Tips & tricks

Pull just a few pages out of a PDF — by printing to PDF

Need to send three pages out of a fifty-page PDF? Print the range “12-14” to PDF and the new file is born. No installing anything.

Free PDF comments: mark up documents without paying for Acrobat

Highlighting and annotating a PDF is handled by the free Acrobat Reader, Edge, and Preview on Mac. Feedback belongs in the file, not in a five-paragraph email.

The @ in Outlook: an @mention adds the recipient and flags the task

Type @name in the body of an email — Outlook adds the person to the recipients automatically and highlights that something's expected of them. No more overlooked tasks buried in the CC line.

Set up your chair in a minute: elbows, knees, feet

Most people sit in their chair exactly as it arrived from the store. Three checkpoints — elbows at desk height, knees at a right angle, feet on the floor — take a minute to fix.

Mouse sensitivity: across two monitors with one flick of the wrist

Default pointer and scroll-wheel speed is tuned for monitors from a decade ago. Two sliders save hundreds of arm movements a day.

SMS verification codes fill themselves in on your Mac

A verification text arrives and Safari on your Mac offers it right in the field to fill in — the phone stays in your pocket. Just turn on message forwarding.

Quick Note: Fn+Q opens a sticky note anywhere in the system

Fn+Q

An idea or a phone call in the middle of work? Fn+Q brings up a floating note over whatever you're doing — and it saves itself to Notes.

The title bar icon: drag a file straight out of the app

Drag a document you have open straight into an email or chat using the small icon in the window's title bar — no hunting for the file in Finder.

Hold a key and pick a character: accented letters without hunting for them

You don't need to hunt through special character tables for accented letters on a Mac — hold a letter down and a menu of all its accented variants pops up.

iPhone as a webcam: the best camera you already own

Your Mac's built-in camera is mediocre. Just set your iPhone near the monitor and the Mac offers it as a webcam — wirelessly, with nothing to install.

Turn on your iPhone's hotspot from your Mac — the phone stays in your bag

Your Mac sees your iPhone's hotspot right in the Wi-Fi menu, even when it's off on the phone. One click and you're online — no touching your phone.

Take calls on your Mac — even when the iPhone's in another room

Your Mac can receive and dial calls from your iPhone. The phone can stay on the charger in the hallway while you talk through your computer's headset.

Cmd+Shift+/ finds any menu command — and shows you where it lives

Cmd+Shift+/

Not sure where an app hides a certain feature? This shortcut opens menu search, finds the command by name, and points an arrow at where it lives.

Handoff: pick up unfinished work from iPhone on your Mac with one click

Finish an email you started on the tram, on your Mac, exactly where you left off. Handoff passes work in progress between your devices automatically.

Finder tags: one file in multiple “folders” at once

Does an invoice belong in the project folder and in accounting? Tags solve the age-old dilemma of where to save a file — it can show up in more than one place at once.

Drag a folder into a Save dialog — and you're there

You don't have to click your way through a Save dialog: drag a folder or file from Finder into it and the dialog jumps straight to that spot.

Camera at eye level and light from the front: two minutes for a better impression

A laptop sitting on the desk shoots your chin and the ceiling from below, and a window behind you turns you into a silhouette. Camera height and light direction fix more than a new webcam ever will.

Speedy meetings: 25 minutes instead of 30, a break as a bonus

One checkbox in your calendar shortens default meetings to 25 and 50 minutes. Between calls you get a breather you don't have today.

Find a time: let the calendar show when everyone's free

Don't arrange a meeting time over email. Google Calendar and Outlook lay attendees' calendars side by side, and you spot the open slot at a glance.

A second time zone in your calendar: no more counting hours

Google Calendar and Outlook can both show a second time axis next to your own. Plan a meeting across time zones by looking, not by doing math in your head.

Grouping Sheets: Edit a Dozen Excel Sheets at Once

Ctrl+click on sheet tabs groups them — and whatever you type into one gets written into all of them. Fix twelve monthly sheets in one move.

New Window in Excel: Two Sheets of the Same Workbook, Side by Side

Switching back and forth between the sheet with source data and the sheet with results? View → New Window shows both at once.

Alt+; in Excel: Copy Without the Hidden Rows

Alt+;

Copying a table with hidden rows and they paste in too? Alt+; selects only the visible cells — the hidden ones stay home.

Choppy Video Call? A Cable Fixes What Wi-Fi Can't

“You froze” usually doesn't mean slow internet — it means unstable Wi-Fi. An Ethernet cable is the single most reliable upgrade for calls.

The Two-Screen Meeting Rule: One for People, One for Notes

Put the meeting window on the monitor with the camera, notes and materials on the other. You look people in the eye, never share anything private, and minutes write themselves.

In-depth guide · 15 min

What loops are: the agentic cycles said to replace prompting

An explainer with prompts: what it means to let AI run in a loop, what's true in the hype, what's overblown, and how to safely try your first loop.

In-depth guide · 23 min

Beeper as your message hub: Claude pulls promises out of your chats before you forget them

A complete guide with prompts: Beeper unifies WhatsApp, Messenger, and Slack into one app, and Claude pulls promises and deadlines out of them via MCP on a regular schedule and writes them into Notion. Includes a patient introduction to the terminal for anyone who's never opened one.

Ask AI What It Assumed

Gaps in your prompt get silently filled with the model's own assumptions. Have them listed out — see what the answer is standing on before you build work on top of it.

Stop Correcting AI Forever: Edit Your Original Message Instead

Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can all edit a message you've already sent and answer again from a clean slate. A lesser-known button that rescues tangled conversations.

A Table Locked Inside a PDF: AI Puts It Back Into Excel

Copying a table out of a PDF turns the columns into one tangled noodle of text. Upload the PDF to AI, ask for CSV — and check the control total.