Nine ways to better productivity

TOP TIPS FOR GETTING YOUR WORK DONE FASTER AND FOR SHARING IT MORE EASILY

DICTATE RATHER THAN TYPE 01

We’re great fans of Nuance Dragon ( nuance.com), but don’t forget macOS has dictation built in, which you can enable in the Keyboard preferences pane. Invoke it by pressing Function (fn) twice. By default, voice recordings are sent to Apple’s server for transcription, which returns written words to your app; enable Enhanced Dictation if you prefer it to be done on your Mac.

FIND SPECIAL CHARACTERS 02

Holding down certain keys reveals variations on their character, but you need to know which offer this. Turn on ‘Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar’ in Keyboard preferences, click the new icon, pick ‘Show Emoji and Symbols’ to reveal a grid of characters, then double-click one to type it in the app you’re using. Choose ‘Show Keyboard Viewer’ to reveal an on-screen keyboard; hold combos of Option, Command, Shift and Control and it’ll show keys you can press for special characters; holding Option alone turns some keys orange and labels them with diacritics; press one to reveal characters that can carry that mark.

CROSS-DEVICE CLIPBOARD 03

In Sierra and iOS 10, you can copy something on one device and paste it on another; each must have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on, be signed in to the same iCloud account, and have Handoff enabled (in ‘System Prefs > General’ and ‘Settings > General > Handoff’). This can take a few seconds to sync, so if your first attempt to paste fails, wait a moment and then repeat.

COLLABORATE IN IWORK 04

Pages, Numbers and Keynote now support real-time collaboration across iOS, macOS and iCloud.com web apps. To invite people to work on a doc, click Collaborate on the toolbar and enter email addresses or phone numbers of people you want to work with.

FOCUS WITH DARK MODE 05

In the General prefs pane, you can make the menu bar and Dock dimmer, helping you to focus better on editing images, say. (Spotlight’s affected too, but not Notification Centre). Use the item above that to set the highlight colour for controls to graphite and dim the coloured window controls.

TABS ALMOST EVERYWHERE 06

In Sierra, many apps that can create multiple windows automatically gain the ability to organise them in tabs. Look in the Window menu for commands to merge all windows or switch the selected tab to a window.

RECLAIM SCREEN SPACE 07

Right-click the Dock’s dividing line and turn on hiding; the Dock will slide out of the way; bring the Dock back by moving the pointer to its screen edge. You can apply this behaviour to the menu bar in General preferences.

SHARE USING AIRDROP 08

With Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, you can share files with nearby Macs and iOS devices (as long as they’re a model and running an operating system listed at apple.co/2eA1elc). In Finder, choose ‘Go > AirDrop’ and drag files onto the icon for the device you want to send them to.

A TIDIER DESKTOP 09

Double-click an edge or corner of a window to resize the window to fill the space all the way to the matching desktop edge or corner. Hold Option as well to expand in the opposite direction too; doing this on a corner expands the window to fill the desktop. (These do not work with iTunes.) Drag one window’s edge into another’s and it’ll briefly stick to its neighbor to help you line them up; if you don’t want them side by side, keep dragging.