How to search for any menu option on macos

MacOS has a special shortcut I wish I have known them at the beginning of my journey with this system. The functionality is hidden in the menu in almost every app when you click on Help. I talk about this little search box.

This small feature may immensely boost your work, especially if you’re the keyboard-centric type of person. In short, it allows you to find and run almost every action in the active app. Press cmd + shift + / and start typing.

Keyboard Settings Window. Make sure you have “Show Help menu” action enabled and assigned to the proper shortcut.

Meet the The Command Palette

When I’ve seen the Command Palette for the first time in Sublime Text editor, I consider it as the most supportive feature every app should have. Right now, most of the code editors have this feature built-in. But other apps don’t.

In apps like Gimp, Word, Excel, Photoshop where you have plenty of various actions, it’s hard to find a specific menu item, unless you spent some time with the app. It often happens to me – I know that an app has a feature I want to use, but I don’t know where it exactly is and which shortcut it has. I used to went through each menu in the app looking for the option. It was a waste of time.

Recently, I discovered that the macOS help menu has an input field that allows me to filter menu items simply by typing. You can use options directly from here. Moreover, it shows me where I can find the selected option in the menu hierarchy. Some of them have keyboard shortcuts assigned – it’s also an opportunity to get to know them. So, if you don’t know the shortcut or if the option doesn’t have the shortcut assigned, searching in Help is another fast way to invoke the desired option.

A few keystrokes are enough to find desired action. You can invoke it directly from the filtered list. Moreover, macOS shows where you can find selected menu item.

Remember, by using cmd + shift + / you’ll get focus on Search Box in macOS help menu, where you can find any menu item available the app.

You may also use Alfred

If you use Alfred, there is a dedicated workflow called Menu Search created by this guy. Thanks to this, you can search for menu items from the active app directly in the Alfred window. It’s useful, if the app overrides the native macOS shortcut.

This Alfred workflow works similarly to the native Help menu.

I use Alfred as the replacement for Apple’s Spotlight and I found it much useful because of custom workflows, snippets, clipboard history and more. I described one of my workflow in the article about running notes.

That’s it. Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll find value in this article!

About Szymon Krajewski

I’m a software developer from Poland who helps others write better code and live better by showing, explaining and inspiring. Read more about me here.

Matt Klein has nearly two decades of technical writing experience. He’s covered Windows, Android, macOS, Microsoft Office, and everything in between. He’s even written a book, The How-To Geek Guide to Windows 8. Read more.

Ever get into a situation where you know an option exists in a menu somewhere, but you can’t find it? Thankfully, macOS lets you search the menus of any open application to find what you’re looking for.

Let’s use Preview as an example. Preview is a great, feature-packed image viewer that comes with every Mac, and it has a lot of options packed into its menus. Case in point: A simple “Export as PDF” option that lets you turn any image or document into a PDF.

If you can’t remember where that option is, though, just click the Help option in the menu bar and use the Search feature that appears.

If we start typing “export”, some really cool magic unfolds: Export as PDF appears under “Menu Items” as a search result.

When we hover over the “Export as PDF” result, the File menu pops open and a blue pointer announces exactly where that option located; no more hunting needed.

Of course, you do need to actually know that an option exists, and it also helps to remember what the option is called, but you don’t necessarily need to be exact. In the case of “Export as PDF” you can use the words “export” or “PDF” and the search system will still return the needed result.

So, the next time you’re wondering where that menu option seemingly disappeared to in an application you’re using, just search for it.

Posted on March 22nd, 2021 by Craig Grannell and Kirk McElhearn

Much of your work on a Mac involves using a mouse or trackpad to move a cursor and click on things. But keeping your hands on the keyboard can be more efficient.

The Mac offers keyboard shortcuts to aid with this, but many Mac users don’t realize system components primarily designed for cursor interaction can be navigated using the keyboard, too. This article explains how.

