and Option+o=ø, and Option+1=¡ (because it's the key for ! otherwise, which makes sense - and can help with Spanish)
For the longer examples, Option+e+e = é, Option+e+a = á, Option+`+a = à, Option+u+u = ü, Option+i+u = û, Option+n+n = ñ, etc.
Holding Option in menus also shows extra options and their shortcuts (although this is less and less the case outside of the Apple apps themselves). An example using Finder -> Edit and pressing/releasing the Option key[1]
Oh and one more: the app "Stickies", which allows you to have "post-it notes" with color coding and collapsing the note by double-clicking on the title, saving to file, etc. I use it to take quick notes or set casual reminders.
Last but not least, not an Apple app but a very helpful tool I've used to make the gif in this post: Kap is incredibly convenient to records bits of the screen and save to various formats, and it's been improving a lot since its early releases[2] (I have no stake in this, I'm just thankful for such a cool piece of free software)
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609
[1] https://i.imgur.com/feRhErF.gif
[2] https://getkap.co/