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After installing Snow Leopard on our Macs, the Mac|Life staff began scouring the inner crevices of 10.6 looking for all the features we can. While Snow Leopard has been advertised as more of a speed increase and "tightening of screws" of the OS, it still has some great features that'll help you work faster.
After spending the weekend with the new OS, we found 100 features, tips, and tricks that should help get you up to speed and make you a Snow Leopard power user.
If you have a tip or feature we missed, drop it in the comments and we'll add it to the article.
Battery Status
If you've secretly suspected that your MacBook's battery isn't working correctly, Snow Leopard can tell you what your geek senses have know all along. In the menu bar you can check the status of your battery, and hopefully you won't see "Service Battery."
No Leopard, no problem
If you're running Tiger on your machine, don't worry. You can install Snow Leopard without having Leopard installed on your Mac first. Apple would like you to purchase the $169 Mac Box Set, but you don't actually need to. You just saved a ton of money!
QuickTime X video record
Need to record a quick video with your iSight or USB camera? You can record directly from your iSight camera in QuickTime X. If you're lucky enough to have a higher-quality camera, you can not only choose the camera and audio source directly from the QuickTime X window, but also decide where the video will be saved.
Language and texts
In the System Preferences, choose Language & Text. A new tab called Texts has a Symbol And Text Substitution feature. Type ( c ) and you get © among other commonly used symbols. Make your own shortcuts! Of course, the app in question has to support it, but in general, you can do things like type “awesome” to substitute your name, “address^^” to substitute your address, and so on.
Time is relative
Automatically set the time zone you happen to be in. Navigate to the Date And Time preference in System Preferences and check off "Set time zone automatically using current location." Perfect for travelers.
QuickTime 7 isn't dead yet
QuickTime X is great. It gives users most of the QuickTime Pro features for free. But for die-hard QuickTime users that need more than a few screencasts and minimal export control, you can install QuickTime 7 from the Snow Leopard disc. Check the Optional Installs folder. Open the Optional Installs, and there's QuickTime 7 ready to be installed. Snow Leopard will find your previous QuickTime 7 preferences, and adds your registration number to the QuickTime 7 preferences.
Spring-loaded drag and drop between applications
Got a pic you want to email or add to a document? There's a quick new way to do that. Drag what you want placed to the app in the Dock. Exposé will initiate that app. Hover over the window you want the item placed in, and press the space bar. Release the mouse button and BAM! It's there.
OpenCL hungers for graphics cards
We've been told by Apple that OpenCL-enhanced applications will scream with compatible video cards. What happens if you cram your Mac Pro with multiple video cards? We asked Apple, and they said if an application is built to support OpenCL and the video cards are supported, the application will indeed get a speed boost.
Start up in 64-bit
If you want to make the kernel start up in 64-bit, hold the 6 and 4 keys on the keyboard at startup. Though applications can still run in 64-bit while the OS is 32-bit, starting up in 64-bit will be marginally faster. Be wary of losing application support, though.
32-bit kernel vs. 64-bit kernel
Is running a 64-bit kernel really that great? We talked to Apple about this, and they told us that what you're doing when you hold down the 6 and 4 buttons during startup is actually booting the kernel into 64-bit mode. For 99.999% of users out there, booting up as usual with the 32-bit kernel is more than adequate. Your 64-bit applications, including the Finder, will still run super quick while the kernel is in 32-bit mode. There is no difference in the speed of 64-bit applications while your kernel is in 32-bit mode. 64-bit mode is useful only to hardcore users and servers.
william.smith61
November 12, 2010 at 12:34am
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shawn lee
October 27, 2010 at 5:29am
Hello i am shawn lee.Thanks for sharing this wonderful and interesting topic.Open a new Finder window, select your Mac’s HD icon from the sidebar, drag the Applications folder to the right-hand side of the Dock. Control-click the Dock icon and you get view options. For apps, Sort by Name, Display as Folder and View as Grid works nicely. View as List also works well.
Thanks
PMI-001
shawn lee
scottgriest
October 21, 2010 at 7:18am
article is so good: "In Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode thanks for sharing this great article...
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debielapol
February 24, 2010 at 8:46am
Unless I missed it, I didn't see mentioned the new feature in the QuickTime Player:
File->New Screen Recording...
It allows you to do a video capture of what is happening on your monitor. Considering that there is commercial software that allows you to do the same thing and they cost more then Snow Leopard itself, this feature alone could pay for itself immediately.
Now, the commercial software will likely have more features at this point, but for basic screen recoding, the new QuickTime Player feature is great.
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ladysun1969
February 17, 2010 at 9:35pm
I just answered my own question:
The article says: "In Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode."
This only works if you have "Open events in separate windows" turned on. Otherwise, you have to double-click, then click Edit.
ladysun1969
February 17, 2010 at 9:32pm
The article says "In Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode."
Is this true? I've got Snow Leopard on a brand new MacBook, but I have to double-click, then click the Edit button to edit the event. Is there an option to choose somewhere?
ladysun1969
February 17, 2010 at 8:46pm
The article says, "Snow Leopard is the only OS with Exchange support out of the box, as Windows 7 requires you to buy Office 2007 to get that functionality".
Not *quite* true. Windows 7 does not come with an Exchange client (ie. Outlook), but Exchange server does. If you have Exchange server, you can install Outlook on your Win7 box & connect to the server. No need to buy Office 2007.
s10nefer
February 17, 2010 at 2:23pm
When using screen sharing to connect to a remote Mac, cmd-tab and Exposé keys are now redirected to the remote machine (it was not the case in Leopard)
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allenkenya
February 03, 2010 at 1:16am
I'm very satisfied with Snow Leopard. For the most part it works exactly as "advertised", is very stable, is fast, etc. I have also enjoyed reading these 100 Tips. I've learned some things and they've reminded me of others that I had forgotten or ignored.