Setting navigation keyboard shortcuts

macOS offers options to let you control its interface from the keyboard. To start with, check System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts to see which shortcuts are set.

By default, many of these shortcuts use the Control key (signified here by ^). On many Mac keyboards, such as those on laptops, you also need to press the fn key, at the bottom left of the keyboard, to use the function keys (F1, F2, etc.), so these shortcuts may require that you press three keys. If you want to change any of them, click on the keyboard shortcut and press a new one.

Navigate the menu bar with your keyboard

Press Ctrl+F2 to move focus to the menu bar. This selects the Apple menu at the top-left of the display, whether or not you’re in full-screen mode.

To select a different menu, navigate using the left or right arrow keys; you’ll see one of the menus highlighted, like the View menu below.

You can also start typing to immediately jump to a menu: type E to go to the Edit menu, or type W to go to the Window menu.

Navigate macOS menus with your keyboard

When a menu is highlighted, you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate it, and also the right and left arrow keys, respectively, to enter and leave sub-menus. If you’re navigating a menu, and want to go back to the menu bar, press the right or left arrow key (as long as a menu item with a sub-menu isn’t selected).

This is good for general browsing — getting a feel for an app’s menus — but not for day-to-day work. If an item has a keyboard shortcut, use that to select it. For an item lacking a shortcut, type a few characters to jump to it and hit Return to select. (For often-used items lacking a shortcut, consider adding one in System Preferences.)

Quickly locate menu items and keyboard shortcuts

If you’re a Mac newcomer or have just installed a new app, it’s handy to get an overview of available shortcuts. CheatSheet provides such a thing in a user-friendly manner.

Download the app and follow the instructions to allow CheatSheet to control your Mac. Now, whenever you hold the Command key for a couple of seconds, a window will pop-up, listing shortcuts for the current app. Click the gear icon for a settings menu, where you can adjust the delay and print the current shortcuts list, if you want.

For assistance in finding a menu item, use the Help menu’s search field. This is activated with Shift+Command+/ (Command+?). Start typing and the first results will be menu items, which you can navigate to using the down arrow key. Selecting one shows its location within the app’s menus, as well as any available help topics. You can press Return to activate the selected menu item.

Navigate dialog boxes with your keyboard

When a Save dialog box appears, it’s tempting to click things with the mouse, but you don’t need to. Return confirms the default selection, but to avoid mistakes, get into the habit of using shortcuts that trigger specific buttons: Command+S to save, Escape to cancel, and Command+Delete to delete.

Navigate the Dock from the keyboard

To send focus to the Dock, use Ctrl+F3. The first time you do so, the Finder will be selected by default. Subsequently, the first app selected will be whatever you most recently keyboard navigated to.

As with the menu bar, you can use the arrow keys to move through the dock, and open and close Dock item menus; press Return to select an item. Note that in the right-hand side of the Dock, you may need to press Escape to close an open stack, before navigating to a different Dock item.

How can I learn more?

Each week on the Intego Mac Podcast, Intego’s Mac security experts discuss the latest Apple news, security and privacy stories, and offer practical advice on getting the most out of your Apple devices. Be sure to follow the podcast to make sure you don’t miss any episodes.

You can also subscribe to our e-mail newsletter and keep an eye here on Mac Security Blog for the latest Apple security and privacy news. And don’t forget to follow Intego on your favorite social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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My app has the default ‘Help’ menu. I have removed the ‘Help’ entry and added a Support entry that links to a forum on my website.

The help menu nib looks like this:

But once I have the app up and running a new menu item has been suck in:

How can I make the search go away? (Or even better, how could I make it launch a url with params such as ).

7 Answers 7

I have found the way to remove the search bar (but not to customize it).

Just assign a menu that is not used to the help menu:

The documentation mentions this in the helpMenu property of the NSApplication class.

You’re looking for NSUserInterfaceItemSearching protocol. Return a single search result item and use it to open your custom URL.

