[HN Gopher] Making macOS Behave Itself
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Making macOS Behave Itself
Author : behnamoh
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-05-25 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danmackinlay.name)
(TXT) w3m dump (danmackinlay.name)
| teddyh wrote:
| " _As the OS unbidden installed the update with the latest
| restrictions and spyware, I asked it 'Why did you do this? Now I
| will switch to another, less usable, operating system! We will
| both be worse off!' And it replied 'It's in my nature.'_ "
| hartator wrote:
| Stupid question. How do you close Preview without saving any of
| screenshots, images, and pdfs that have been opened?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| CMD+Q should work.
| hartator wrote:
| You have to go through each opened document one by one and
| decide to save or not. Like there is no option to just mass
| discard.
| hartator wrote:
| > Out of curiosity, what's your workflow look like that
| you're ending up with so many "dirty" screenshots that it
| wants to know if it should save or not?
|
| Yes, screenshot part of the screen, do a quick edit or
| highlight in Preview, and paste it to GitHub or email. I
| never want the screenshots to be saved to disk but end up
| with my Preview full of "dirty" screenshots.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what's your workflow look like that
| you're ending up with so many "dirty" screenshots that it
| wants to know if it should save or not?
|
| (AFAIK there's no mass-discard option, but I've never
| really thought about it before because 99% of the time
| Preview is showing me something that's already on disk)
| grishka wrote:
| Alt-right-click the dock icon and choose "force quit" or
| whatever it's called in English.
| [deleted]
| musicale wrote:
| Option-click on a window's red close button closes all open
| windows/documents in a macOS app, but I don't know of a
| "delete all" shortcut, so (unfortunately) all unsaved
| documents will get a confirmation dialog in their window
| where you have to click the delete button.
|
| There used to be command key shortcuts for the don't
| save/cancel/save (command-d/s/c iirc?) dialog buttons, but
| they've changed the ui to delete/save and seem to have
| removed the keyboard equivalents.
|
| The right way to do it (in my opinion) would be option-
| click on the Delete button or command-option-D, but they
| don't seem to have implemented that.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > There used to be command key shortcuts for the don't
| save/cancel/save (command-d/s/c iirc?) dialog buttons,
| but they've changed the ui to delete/save and seem to
| have removed the keyboard equivalents.
|
| Command-d is still mapped to don't save (at least in
| Preview, just verified). Escape is cancel.
| fire wrote:
| iirc command+option+w will close all open windows without
| actually quitting the app itself
| Lammy wrote:
| Does Option + Command + Q work? Not near a Mac to try it, but
| that was the convention back in the Tiger days.
| hartator wrote:
| Yes, this immediately quits (I think that the same as Force
| Quit?) but when you reopen Preview everything unfortunately
| reopen as well.
| [deleted]
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Sorry, but a MacOS that doesn't have animated wallpapers still
| can be said to 'behave itself'.
| nomel wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I saw my desktop.
| endemic wrote:
| Login screen, maybe.
| corrral wrote:
| Sometimes I make a new virtual desktop and see it for a few
| seconds.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Yeah a number of these seem like just somewhat idiosyncratic
| preferences or note-to-self-how-to-do-X-thing, the title is a
| bit misleading.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I found the link list at the start of the page to be hard to
| understand I still I realized it was links to parts of the
| article
| phren0logy wrote:
| I was recently talking to a colleague about my experience, in
| which I went from being on windows 75% of the time (Mac 25%) to
| Mac 75% and Windows 25%. This was a huge relief for me and made
| things much easier, but he commented on how he can't stand
| working on MacOS.
|
| It's lists like these that remind me that I have sanded off a lot
| of the rough edges in MacOS to make it so comfortable, and those
| who are unwilling/unable or don't know how can be met with
| frustration from MacOS.
| behnamoh wrote:
| > It's lists like these that remind me that I have sanded off a
| lot of the rough edges in MacOS to make it so comfortable, and
| those who are unwilling/unable or don't know how can be met
| with frustration from MacOS.
|
| The same can be done about virtually any OS (including Windows)
| to make it suck less. But none of them are advertised as the
| most easy-to-use OS.
| rado wrote:
| How to make macOS remember each app's input source? There are
| some setting, they don't really work. It's my only serious
| problem with the best OS around. Can anyone make an app to fix
| this? Thanks!
