Look it up

How many times do we read an article or a PDF and wonder what one particular word meant? We’d make a mental note to look it up later, but before we know it, we’d forget the word. Well, Mac has a fix—the Dictionary, of course.

• Just right-click on a work and select “Look Up” from the menu options.
• You can also tap three fingers on the word if you’d rather use the trackpad. You may have to enable this option in System Preferences before you can use it, though.

Glance at all windows

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got at least five different apps running at the same time. It’s only too easy to move from one to another and not really keep track of which apps you open. Mission Control on the Mac will show you all your open apps and files.

• Just press Control + Up Arrow and Mission Control will show all the apps that you’re currently running on your Mac.
• On the trackpad, you can swipe up with four fingers to perform the the action.

Share a quick emoji

Who doesn’t use emojis nowadays? It’s become the best way to get around sticky conversations and situations. Thanks to Mac, you can find any emoji you need in a quick access panel. To access the emoji panel, just hit Command +Control + Spacebar on any text surface.

Spot your apps and files

If you’ve been using computers long enough, you’d be pretty comfortable with the keyboards. Well, in that case, you don’t have to move around your mouse pointer for everything. Just hit Command + Spacebar and a global search will pop up. Type in any file, folder, or app you need and Mac will open it right away. You can even search for your browsing history this way. This is called the Spotlight Search. Apt, huh?

Stay notification-free for upto 24 hours

This is probably the most helpful of the lot: silencing your notifications. Sometimes when all you want to do is focus on work and drain out distractions, you’d get alerts for messages, apps, reminders, emails, software updates and every thing else you don’t need at the moment. Just head over to the Notification center (it’s on the top corner of the screen) and enable the Do Not Disturb mode. Alternatively, you can also press the Option button while clicking on the Notification icon. This will snooze all your notifications for 24 hours.

Well, what do you think of our list? If you have anything that we’ve left out, let us know.