You probably don’t want to get rid of that search bar, since you can still use it to search for menu items!

As I’m sure you know, this search box will only show Help Topics if your app comes with an Apple Help Book, which can be made by following Apple’s documentation.

I’m afraid I don’t know of a way to override the search bar’s behaviour, but if you don’t want to write documentation for your app, I think it would be better to keep the search bar, even if you can’t search your forum for help.

I remove Search bar from Help menu in mac development by enter a single Space after Help like “help “.Its look funny but working properly.

@zhoudu’s answer worked for me. I translated it into Swift 5.0:

Put it into your AppDelegate .

The answers from @pointum and @zhoudu aren’t supported on Mac Catalyst apps, so here’s an option for that.

According to this answer, the search field is added by macOS. I looked for a plist key to disable it, but didn’t find anything. Then I started messing with the buildMenuWithBuilder method. I had to change my AppDelegate class to be a subclass of UIResponder instead of NSObject and then I could override that method in my AppDelegate . Once that was running, it took a few tries to do something useful with it.

Attempt 1: I tried removing the first element of the Help menu, which was the search field.

But the search field is added after this method runs, so this code only removed the “[app name] Help” element that I wanted to keep.

Attempt 2: I tried taking the “[app name] Help” menu element from the default menu, then adding it to a new menu and replacing the default help menu with that:

But macOS is not so easily tricked; it still identified this as a help menu and added the search field. Even when I changed the menu name to “Help ” as shown here, I got the same result.

Attempt 3: Finally I had to make a new help action, add it to a new help menu, AND name the help menu with an extra space. Only when I did all three things did macOS stop adding the search field:

Take control of your menu bar

Bartender is an award-winning app for macOS that superpowers your menu bar, giving you total control over your menu bar items, what’s displayed, and when, with menu bar items only showing when you need them.
Bartender improves your workflow with quick reveal, search, custom hotkeys and triggers, and lots more.

Bartender&nbsp4 is headed to your downloads folder!

You will find Bartender&nbsp4.dmg in your downloads folder. Please open this then move Bartender to your Applications folder and launch it from there.

This download is both the trial and the full version (with license).

You can use the trial for 4 weeks, after this Bartender will prompt you to purchase a license.

• Bartender&nbsp4 is designed for macOS Big Sur and Monterey, and will not run on older version of macOS.
• Bartender&nbsp4 is is a paid upgrade.

Bartender&nbsp4 is for macOS Big Sur and Monterey

It looks like you are on an older version of macOS, and Bartender&nbsp4 will not work on it.
Would you like to see Bartender&nbsp3 for your version of macOS?

New in Bartender&nbsp 4

Quick Reveal

Lightning-fast access to your menu bar items is now possible with Quick Reveal. Get instant access to your hidden menu bar items simply by moving your mouse to the menu bar, or if you prefer, by clicking the menu bar.

Bartender Bar

The Bartender Bar is back!
Access your hidden menu bar items in the Bartender Bar beneath the menu bar. Great if you need more room for all your menu bar apps.

Menu Bar Item Spacing

Reduce the space between menu bar items using Bartender, allowing you to have the same spacing as previous macOS versions, or even less, allowing you to have more menu bar items.

Quick Search

Quick Search will change the way you use your menu bar apps.
Instantly find, show, and activate menu bar items, all from your keyboard.

Triggers

With the power of the new Triggers in Show for Updates, you now have options when an item shows.
Triggers include: any change, icon matching, or a script.
Allowing you to show menu bar items exactly when you need them.
Bartender also includes some unique Triggers for:

• Battery – show when on battery power or at specific levels.
• WiFi – show when not connected to a WiFi network.
• Time Machine – show while time machine is backing up.

macOS Big Sur, Monterey and M1 Support

Bartender 4 is designed for all the great changes in macOS with Big Sur and Monterey.
Bartender 4 runs native and lightning-fast on Apple silicon M1 macs.