| musicale wrote:
| > Apple has shipped a slow, incomprehensible scripting language
| for as long as I have been aware of them
|
| Apple's Open Scripting Architecture is something like 30 years
| old at this point. Macs have been scriptable using JavaScript for
| more than 20 years (JavaScript OSA, 2001), and JXA has been
| included in macOS since 2013.
|
| AppleScript may have been something of a failure, but HyperTalk
| (which it was based on) was a huge success.
|
| Personally I like AppleScript, even if I mainly use Python (and
| occasionally JavaScript) for scripting macOS and iOS. Now I want
| to try Late Night Software's Script Debugger 8, which looks like
| a nice IDE for AppleScript.
| usrn wrote:
| Last I checked the javascript documentation for OSA was pretty
| incomplete. I needed to script something on a mac the other
| year and had to use AppleScript because I couldn't figure out
| how to do something extremely basic (like get a hash out of
| some app or something, I don't remember.)
| musicale wrote:
| In theory there should be a mapping from AppleScript APIs and
| objects to JavaScript, but it may not always be obvious.
|
| I wish Apple had better developer documentation in general.
|
| It seems to have taken a downturn recently even as they have
| accelerated feature velocity with things like SwiftUI.
| taylodl wrote:
| My biggest Mac OS annoyances:
|
| 1. Why can't windows remember their positions when using multiple
| screens? Is it a bug in the OS or a bug in the App (because some
| apps seem to work better than others?)
|
| 2. Why does Finder search suck so bad? I generally find it easier
| to drop to a command line and use 'find' rather than use Finder.
| Finder in general kinda sucks.
|
| 3. Why doesn't the Always Open With option on the Other...
| submenu seem to work?
|
| 4. Why does Expose not work half the time? I have many
| applications with many windows open for each. I don't want to use
| Mission Control to select the window, I want to use Expose. Half
| the time Expose just gives me the desktop. Not what I want.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| #3 is super annoying - but also why can't I bulk edit
| associations?
|
| Parallels decided to install Windows Media Player as my media
| player for all music and video file types on macOS and I want
| to reset all of them to VLC.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > #3 is super annoying - but also why can't I bulk edit
| associations?
|
| You can.
|
| Right Click -> Open With -> Other... (Always open with
| checkbox)
|
| is for setting a particular association for the particular
| file you right-clicked (maybe you always want this file to
| open in Sublime, but this other one with the same extension
| in TextEdit, for some reason, etc).
|
| command-I to open the Get Info pane -> expand Open With block
| -> use dropdown labelled "Use this application to open all
| documents like this one" -> click Change All... button
|
| is the bulk edit flow
| [deleted]
| amarshall wrote:
| #2 this doesn't solve the problem, but IMO changing the default
| from "search everywhere" to "search in this folder" helps quite
| a bit.
|
| #3 I think that only applies to the current _file_ , not its
| type. Use the info pop up for that.
|
| #4 generally seems to be linked to certain apps creating
| windows in "unusual" ways. Quit apps till the culprit is found.
|
| (In case it's unclear: not defending the design choices, just
| suggesting.)
| radicality wrote:
| For 2), it's because Finder only ever looks for things indexed
| by Spotlight. So it could be Spotlight lagging behind (that's
| the 'mdworker' I'm sure you've seen many times hogging cpu),
| the Spotlight importer for that file type failing, or even just
| Spotlight deciding not to index various folders by default :(
| Off the top of my head I don't remember exact folders it
| ignores, but it definitely does not index the full file system.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Spotlight going out of its mind indexing is my current
| annoyance. mds and mdworker processes taking up 100% of my
| CPU for hours on end, blasting hot air into my already hot
| home office. I have a screenshot of 30+ mdworker_shared
| processes simultaneously doing god knows what, roasting my
| CPU. Nothing I do seems to help, including limiting spotlight
| to specific folders, disabling it for certain volumes from
| the command line, there's just no way tell Spotlight to not
| melt my CPU without turning off the service altogether. Total
| madness and it's an opaque black box.
| gs17 wrote:
| I don't bother with Expose, I disabled its shortcuts and use
| AltTab [0] instead. 90% of the time I just want to swap between
| the last two recently used windows and that makes it incredibly
| easy.
|
| [0] https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
| blondin wrote:
| me: that media encoding command is pretty awesome! didn't know
| about it.
|
| also me: all OSes should just have ffmpeg preinstalled. so we
| don't relearn these encoding commands over and over again.
| sbf501 wrote:
| My two favorite/most-annoying aspects of macOS:
|
| 1. Me: Clicks on .py file ... MacOS: "Please update XCode with
| 13GB of patches..."
|
| 2. Me: Tries to run "gdb" ... MacOS: "Please create a manual
| certificate to debug your C code..."
