Two Mac Tips To Brighten Your Day

8/23/2021Posted inTips2 Comments

Here are two quick Mac tips that will give you strength, whiten your teeth, and eliminate doggy breath.

Adjust Your Mac’s Volume in Fine Increments.
Want to fine tune the volume on your Mac? Press shift+option while pressing the volume or brightness keys. It will adjust in quarter increments instead of full increments.

This also works with the Touch Bar.

Open The Current Application’s Preferences.
If you need to get to an application’s preferences, simply type command+, (comma). I had no idea this existed until a few days ago. I mean, it’s not like I could have known about this, right?

Do you have a favorite tip to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Where In The World Is Big Sur?

10/24/2020Posted inGeneralNo Comments

It’s right here, apparently:

However, I was referring to Big Sur the operating system. There have been two Apple events and quite a few products released over the past two months. As of this writing, there has been no official release. The beta program is still ongoing, with developer beta 10 and public beta 9 as the latest releases.

So what’s the hold up? If I had to guess, it’s waiting for yet another Apple Event sometime in the next few weeks. I would imagine this event would feature all things Mac, so it makes sense to wait for said event.

Personally I’m fine with waiting. Big Sur is going to be a big change, so I’m ok waiting for a stable release. It also gives us (Nisus) more time to be ready with compatibility updates for our apps.

In the meantime, I’ll keep using the developer beta and hope for the best.

Big Sur Beta Testing

10/2/2020Posted inGeneralNo Comments

I have been using developer betas of macOS Big Sur and in my opinion it is less problematic at this point than macOS Catalina. That operating system filled me with rage in a way none has since Leopard. Big Sur does not make me want to chuck my computer in the bin, so I guess that is progress.

If you haven’t already you should familiarize yourself with how Big Sur looks and works. It’s quite a change! There is a distinct iOS-like feel in Big Sur, with its bold colors and translucent menu bar. The new squared app icons only add to that perception. Again, it feels like iOS has come to the Mac. 

Really though, it’s not that different in practice. It still works like a Mac with an updated interface. That happens every few years on macOS. I’m very curious to see this on one of the new Apple Silicon Macs that are coming soon. 

I’ve hit some bugs to be sure, but most of them have already been fixed. I’m sure there are still a few nasty ones out there, but I haven’t hit them yet. I will say that Mail currently is a train wreck, but Mail has always been a train wreck in macOS betas. 

I’m eager to see the final release. I’d prefer it be less buggy than Catalina, and I think that will happen. I can dream, can’t I?

How to Batch Rename Files

7/16/2020Posted inTipsNo Comments

Have you ever wanted to rename more than one file at a time? Me too. So how do you accomplish this?

  • Switch to the Finder.
  • Locate the files you want to rename.
  • Select all the files you want to rename.
  • Use the menu File > Rename X Items, where X is the number of files you’ve selected, eg: “Rename 2 Items”.
  • A dialog box will appear. Choose from the many options as desired and click the “Rename” button.

That’s it! Your files will be renamed the way you chose. 

If you have a tip or a trick please let us know. We would love to feature your tip in our newsletter and our blog.

Quick Tip: Hide the Menu Bar

7/8/2020Posted inTipsNo Comments

Did you know you could hide the menu bar on your Mac? You can! Open System Preferences > General and checkmark “Automatically hide and show the menu bar”.

Bonus tip: you can customize the order of icons on the right side of the menu bar. Hold down the command key as you click an icon to start dragging it. If you drag the icon off the menu you can eliminate it altogether.

How to Search for Menu Commands and Help Topics

4/9/2020Posted inGeneral, TipsNo Comments

At some point you’ve probably forgotten where a particular menu command is located. The good news is that you can quickly use Nisus Writer’s Help menu search to find it. Just open the Help menu and type a word or two into the search field like so:

The above screenshot shows a search for the word “hyphenation” which turns up the relevant menu commands. You can do two things with the list of matching menu commands:

1. Let your mouse pointer linger over the command to see its location in the main menu structure. A large arrow indicator appears like so:

2. Click the command to activate it, as if you’d used it normally.

For an app like Nisus Writer Pro that has a full user guide you will also see a list of associated help topics in the search results. If you click any of those results you’ll be taken directly to the associated help topic in your web browser (Safari by default).

You can use this Help menu search in any macOS apps that support it. It’s relatively standard and nearly all apps from Apple provide it, including Apple Mail, Numbers, Finder, etc.

Quick Tip: Using Spotlight As A Launcher

2/24/2020Posted inTipsNo Comments

Did you know you can use the Spotlight search box as a launcher? It’s true. Here’s how:

  • Click in the upper-right corner of the menu bar. Alternatively, you can use the Command + Space Bar shortcut.
  • Type in an application (Nisus Writer Pro, for example). You should see a list of results:

  • Double-click on the result you are looking for, and your application will open.

It’s a small thing, but if you don’t already use an alternative launcher, this will do nicely.

Tip: How To Use Tabbed Windows in Nisus Writer

11/4/2016Posted inTipsNo Comments

If you’re like me you have more than one document open at a time. Controlling that gets messy, and I’ve often wished that I could have a tabbed interface like my browser of choice. Thankfully you can. That’s because macOS Sierra introduced a tabbed interface that almost any application can use.

Tabs work almost exactly like they do in Safari. If you have several windows open you can use the Merge All Windows command under the Window menu, where Tab-specific menu items reside. Doing so will merge all open documents into a single window with multiple tabs. Command-T opens a new tab, as does clicking the “+” button. Dragging a tab rearranges the tabs, and dragging the tab off the tab bar moves the document into its own window.

We have verified this new Sierra specific feature works in both Nisus Writer Express and Pro. In fact, this should work on many apps, as this feature is system wide.

So if you want to reduce open window clutter, this new feature is for you.