Menu bar layout

More powerful and refined, with the new menu bar layout screen, you have complete control of your menu bar items.
You can have them hidden but still easily accessible.
Set your most essential menu bar items always visible.
Define the exact order of menu bar items for your workflow.
Bartender will keep your items ordered as you want.

Add hotkeys for any menu bar item; this can show and activate any menu bar item via any hotkey you assign.

With Spacers, your menu bar is uniquely your own, with the ability to customize menu item grouping and display labels or emojis to personalize your menu bar.

Use Apple Script to show and activate menu bar items. Fantastic for some advanced workflows.

Swap shown items for your hidden ones to take up less menu bar space, allowing you to have more menu bar items on a smaller screen.

Search and Activate menu bar item using Spotlight. Just start your search with the keyword “Bartender “.

You can choose where new menu items will appear in your menu bar, shown for instant access, or hidden for less distraction.

Much more still to come.

Can I use Bartender 4 on macOS Catalina or earlier?

Bartender 4 is compatible with macOS Big Sur and Monterey. Because of the massive changes in macOS Bartender 4 could only be designed to work with the new versions of macOS. You can use a Bartender 4 license with Bartender 3.

Is Bartender&nbsp4 free?

No Bartender&nbsp4 is not free. It has a 4 week trial after this Bartender&nbsp4 will be $15, and will have a great discount of 50% for users with a license to any previous version of Bartender.

I recently bought Bartender 3 do I need to pay for an upgrade?

If you bought Bartender 3 after April 2020 you are entitled to a free upgrade to Bartender 4, Bartender 4 will accept and use your Bartender 3 license.

How do I update from a previous version?

You need to be on macOS Big Sur or Monterey, then you can download Bartender 4 from the website, open the disk image and move Bartender 4 to your applications folder. You can then delete any previous versions of Bartender you have and launch Bartender 4.

How do I buy an upgrade from a previous version?

Click Buy Now, then select Upgrade to Bartender 4. You will be prompted to enter your previous license details, once submitted and instantly verified you will be able to purchase a Bartender 4 license with a 50% discount.

Can I use my license on all my macs?

Yes, a license is for use on all the macs you own and are the main user of.

I am having a problem with Bartender 4

Please contact us with as much information as possible by sending feedback in Bartender or by emailing [email protected] Screen recordings and screen shots always help a lot.

If an app is misbehaving, make it stop

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Apps on macOS are usually well-behaved, but there are times when they can stop working or freeze and slow down your entire Mac. If that happens to you (and it might happen often if you’re playing with the latest Monterey betas), it’s time to quit the app.

The first thing to do, of course, is try to quit the app normally:

• Right-click on the app’s icon in the menu bar and select “Quit,” or.
• Press the Command-Q keys.

However, if the app is frozen or just won’t go away, then you need to force a quit. Again, there are a couple of ways to do this:

• Click on the Apple icon in the top-left corner and look for a choice that says “Force Quit” or.
• Press Command-Option-Esc.

You may be able to find “Force Quit” in the Apple drop-down menu.

Either way, this will bring up the “Force Quit Applications” box, which will have a list of currently active apps. Highlight the troublesome app, and click on the “Force Quit” button. A pop-up will ask if you’re sure; click on “Force Quit” to finally quit the app.

Use the “Force Quite Applications” menu to shut down an erring app.

If for any reason you can’t access the “Force Quit” menu, there is another way to quit the app using the Activity Monitor, which lists all of the active processes on your Mac. To get to the Activity Monitor:

• Use Spotlight Search to find “Activity Monitor,” or.
• In your Finder, click on Applications in the left-hand menu. In the resulting list of apps, double-click on Utilities to open the folder, and then double-click on Activity Monitor.

You’ll find Activity Monitor in the Applications’ Utility folder.

