macOS

Contents

Developer directory

If you create a folder named Developer in your home directory, macOS will display a hammer icon on it. This icon appears in the sidebar as well. The same applies to a Sites directory.

Developer directory preview

One feature that bothers me in macOS is link previews in mail. To disable it, go to the Compose tab and uncheck the option for adding link previews.

Mail link previews setting

Enable key repeat everywhere

This feature enables you to press and hold a key to repeat it.

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Enable blazingly fast keyboard repeat rate

This will enable your cursor to move quickly and efficiently through your code.

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 15

Key repeat example

Hyper Key

Make use of your Caps Lock key and convert it, or any of your modifier keys, to the Hyper Key, combining all four modifiers: ⌃ + ⌥ + ⌘ + ⇧

This enables all kinds of features. Personally, I use it for such things as:

Network quality testing tool

I recently discovered the networkQuality command in macOS Monterey. Previously, I relied on fast.com to check my internet speed on macOS.

networkQuality
==== SUMMARY ====
Uplink capacity: 26.401 Mbps
Downlink capacity: 174.401 Mbps
Responsiveness: Low (103 RPM)
Idle Latency: 13.250 milliseconds

Scrollbar blindness

I witness undesirable horizontal scrolling on the web regularly. To avoid overlooking overflowing containers with scrollbars, web developers on macOS should ensure scrollbars are visible at all times.

Horizontal scrolling example

The term “scrollbar blindness”, coined by Sven Kadak, suggests that everyone visit the system settings and set the “Show scroll bars” option to “Always”.