Chapter 5
In This Chapter
Making the most of your Home folder
Arranging your Desktop for greater efficiency
Adding time savers to the Dock
Using the Trash (and rescuing precious stuff from it)
Using Mission Control and Dashboard to perform Desktop magic
Printing documents
When you’re no longer a novice to Mavericks and the basics of the Finder, turn your attention to a number of more advanced topics ’n tricks to turn you into an iMac power user — which, after all, is the goal of every civilized consciousness on Planet Earth.
Consider this chapter a grab bag of Mavericks knowledge. Sure, I jump around a little, but these topics are indeed connected by a common thread: They’re all surefire problem-solvers and speeder-uppers. (I can’t believe the latter is really a word, but evidently it is. My editors told me so.)
Each user account that you create within Mavericks is actually a self-contained universe. For example, each user has a number of unique characteristics and folders devoted just to that person, and Mavericks keeps track of everything that a user changes or creates. (In Chapter 20, I describe the innate loveliness of multiple users living in peace and harmony on your iMac.)
This unique universe includes a different system of folders for each user account on your system. The top-level folder uses the short name that Mavericks assigns when that user account is created. Naturally, the actual folder name is different for each person, so Mac techno-types typically refer to this folder as your Home folder. (Mine is called mark, as you’ll see in upcoming figures.)
Each account’s Home folder contains a set of subfolders, including
Although you can store your stuff at the root (top level) of your hard drive, that gaggle of files, folders, and aliases can get very crowded and confusing very quickly. Here’s a Mark’s Maxim to live by:
I discuss security within your Home folder and what gets stored where in Chapter 20. For now, Figure 5-1 shows how convenient your Home folder is to reach because it appears in the Finder window Sidebar (on the left). One click of your Home folder, and all your stuff is within easy reach.
In addition to the Finder window Sidebar, you can reach your Home folder in other convenient ways:
A menu pops up (hence the name).
You’re set to go. From now on, every Finder window you open displays your Home folder as the starting location!
Many folks put all their documents, pictures, and videos on their Mavericks Desktop because the file icons are easy to locate! Your computing stuff is right in front of you … or is it?
Call me a finicky, stubborn fussbudget — go ahead, I don’t mind — but I prefer a clean Mavericks Desktop without all the iconic clutter. In fact, my Desktop usually has just three or four icons even though I use my iMac several hours every day. It’s an organizational thing; I work with literally hundreds of applications, documents, and assorted knickknacks daily. Sooner or later, you’ll find that you’re using that many, too. When you keep your stuff crammed on your Desktop, you end up having to scan your screen for one particular file, an alias, or a particular type of icon, which ends up taking you more time to locate it on your Desktop than in your Documents folder!
Plus, you’ll likely find yourself looking at old icons that no longer mean anything to you, or stuff that’s covered in cobwebs that you haven’t used in years. Stale icons … yuck.
I recommend that you arrange your Desktop so that you see only a couple of icons for the files or documents that you use the most. Leave the rest of the Desktop for that cool image of your favorite actor or actress.
Besides keeping things clean, I can recommend a number of other favorite tweaks that you can make to your Desktop:
I personally like things organized by name. You can also quickly change your sorting criteria by right-clicking any open space and choosing Sort By.
You see the Desktop & Screen Saver pane within System Preferences, as shown in Figure 5-3. Browse through the various folders of background images that Apple provides, a range of solid colors, or use an image from your iPhoto library or Pictures folder.
Any external networks, hard drives, or devices to which you’re connected show up on your Desktop. You can double-click the Desktop icon to view your external stuff.
If the Dock seems like a nifty contraption to you, you’re right again. It’s like one of those big control rooms that NASA uses. From the Dock — that icon toolbar at the bottom of the Mavericks Desktop — you can launch an application, monitor what’s running, and even use the pop-up menu commands to control the applications that you launch. (Hey, that NASA analogy is even better than I thought!)
When you launch an application — either by clicking an icon on the Dock, clicking an icon within Launchpad, or double-clicking an icon in a Finder window or the Desktop — the icon begins to bounce hilariously in the Dock to indicate that the application is loading. (So much for my NASA analogy.) After an application is running, the application icon appears in the Dock with a shiny blue dot underneath. Thus, you can easily see what’s running at any time just by glancing at the Dock.
