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Finder
I frequently use the “Recent Items” Finder menu command to quickly get to a previously opened file.
But there have been many times that I’ve wanted to not open that recent file, but to see where the file was located instead. This usually meant digging through sub-folders.
But I’ve found a quicker way to get where I want to go.
While selecting the “Recent Items” menu command and then holding down the Command key, the menu will change to “Show (Recent Item) In Finder”, thereby taking me to the location of the file instead of opening the file.
Want to see more information from your Menu Extras?
Option-Click on them. Here are a few of mine.
Volume
With the option key held down, shows settings that you would normally change in the System Preferences pane.
Do you need to run Windows software on your Mac? Maybe MS Project or something else not available natively? With the coming of Intel Macs, there are now many ways to do this. You can use Apple's solution – Boot Camp – to reserve a portion of your disk and install Windows. I usually don't recommend this solution, as it requires restarting your Mac to switch between Windows and OS X, unless you need to run very intensive software (like games). It also eats up a lot of disk.
I usually point people to VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run a Virtual Machine. There's also an open source solution, VirtualBox, which isn't quite as full-featured as Fusion or Parallels (but the price is right!). But today I want to talk about a new release of yet a different approach.
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A friend of mine recently decided it was time to let go of her old Palm Tungsten E2 in favor of her iPod touch. The biggest problem was converting her old contact database from the Palm desktop app. We managed to export everything when she was on her old iMac running Tiger, but we ran into fatal problems with her new iMac and Snow Leopard, so we had a lot of editing to do before it was ready for the touch.
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1. Large Icons (Snow Leopard)
One of my favorite features in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is the Large Icon option. When you open any Finder window and switch to Icon view you can now drag the slider in the lower right corner to enlarge the view. In many cases this allows you to see the images in detail or even read the text of a document to find the one that you're looking for.
2. Preview inside of an icon (Snow Leopard)
This is kind of an add on tip to #1. Once you're in Icon View and you have the nice large thumbnails, if you click on a supported document you can actually preview it right in its icon without having to open it. Step through a PDF, flip the slides of a Keynote presentation or play a movie. Cool!
3. Change Audio Options (Snow Leopard)
The menu bar can have lots of icons representing System Settings for quick access instead of always having to go to the System Preferences. Now if you hold down the Option key before clicking things like the Sound Icon (AirPort Icon, etc.), you'll see several more options. For sound in particular you can set your input and output settings.
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