> Power up your Mac’s input devices

Type accented letters

For access to accented letters, hold a letter key down to view a menu; press 1 to insert the first character in the menu, 2 for the second, and so on. Learn shortcuts in Keyboard Viewer (System Preferences > Keyboard).

Keyboard access to menu commands

To access a menu command without navigating menus, press Cmd+Shift+/ to bring up Help, and start typing the command’s name. Use the arrow keys to navigate the options, and Return to confirm the one you want. This is great when you know the name of a command but don’t recall its whereabouts.

Dump your mouse

The mouse is a dated input device, and poor ergonomically. Consider a trackpad so you can use gestures, or a pen-based tablet on which the surface is mapped to corresponding points on your display — then you can jump to a position on-screen by lifting the stylus and setting it down elsewhere.

Use Hot Corners

In the Mission Control pane of System Preferences, click Hot Corners. In the sheet that appears, select what you want to happen when you move the pointer into each corner of the screen. This can be a super fast way to open Mission Control and more.

Use a window manager

Don’t waste time positioning windows precisely — get a window manager to do it! BetterTouchTool has options for this, but Moom ($10, manytricks.com) is better. Have it instantly snap a window to a userdefined area by using a keyboard shortcut or gesture, or by dragging out the desired position on your screen.

Open apps from the keyboard

BetterTouchTool enables you to set keyboard shortcuts to open favorite apps or folders. The action to use is Open Application/File/AppleScript. Shortcuts using Ctrl+Shift plus a letter won’t clash with anything else.