• You’ll see a list of active processes, which should include your misbehaving app. It’s going to be a long list, so you can click on the “Process Name” heading to alphabetize the list for an easier find. If you suspect that the app is stressing your CPU, you might try clicking on the “% CPU” heading, which may put the app at the top of the list.

Once you’ve found the app, click the “x” icon at the top of the list.

• Highlight the app you want to quit, and click on the “x” icon at the top of the window.
• Click on “Force Quit.”

Now you can either quit or force quit the app.

And if you’re still having difficulties, you can always shut down your system. You may lose some of what you’re currently working on, but it will close the app that’s driving you nuts.

• Hold down your power button (or the Touch ID button if your Mac has a Touch Bar) until you see the Apple logo on your display.
• Let go, and allow the system to restart.

Do a basic search in Outlook

You can use the search box on the toolbar to search in the current folder or view.

Go to the folder or view that you want to search, such as Mail, Calendar, or People.

In the upper-right corner of the Outlook window, enter your search word or words in the search box .

Outlook displays the search results on the Search tab.

Note: To perform a comprehensive search of all Outlook files (regardless of folder or view), choose All Items. This option is available in all views. Note that every time you switch views, you will need to re-enter your search words.

If you are an Office Insider and are on build number 16.18.181008 and higher, your search experience has been enhanced and improved. When you select the search box, you see quick suggestions based on your recent search history. Pick any suggestion for a quick result.

Choose where you want the search function performed. The options available will depend on which folder or view you’re searching in.

In Mail: You can search in Current Folder, Subfolders, All Mail, or All Items.

Current Mailbox: You can search in the mailbox currently selected.

In Calendar: You can search in Current Folder, All Events, or All Items.

In Contacts: You can search in Current Folder, All Contacts, or All Items.

In Tasks: You can search in Current Folder, All Tasks, or All Items.

In Notes: You can search in Current Folder, All Notes, or All Items.

When you are finished looking at the search results, on the Search tab, click Close Search.

If you don’t click Close Search, the Search tab remains active. The item list continues to show the search results even if you click another tab, such as the Home tab.

An Outlook search includes the file names of attachments but not the text inside attachments.

To save a search as a Smart Folder, on the Search tab, click Save Search, and then enter a name for it under Smart Folders.

Search within an item

On the Edit menu, point to Find, and then click Find.

In the Find box, enter your search word or words.

In the item, Outlook highlights the first instance of your search phrase.

To find the next or previous instance of your search phrase, use the forward or back arrows .

Note: The keyboard shortcut for searching within an item is + F.

You know you have an email message somewhere, but you just can’t locate it in Outlook. Don’t worry—with the many search options in Outlook for Mac, you can use a combination of different search criteria to find the information you’re looking for.

In the Navigation pane, click Mail.

On the Edit menu, point to Find, and then click Outlook Items.

The Search tab appears.

Define the scope of the search by clicking a scope button on the Search tab, such as Subfolders or All Mail.

Add any of the following criteria to refine your search:

On the Search tab, click

To search based on

Text that appears anywhere in an item.

The sender of a message.

Text that appears in the subject of a message.

Whether or not an item has an attachment, or the size of an attached file.

The recipients of a message.

The date that you received a message.

The date that a message was sent.

The priority level of a message.

The read status of a message.

The follow up status of a message.

The category assigned to a message.

Note: Some search criteria will require you to enter additional information.

To modify your search by adding or removing criteria, do any of the following:

Add an additional criterion

Click .

Delete one of your search criteria

Click the next to the criterion that you want to delete.

When you are done looking at the search results, on the Search tab, click Close.

The available search criteria are specific to where you are within Outlook, such as Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes.

If you don’t click Close, the Search tab remains active. The item list continues to show the search results, even if you click another tab, such as the Home tab.

An Outlook search includes the file names of attachments but not the text inside attachments.

The keyboard shortcut for starting an advanced search is SHIFT + + F .

To save a search as a Smart Folder, on the Search tab, click Save, and then enter a name for the Smart Folder.

