The Macintosh — or Mac, as it’s now known — is one of the signature products of Apple, the tech company that changed the world. Steve Jobs’ obsessions with simplicity practically brought about all of the wonderful innovations we associate with the 21st century. The numbers do not lie; Macs now account for 10 percent of all personal computers.
But despite their popularity, there are many things people don’t know about mac computers. The sleek design of an Apple computer, MacBook, or other sorts of mac laptops makes it come off as intimidating and mysterious to many people.
But fear not, for this article will walk you through five things you most likely didn’t know about macs.
1. You Can Get Specific With Your Volume Adjustments
One of the key features on every computer out there is two little volume buttons that sit on the keyboard. These buttons allow users to quickly change the volume of music or video content that they’re hearing.
However, few people realize that these volume buttons are shortcuts. They’re the quickest way to change the volume, but they’re far from the most granular.
You should have a little speaker icon in your menu bar. If you click on this, you can adjust the volume of your speaker more according to your specifications.
If you don’t have a speaker icon in your menu bar, head over to the sound section of the “system preferences” on your mac. There should be a button that will allow you to put volume adjustments in your menu mar.
But it gets even more specific than that.
In the sound section of your system preferences, there’s a hyper-granular volume bar that allows you to get your volume absolutely perfect.
By holding down shift and option at the same you adjust your volume, you can make use of these granular volume adjustments. You’ll notice that rather than fulling up by a full marker, your volume button will only fill up by a quarter of that marker.
This makes adjustment perfect for anyone who listens to music while working on the gone.
2. You Can Unpartition Your Mac Hard Drive
Partitioning is the process of creating regions on computer storage rather than keeping all of your files in one place. It can be helpful for those looking to manage different projects separately. When you partition your hard drive, you instruct your computer to treat the separate parts as separate beings.
Hard drive partitioning is, or was, a good option for people looking to keep their data secure. If one region of your hard drive fails, you still have all of your information backed up. It’s much more convenient than saving everything on flash drives.
However, it’s not always so useful in 2021.
These days, tons of businesses run on cloud capabilities. The wave of the future is not storing anything important on your own computer at all and keeping it all online. This means that the failure of your individual hardware never means you lose information.
If your hard drive is partitioned, and that’s causing you more harm than good in the age of the cloud, it’s possible to un partition your hard drive. Check out this article on how to unpartition a hard drive mac to learn everything you need to know.
3. Name Many Files At Once
Everyone who has to move files around for work or personal projects knows how important naming is — and what a hassle it can be. A poorly named file can easily get lost and waste tons of time on productivity. File renaming is a tedious but important part of the work process.
However, you don’t need to name each of your files individually. The Mac allows you to name groups of photos all at once. Head to your Finder to get started.
Once you’re in the Finder, select the documents you want to rename by holding down shift before you click them. This will group the selected documents together.
After selecting your items, right-click to open up an options menu. There should be an option that says “rename X items.” Click this option, and you’ll be able to rename all of these at once.
4. Customize Your Keyboard Shortcuts
There are some incredibly easy keyboard shortcuts out there to learn. Practically everyone knows that “control X” cuts and “control V” pastes. Control P, intuitively, prints, and “control C” copies.
But did you know that apple lets you customize your keyboard shortcuts?
Head back over to your “system preferences” and head over to the section entitled “keyboard.” From there, go into shortcuts and click the “plus” icon.”
From here, you’ll be able to choose the application and function that you wish to customize. A box will pop up that will ask you the function you want, the button that you want to link to it.
This is perfect for anyone who has to manage many niche applications. Customizing your keyboard and mac to your own specifications means that you can save time performing functions that you’ll have to repeat often.
Mac Computers Hold Many Secrets
Mac computers were given purposefully simply designs to make them comfortable for first-time and casual computer users. This is why they’ve become such a dominant force in the world.
However, there is a lot of complexity lurking within every single apple computer. You can get hyper-specific with volume adjustments, unpartition your mac hard drive, name many files at once, and customize your keyboard shortcuts.
Make use of these secrets to optimize your mac usage.
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