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| My issue with the first one is that modern Xcode releases take
| forever to install on 128 GB macbooks. It wasn't like that at
| all in the past. A 128 GB macbook pro was an entry-level model,
| but you could comfortably install Xcode in an hour maximum. Now
| I had to leave it open for the nigh. Just to update to a minor
| version. This basically means I can hardly use it for anything
| else.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| https://github.com/RobotsAndPencils/xcodes can install Xcode
| in a few minutes (plus however long it takes to download). Be
| sure to enable the experimental option to extract using
| unxip.
|
| Yes, it's absurd that you need a third-party application to
| install Xcode.
| happymellon wrote:
| An hour? That is ridiculous.
|
| It takes forever, but it really shouldn't. It only seems to
| get installed to provide a compiler. Why does that take an
| hour?
|
| `apt install gcc` takes a minute.
| mattl wrote:
| https://blog.kulman.sk/faster-way-to-download-and-install-
| xc...
| fragmede wrote:
| As someone native to Linux, I can't stand the default cmd-tab
| behavior on OSX, https://contexts.co/ app makes it usable for me
| again.
| [deleted]
| copperx wrote:
| +1
|
| Contexts solves my #1 annoyance with macOS.
| digisign wrote:
| See AltTab as well, its FLOSS.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Yes, AltTab is quite useful, especially the feature which
| allows you to switch to other apps by "hovering" your mouse
| on their icon when pressing OPTION+TAB.
| wdb wrote:
| Contexts is great but not really maintained anymore?
| copperx wrote:
| PDFs can be concatenated using Preview.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Preview can do a whole lot more than that! It can reorder
| pages, edit pictures, has ocr, can insert signatures and a host
| of other things.
|
| I find that whenever I am not on MacOS, I am missing preview
| and there just isn't any substitute for it.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I wish Preview didn't have the annoying rubber-band (elastic)
| effect when scrolling horizontally.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Preview can OCR? That's the one feature I have been missing
| from Acrobat Pro.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Yes. I just tested it to verify on this gif
|
| https://images-na.ssl-images-
| amazon.com/images/G/01/digital/...
|
| https://imgur.com/a/oHUM5J7
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I just scanned an invoice to pdf via a Brother MFC
| printer/scanner, and I cannot highlight any of the text
| in it in Preview. How can I run OCR on this document in
| Preview? I do not see any menu option or anything in Help
| menu.
| frizlab wrote:
| Only works on latest macOS. Also you have to wait a bit
| for the OCR to take place and there are no indication
| whatsoever the system is working on it. When it's done,
| you can simply select the text.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have had this pdf open in Preview for 30+ min in the
| latest macOS. I think this is the Live Text functionality
| mentioned in other comments, but it does not work on
| PDFs, only images and whatnot.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| I've never gotten OCR to work on scanned pdfs. PNG files
| / screenshots - instant ocr. Very bizarre behavior.
| docfort wrote:
| The feature is called Live Text, and it was released in
| macOS Monterey.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not see any indication that Live Text has
| functionality to perform OCR on PDFs.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/interact-with-
| text-in...
| joeman1000 wrote:
| You can do it in finder too. Preview lags hard when combining
| and saving big pdfs.
| bedros wrote:
| How to turn off/on Box process, it keeps taking too much CPU
| utilization
| vehemenz wrote:
| Personally I use rclone to mount my Box files as a volume. It's
| a little slow, but at least it's predictable.
| behnamoh wrote:
| You might find this interesting:
|
| https://medium.com/@parttimeben/how-to-speed-up-mac-with-app...
| lordnacho wrote:
| How do you make it put windows on the same screens after a wake
| up or an unplug?
|
| Sometimes I want to carry my laptop around, and I want my windows
| in a particular way. When I plug in my screens again, I want them
| back again in the multiscreen setup.
|
| This sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. So eventually I end up
| having to move the windows to other screens, maximize, etc before
| I can get on with my work.
|
| You'd think there was a way where it could remember what was
| plugged in and restore as appropriate.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I use Amethyst and it does a great job at that. Otherwise,
| you'd have to pay for apps that do that.
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