In macOS Monterey, when you take an app fullscreen by clicking the green traffic light icon in the top-left corner of the app window, the menu bar may be hidden from view in order to draw your focus to the window’s content.

If you’re using a Mac that has a camera housing or “notch” centered at the top of the screen, like a 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro, hiding the menu bar effectively makes the notch invisible, since the menu bar color turns black in full screen mode, regardless of whether you’re using Light or Dark mode.

This effect may be welcomed, but if you’d prefer the menu bar and its items to remain visible in full screen mode, there’s a setting that you can disable to achieve it. The steps below show you how.

1. Click the Apple () symbol in the menu bar and select System Preferences. in the dropdown menu.
2. Click the Dock & Menu Bar icon in the preference pane.

That’s all there is to it. The next time you take an app full screen, the menu bar will remain visible at the top of the window, complete with menu options and any other menu items you may have arranged there.

With the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple took a note from the iPhone and added a notch at the top of the display that houses the FaceTime camera. Also like the iPhone, Apple decided to fill the space around the notch with the menu bar.

Update 10/28: Apple has posted an official support document regarding the notch.

For most people, it won’t be an issue. Unless you’re the kind of person who uses a lot of menu bar icons or runs their screen at a larger resolution, menu bar items will simply occupy the space to the right of the notch, and menu items will stick to the left. However, since the macOS menu bar is much more customizable and versatile than the iPhone’s status bar, some apps with lengthy menus could cause issues, as evidenced by a viral tweet that made the rounds this week:

In its Human Interface Guidelines, Apple is urging developers to make menus less of an issue with the notch by favoring “short, one-word menu titles.” As Apple explains, “A short, single-word app name (and) … one-word menu titles work especially well in the menu bar because they take little space and are easy for people to scan.”

Additionally, the funky menu bar extra behavior in the tweet will also hopefully be fixed. Apple is encouraging “exposing app-specific functionality in other ways” such as the Dock. It’ll take time and there will be some pushback, but over the course of the next several months, jumping menus and obscured menu bar extras should become less of an issue.

In the meantime, Apple has provided a fix of sorts. When you’re in full-screen mode, you have the option to display the menu bar under the notch with a black strip around the notch. This is handy if the app you’re using isn’t displaying the menu properly while in full-screen mode but you’ll lose some screen real estate.

To activate this, click on an app’s icon in the Finder and Get Info on it (Command+I on your keyboard, or go to File > Get Info). If it’s available, you’ll find an option in the General section to “Scale to fit below built-in camera.” Check that box, close Get Info, and then when you launch the app and go into full-screen mode, the menu bar will be positioned under the notch.

According to Apple’s Developer Documentation for User Interface, this setting shows up if a developer doesn’t write their software to switch on its own. If a developer decides to write their software to use the mode they deem best for their app, the option is not available. Some of the apps that we found with this option so far include Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Xcode, iMovie, GarageBand, the iWork apps, Adobe Premiere Pro 2021, Affinity Photo, Civilization VI, Cisco Webex Meetings, Spitfire Audio, and Cinema 4D. It’s entirely possible that those apps and others will be updated by their developers to use a preferred mode.

As noted in our full review of the 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro, the notch doesn’t technically infringe on the MacBook Pro’s screen area. The screen below the notch is a 16-by-10 space like before, and the notch and screen on each side of it are “extra” space. When the menu bar is placed in that notch area, it’s actually giving you more room to work with than the previous MacBook Pro displays.

In case you’re wondering, this option is not available for the macOS Monterey Finder, which is basically an app that runs in full-screen mode all the time. So you can’t block out the notch by default, at least for now.

Top: By default, the menu bar runs through the notch. If menu listings run into the notch, the menus continue after the gap. Bottom: WIth “Scale to fit below built-in camera” the menu bar is below the notch. (Note: iMovie in this photo is in full-screen mode. Also, the camera has been enhanced to make it more visible.)