However, two of them don't ring true at all for me:
1. "Wake up and shut down faster" -- Snow Leopard usually wakes up faster; I have far fewer times when the computer simply refuses to wake up. But, it does not shut down faster. The only thing that consistently embarrasses me about my MacBook Pro is that it is so slow shutting down -- we're talking 5+ minutes to close out applications, stop processes, and turn off -- or sometimes just refuses to shut down. Combined with Firefox (any recent iteration) quitting, it's a dog in this respect.
2. Edit iCal Event Quicker: Hmmmm. Double-clicking on an iCal event brings up the details about the event but in order to edit it, I have to then click edit. I don't see any change from Leopard. I would welcome a return to double-clicking and going straight to edit.
madno
January 18, 2010 at 8:33am
Hi i love everything about leopard but the problem is i want to install it on pc. I hope mac life can write the article about how to install leopard in pc.
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PCheese
December 07, 2009 at 1:43pm
You wrote that Snow Leopard "triangulates your position based on your IP address". Triangulation uses multiple angles and distance estimates from known physical locations (i.e. cell towers, satellites) to determine current location. Apple could also have used an IP address to location lookup database, but that does not appear to be the case. Instead, they use skyhookwireless.com to to find your location based on MAC addresses of nearby access points. (It's possible they employ triangulation techniques here.)
bgreggs
October 10, 2009 at 6:28am
My Palm Centro is still syncing fine via HotSync manager to Palm Desktop 4.2.2 in Snow Leopard
Robert Ireland
September 12, 2009 at 11:11am
switch to 64 results in inability of yahoo to download mail
gmorain
September 09, 2009 at 1:54pm
When using screen sharing to connect to a remote Mac, cmd-tab and Exposé keys are now redirected to the remote machine (it was not the case in Leopard)
heap1
September 06, 2009 at 12:47pm
Palm syncing still works fine. I have had no problems syncing my 9 year old Sony Clie with Palm Desktop software version 4.2.1 in Snow Leopard.
beeblebrox
September 05, 2009 at 8:03pm
I must be really missing something here. When I first read of the new feature I sent up a cheer, as I'm sure many Mac users did. Then I tried it. There were way over 100 items in the trash when I went down the list and tried the 'Put Back' feature both from the context menu and the file menu. Out of all those items only seven had 'put back' enabled, - 2 empty folders, 1 WMV, 1 Application, and 3 PDFs -all the rest were grayed out. Of all those files only seven worked as Apple's Support article said they should?
I wish someone could tell me what's wrong here. Otherwise it just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.
jyuichi
October 18, 2009 at 12:52pm
Regarding buggy put back, for me it seems that items sent to the trash from Finder or desktop can be put back but items dragged from stacks (like my download stack thats right next to the trash can) can't. Real bummer :( Sleepless Nights & Wakeless Days
romanboy
September 04, 2009 at 12:22pm
Option click in the Menu Bar on the iSync icon and it tells you when it last synched all your Bookmarks, Calendars, Contacts, etc.
mr100percent
September 01, 2009 at 10:45pm
To turn on text substitution features in an application:
Control-click and choose Substitutions > Show Substitutions. (In some applications, you can also choose Edit > Substitutions > Show Substitutions.)
Doc Izzy
September 01, 2009 at 4:10pm
The sticky keyboard shortcut was in Leopard. I've used it almost daily at work. May have even been in Tiger.
jemoreno
September 01, 2009 at 8:41am
I first noticed that my directory utility app was gone, then I snooped around and found how to access it.System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options > Network Account Server
jemoreno
September 01, 2009 at 8:39am
If you’ve ever wanted to change audio sources without firing up system preferences, well Snow Leopard lets you do just that. By holding down Option + clicking on the volume control in the menu bar you are able to quickly change sources.
ericgorr
September 01, 2009 at 7:54am
Unless I missed it, I didn't see mentioned the new feature in the QuickTime Player:
File->New Screen Recording...
It allows you to do a video capture of what is happening on your monitor. Considering that there is commercial software that allows you to do the same thing and they cost more then Snow Leopard itself, this feature alone could pay for itself immediately.
Now, the commercial software will likely have more features at this point, but for basic screen recoding, the new QuickTime Player feature is great.
One of the best uses for this new feature is when users report bugs, they all now can easily send a screen recoding of what they were doing at the time. A huge boon to developers everywhere...
Nijigasumi
September 01, 2009 at 7:35am
You're right about iChat video to Windows AIM. The ability's already in Leopard but it was buggy and sometimes decided it didn't want to work. I have yet to try it out in SL. Lets hope they made it more stable.
BallinaLad
September 01, 2009 at 5:10am
I tried the feature to edit iCal entries with just one click, but no joy.It still works just as before -- double click the item then click Edit to change the details.Was this feature removed from the release version?Ric "Edit iCal events quickerIn Leopard you had to double-click on the event, then you had to click Edit to edit the event. That's one too many clicks. In Snow Leopard, you can just double-click on the event to get to edit mode. "
ikarelin
August 31, 2009 at 10:02pm
Active Directory Settings are moved to "Accounts" in System Settings instead of /Applications/Utilities/Directory Services app. Cool !!!
Calob Horton
August 31, 2009 at 8:10pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe being able to audio/video chat with Windows AIM client users was available in Leopard.
mattc986
August 31, 2009 at 2:46pm
Yeah I'm still on 10.5.8 on a MBP Early 2008 and I've always been able to resize my Desktop icons with a two finger pinch. You can do it in a finder folder so it makes sense the desktop responds the same way since it's technically your desktop folder.
Anyway, definitely not a Snow Leopard tip/trick/feature.
