100 Snow Leopard Tips, Tricks, and Features

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100 Snow Leopard Tips, Tricks, and Features

Posted 08/31/2009 at 1:02:49pm | by Arvind Srinivasan and Roberto Baldwin

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

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."

tiger

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

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

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 zone

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

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.

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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.

speed

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.

COMMENTS: 21

TAGS: Snow Leopard, features, Tips

COMMENTS

Desktop icons
Submitted by mattc986 on Mon, 2009-08-31 13:46

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.

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AIM Chatting
Submitted by Calob Horton on Mon, 2009-08-31 19:10

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe being able to audio/video chat with Windows AIM client users was available in Leopard.

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Active Directory Accounts integration
Submitted by ikarelin on Mon, 2009-08-31 21:02

Active Directory Settings are moved to "Accounts" in System Settings instead of /Applications/Utilities/Directory Services app. Cool !!!

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iCal edit revision seems to be wrong. Feature removed maybe?
Submitted by BallinaLad on Tue, 2009-09-01 04:10

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. "

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You're right about iChat
Submitted by Nijigasumi on Tue, 2009-09-01 06:35

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.

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Another nifty new feature
Submitted by ericgorr on Tue, 2009-09-01 06:54

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...

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Select input and output sources
Submitted by jemoreno on Tue, 2009-09-01 07:39

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.

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Directory Utility App not gone
Submitted by jemoreno on Tue, 2009-09-01 07:41

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

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Sticky keyboard shortcut.
Submitted by Doc Izzy on Tue, 2009-09-01 15:10

The sticky keyboard shortcut was in Leopard. I've used it almost daily at work. May have even been in Tiger.

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Text substitution
Submitted by mr100percent on Tue, 2009-09-01 21:45

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.)

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Option click in the Menu Bar
Submitted by romanboy on Fri, 2009-09-04 11:22

Option click in the Menu Bar on the iSync icon and it tells you when it last synched all your Bookmarks, Calendars, Contacts, etc.

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Put Back
Submitted by beeblebrox on Sat, 2009-09-05 19:03

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.

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Stacks and Put back
Submitted by jyuichi on Sun, 2009-10-18 11:52

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

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Palm OS Syncing, it still works in Snow Leopard
Submitted by heap1 on Sun, 2009-09-06 11:47

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.

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Screen sharing changes
Submitted by gmorain on Wed, 2009-09-09 12:54

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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yahoo mail
Submitted by Robert Ireland on Sat, 2009-09-12 10:11

switch to 64 results in inability of yahoo to download mail

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Palm Syncing works fine 2
Submitted by bgreggs on Sat, 2009-10-10 05:28

My Palm Centro is still syncing fine via HotSync manager to Palm Desktop 4.2.2 in Snow Leopard

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omega watches
Submitted by benet (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-10 18:04

Every little chat Salon 1000 ah!replica watchYou are my best's buddy d

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omega watches
Submitted by benet (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-10 18:18

Every little chat Salon 1000 ah!replica watchYou are my best's buddy
dad

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nice شات صوتي,
Submitted by ammarvvip (not verified) on Wed, 2009-11-11 06:50

nice
شات صوتي, دردشه صوتيه, شات مصريه, شات دردشة دردشه دردشة موبايل شات دردشه

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nice
Submitted by ammarvvip (not verified) on Wed, 2009-11-11 07:03

full nice full nice
شات صوتي, دردشه صوتيه, شات مصريه, شات دردشة دردشه دردشة موبايل شات دردشه

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