As far as menu bar extras, Apple will only allow them to fill the right side of the notch, and will only show what can fit. So if you use numerous extras, some might go missing: “When menu bar space is constrained, the system prioritizes the display of menu bar menus, as well as essential menu bar extras, such as Clock. To ensure that menus remain readable, the system may decrease the space between the titles, truncating them if necessary.”

There are also utilities that will remove the notch, such as Top Notch and Forehead. We’re sure there will be many others to come.

A few months ago, we launched Ask Product Hunt, a community-powered product search engine. The idea was simple: Ask your product discovery questions on Product Hunt, and let the community chime in with their recommendations.

To date, more than 2,300 questions have been submitted, with one of the most popular ones being: What is your favorite MacOS menu bar app?

Community members recommended over 100 different products, and we’re sharing some of their favorites on this list. Browse through and give the ones that you think might interest you a try. And if you want to explore more, you can check out the full list of Ask Product Hunt questions here.

Caffeine: Keep your Mac from going to sleep

“Caffeine is so simple it’s hard to understand how it’s not a native feature from MacOS.” — Camilo Oliveira

f.lux: Adjusts your computer’s display to adapt to the time of day

“After using this for sometime, I can barely look at other screens now. Must-have for night-owls.” — Anand Rajaram

Bartender: Organize and hide menu bar items on your Mac

“Bartender lets me hide menu bar apps I don’t use very often but that I would still like to be accessible.” — Sindre Sorhus

1Password: Simple digital security for your passwords and wallet

“This is one of my favorite Mac apps, period. Keeps me super-secure and does it all easily. You can tell the company behind it (Agile Bits) is really passionate about what they make.” — Josh Lewis!

iStat Menus 5: An advanced Mac system monitor for your menu bar

“I’ve been using iStat Menus since version 3, and it is one of the first menu bar apps I install on a new machine!” — Brandon Brown

Magnet for Mac: Keep your workspace organized

“This is the best screen organizer I’ve used. The keyboard shortcuts are great, but the ability to quickly drag and organize your screen in halfs, thirds, or quarters is a time saver, especially when jumping between laptop and monitor.” — Emily Campbell

Alfred: Boost your efficiency with hotkeys, text expansion and more.

“So excited for the new release of Alfred! The new Workflow editor looks like it’ll make programming your Mac to do your bidding so much better.” — Chris Messina

Aware: Track how long you’ve been actively using your computer

“Really unobtrusive way to keep an eye on how long you’ve been at the computer without taking a break. I prefer this to the Pomodoro style apps that prompt you.” — Steve Agalloco

Spectacle: Move and resize windows with ease on Mac

“I can’t live without this app. One of the first that I install when getting a new Macbook.” — Mateusz Zatorski

Sip: Simple OSX app to sample and encode any color on your screen

“Great tool. Super helpful when designing and working with swipe files.” — Bryce York

Noizio: Ambient background sounds for your Mac

“Very nicely reduced, simple design. I go to coffee shops often just for the background noise (ok, and the coffee), so I’m working to coffee shop sounds now.” — Dave McKinney

Itsycal: A tiny calendar for your Mac’s menu bar

“It’s always good to be able to take a brief glance at your day.” — Nik Sudan

CloudApp: Lightning fast media sharing and screengrabs

“I’ve been using CloudApp for years, can’t do without it! The annotation feature is absolutely key when doing bug reports or feature specs, for example.” — Maxime Prades

How to hide the dock and menu bar on a Mac and add multiple desktops to free up space

You’re doing serious business on your Mac—so much serious business that it doesn’t all fit on your screen. You might think you need to buy several large monitors to contain all of your business, and maybe that’s true. But a few tweaks can free up a lot of space on your Mac, which just might be enough to accommodate all of the business you need to be doing.