Ah, but there’s more: The Dock can offer more than just a set of default icons! You can add your own MIS (or Most Important Stuff) to the Dock, making it the most convenient method of taking care of business without cluttering up your Desktop. You can add
Do not try to add an application anywhere to the right of the separator line. You can’t put applications there because Mavericks might think that you want the application dumped in the Trash!
Mavericks already includes two stacks on the Dock by default: your Documents folder and your Downloads folder.
You can remove an icon (okay, almost any) from the Dock at any time as long as the application isn’t running. In fact, I always recommend that every Mavericks user remove the default icons that never get used to make more room available for your favorite icons. The only two icons you can’t remove are the Finder and Trash icons. To remove an icon from the Dock, just click and drag it off the Dock. You’re rewarded with a ridiculous puff of smoke straight out of a Warner Brothers cartoon! (One of the OS X developers was in a fun mood, I guess.)
From the Dock menu, you can open documents, open the location in a Finder window, set an application as a Login Item, control the features in some applications, and other assorted fun, depending on the item.
To display the right-click Dock menu for an icon
Note that you can also press the Control key and click the icon, or even hold down the left mouse button (or tap and hold on a trackpad) for a second or two.
Another sign of an iMac power user is a well-maintained Trash bin. It’s a breeze to empty the discarded items you no longer need, and you can even rescue something that you suddenly discover you still need!
The Mavericks Trash bin resides on the Dock, and it works just like the Trash has always worked in OS X: Simply drag selected items to the Trash to delete them.
Here are other methods of chunking items you select to go to the wastebasket:
You can always tell when the Trash contains at least one item because the basket icon is full of crumpled paper! However, you don’t have to unfold a wad of paper to see what the Trash holds: Just click the Trash icon in the Dock to display the contents of the Trash. To rescue something from the Trash, drag the item(s) from the Trash folder to the Desktop or to any other folder in a Finder window. (If you’re doing this for someone else who’s not familiar with Mavericks, remember to act as though it were a lot of work, and you’ll earn big-time DRP, or Data Rescue Points.)
When you’re sure that you want to permanently delete the contents of the Trash, use one of these methods to empty the Trash:
If security is an issue around your iMac, and you want to make sure that no one can recover the files you’ve sent to the Trash, using the Secure Empty Trash command takes a little time but helps to ensure that no third-party hard drive repair or recovery program could resuscitate the items you discard.
iMac power users tend to wax enthusiastic over the convenience features built into Mavericks. In fact, we show ’em off to our PC-saddled friends and family. Three of the features that I’ve demonstrated the most to others are the OS X Dashboard display and the amazing convenience of Mission Control. In this section, I show ’em off to you as well. (Then you can become the Mavericks evangelist on your block.)
The idea behind Dashboard is deceptively simple, yet about as revolutionary as it gets for a mainstream personal computer operating system. Dashboard is an alternative Desktop that you can display at any time by using the keyboard or your pointing device (by swiping upward with three fingers and clicking Dashboard); the Dashboard desktop holds widgets (small applications that each provides a single function). Examples of default widgets that come with Mavericks include a calculator, a world clock, weather display, and a dictionary/thesaurus. (Think of the apps you can download for an iPhone or iPad, and you’re in the same territory.)
Oh, did I mention that you’re not limited to the widgets that come with Mavericks? Simply click the plus button at the bottom of the Dashboard display and drag new widgets to your Dashboard from the menu at the bottom of the screen. To remove a widget, click the minus button at the bottom of the Dashboard display, and then click the X icon that appears next to the offending widget. When you’re done with your widgets — that sounds a bit strange, but I mean no offense — press the Dashboard key again to return to your Desktop.
Simple applications like these are no big whoop. After all, OS X has always had a calculator and a clock. What’s revolutionary is how you access your widgets. You can display and use them anywhere in Mavericks, at any time, by simply pressing the Dashboard key. The default key on most late-model iMacs is F4, although you can change the Dashboard key via the Mission Control pane within System Preferences (or even turn it into a key sequence, like Option+F4).
A WebClip widget can include text, graphics, and links, which Dashboard updates every time you display your widgets. Think about that for a second: Dynamic displays, such as weather maps, cartoons, and even the Free Music Download image from the iTunes Store are all good sources of WebClip widgets! (That last one is a real time saver.)
Follow these steps to create a new WebClip Dashboard widget from your favorite website:
If you’ve added the Open in Dashboard button to the Safari toolbar (which bears a pair of scissors and a dotted box), you can click it instead.
