502 tips · new ones added continuously
Every tip is one concrete thing you will do better or faster. Filter by what you use and who you are — or just search.
Clubs, dentists, and school events don't belong in your work calendar. A shared Family calendar is visible to both partners, so nothing gets lost in one person's head.
Need to get files onto another device on the same network? Python turns any folder into a downloadable web page.
Exam slots fill up within minutes. A reminder set to the exact moment registration opens decides whether you plan your exam period, or take whatever's left.
For subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play, you can cancel the trial a minute after activating it: it still runs to the end, and nothing gets charged. Elsewhere, a reminder does the job.
A work laptop and your own computer on one desk doesn't have to mean two keyboards. A USB switch flips between them with a single button.
After 20 minutes at a screen, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. The eye muscles relax and you skip the dry, burning eyes come evening.
During a slideshow, type a slide number and press Enter — you're there. No clicking back through twenty slides in front of an audience.
Can't grab an object buried under an image with your mouse? The Selection Pane lists every element on the slide — pick by clicking in the list, not by hunting on the canvas.
Presentation is 80 MB and won't go through email? Built-in image compression shrinks it to a fraction of the size — two clicks, no visible loss.
Ctrl+D
Duplicate an object, move it into place — and the next Ctrl+D copies with the same offset built in. A row of evenly spaced elements in seconds.
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.
A contract, an attachment, and a scanned addendum, all in one file: Preview handles it on a Mac, free PDF24 on Windows — just don't upload sensitive documents anywhere.
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.
Before a meeting or a coworker pulls you away, write one sentence: what you're doing and what the next step is. Coming back then takes seconds, not a quarter hour.
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.
Plenty of monitors and laptops run at 60 Hz even though the hardware can do more. One setting, and scrolling suddenly feels buttery smooth.
With an external monitor and keyboard, a laptop can run closed and save desk space. Just change one setting for what closing the lid does.
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.
Default pointer and scroll-wheel speed is tuned for monitors from a decade ago. Two sliders save hundreds of arm movements a day.
A monitor rotated 90° shows a full document page, a long email, or code without endless scrolling. Windows and Mac both handle it right in settings.
Build your own Quick Action in the Shortcuts app in five minutes — select photos, right-click, and they're the right size for email.
Move the cursor past the edge of your Mac's screen — and it shows up on the iPad. One keyboard, one mouse, two devices, zero setup.
A hidden option in Accessibility changes how you use the trackpad — drag windows and files with a light three-finger touch, no holding down and no thumb fatigue.
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.
You might already own a second monitor — your iPad. Sidecar turns it into a wireless Mac display in two clicks, even on the road.
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.
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.
Option+→
Option plus an arrow key jumps by word, Cmd jumps to the start and end of a line. Switchers from Windows type on a Mac with the handbrake on until they learn these.
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.
Cmd
The icons in your Mac's menu bar aren't nailed down — hold Cmd and drag them elsewhere, or drag one downward to remove it entirely.