This step allows you to choose the section with the desired content.
Bam! Mavericks displays your new WebClip widget within Dashboard.
When you click a link in a WebClip widget, Dashboard loads the full web page in Safari, so you can even use WebClips for surfing chores with sites you visit often.
In Chapter 4, I mention using the +Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between your open applications. If you’ve moved to the iMac from a PC running Windows, you might think this simple shortcut is all there is to it. Ah, dear reader, you’re in Mavericks territory now!
Mission Control is a rather complex-sounding feature, but (like Dashboard) it’s really all about convenience. If you typically run a large number of applications at the same time, Mission Control can be a real time saver, allowing you to quickly switch among a forest of different application windows (or display your Desktop instantly without those very same windows in the way). The feature works in three ways:
Ah, but what if you want to switch to an entirely different set of applications? For example, suppose that you’re slaving away at your pixel-pushing job, designing a magazine cover with Pages. Your page-design desktop also includes Photoshop and Apple’s Aperture, which you switch between often, using one of the techniques I just described. Suddenly, however, you realize that you need to schedule a meeting with others in your office using the OS X Calendar application, and you also want to check your e-mail in Apple Mail. What to do?
Well, you could certainly open Launchpad, launch those two applications on top of your graphics applications, and then minimize or close them. With Mission Control’s Spaces feature, though, you can press the Control+← or Control+→ sequences to switch to a completely different “communications” Desktop, with Calendar and Apple Mail windows already open and in your favorite positions! Figure 5-4, shown in the previous section, illustrates two available Spaces desktops, labeled Desktop 1 and Desktop 2, as well as my Dashboard screen. (If you’re using a trackpad, you can swipe to the left or right using three fingers to switch Spaces.)
After you’re done setting up your meeting and answering any important e-mail, simply press Control+← or Control+→ to switch back to your “graphics” desktop, where all your work is exactly as you left it! (And yes, Virginia, Spaces does indeed work with full-screen applications.)
Now imagine that you’ve also created a custom “music” Desktop for GarageBand and iTunes … or perhaps you joined Safari and iPhoto as a “webmaster” Desktop. See why everyone’s so excited?
To create a new Desktop for use within Spaces, click the Mission Control icon on the Dock, or press F3. Now you can set up new Spaces desktops. Move your cursor to the top-right corner of the Mission Control screen and click the Add button (with the plus sign) that appears. (If you’ve relocated your Dock to the right side of the screen, the Add button shows up in the upper-left corner instead.) Spaces creates a new, empty, Desktop thumbnail. Switch to the new Desktop by clicking the thumbnail at the top of the Mission Control screen and open those applications you want to include. (Alternatively, you can drag the applications from Mission Control onto the desired Desktop thumbnail.) That’s all there is to it!
To switch an application window between Spaces desktops, drag the window to the edge of the Desktop and hold it there. Spaces will automatically move the window to the next Desktop. (Applications can also be dragged between desktops within the Mission Control screen.) You can also delete a Desktop from the Mission Control screen: Just hover your pointer over the target Spaces thumbnail and then click the Delete button (with the X) that appears.
When you move your pointer to that corner, the feature you’ve specified automatically kicks in. Sweet!
Mavericks makes document printing a breeze. Because most Mac printers use a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, setting up printing couldn’t be easier. Just turn on your printer and connect the USB cable between the printer and your iMac; Mavericks does the rest.
After your printer is connected and installed, you can use the same procedure to print from within just about every OS X application on the planet! To print with the default page layout settings — standard 8½-x-11" paper, portrait mode, no scaling — follow these steps:
OS X displays the Print dialog.
Open the Printer pop-up menu to display all the printers that you can access.
For more than one copy, click in the Copies field and type the number of copies that you need.
Use the left- and right-arrow keys under the Preview display to look at each page of your document as it will appear when printed.
If you have to make changes to the document or you need to change the default print settings, click Cancel to return to your document. (You have to repeat Step 1 again to display the Print dialog again.)
To print the entire document, leave the default Pages option set to All.
When you’re set to go, click Print.
Mavericks prompts you with a Save As dialog, where you can type a name for the PDF document and also specify a location on your hard drive where the file should be saved.
Heck, if you like, you can even fax a PDF (with an external USB modem or a multifunction printer), add the PDF to iBooks, or send it as a Messages or an Apple Mail e-mail attachment! Just choose these options from the destination list rather than Save as PDF.