For example, some tasks are easier with multiple windows open side-by-side. I like to have a browser window open for research and another application open for taking notes. This isn’t easy if you’re using a Mac with the default settings—there’s not enough room to put two decently sized windows alongside each other. Here’s how my screen looks before any adjustments.

A single Chrome window takes up almost all of my screen space, making it hard to take notes. The dock and menu bar also take up a decent amount of vertical space, which makes it even more crowded.

You can free up space by adjusting the display settings, hiding the dock, and hiding the menu bar. This gives you a lot more room to work with.

Here’s a quick guide to doing all of that, plus tips on setting up multiple desktops for even more room.

Shrink your Mac’s windows

The first thing you’re going to do is adjust the display settings, shrinking how much room everything takes up. Head to System Preferences, which you can find by clicking the Apple logo in your menu bar and clicking System Preferences. Next, click Displays.

Under Resolution, check the Scaled option.

This will bring up a number of scaling options. Click More Space, if it’s available.

Your screen will adjust, and you’ll quickly notice that everything takes up a lot less room.

Note that, if your Mac has multiple displays, you’ll need to configure this setting on each of them.

The potential downside here is that everything is a little bit smaller. To me, the tradeoff is worth it. For you, it might not be—particularly if you find yourself squinting at the computer already. I suggest you give it a shot and see if you like it because you can always change it back later.

You’ve now freed up some serious space for some serious business, but you need more. Let’s keep going.

How to hide the dock on a Mac

The dock, by default, is always there. But do you need to see all of your icons all the time? Does knowing that you have 103 emails waiting for you really make you more productive?

I don’t think so. You can hide it by right-clicking or control-clicking the horizontal line that separates sections, then clicking Turn Hiding On.

This will hide the dock by default, freeing up a bunch of vertical space.

You might miss your dock. That’s understandable, but don’t worry—it’s not gone. You can visit it anytime by moving your pointer to the bottom of the screen. It will pop back up for you. But when you don’t need it, it won’t take up any space, meaning you have more room for all of your serious business.

If you’re not ready to hide the dock altogether, there’s a compromise: you can shrink it. Hover your mouse over the line that separates the sides of your dock, then click-and-drag up and down to resize.

You can make a tiny dock.

You can optionally right-click, or control-click, and Turn Magnification On.

This will expand whatever icon your mouse is currently hovered over, allowing you to see more detail.

How to hide the menu bar on a Mac

Want to free up just a little more room? You can also hide the menu bar at the top of the screen. Head back to System Preferences, then click General. You’ll find the option to Automatically hide and show the menu bar.

Check that box, and the menu bar will be hidden by default.

Again, the menu bar isn’t gone—it’s just hidden. Move your mouse to the top of the screen and it will pop down for you, then disappear when you move the mouse away.

Remember that you did this! It might be disorienting otherwise. The first few times you sit back down at your computer, you might be overwhelmed by all of the serious business that fits on your screen at once, and you might also be confused about where your dock and menu bar went. Don’t panic, and try to remember that you hid everything. You can always change things back if you can’t handle it. I won’t judge you.

How to have multiple desktops on a Mac

Mission Control is one of those features that most Mac users never use—and, to be fair, it is a little confusing. But it’s also really useful, once you grasp it. It lets you set up multiple desktops, each with their own set of windows. You can then quickly switch between them.

Open Mission Control by swiping up on your touchpad using three or four fingers, or by using the keyboard shortcut control-up. This will show you all of your currently open windows.

Move your mouse to the top of the screen, and you’ll see a thumbnail of your current desktop. There’s also a plus sign in the top-right corner.

Click this plus sign to make more desktops.

You can make as many desktops as you want, then drag windows to them. You can quickly switch between desktops by swiping your trackpad with three or four fingers, or by using the keyboard shortcuts control-left or control-right.

This effectively gives you as many screens as you want, without the need to buy more monitors and a giant desk to store them all on. I personally use different desktops for different tasks: one is for whatever I’m working on, another is for email and chatting with coworkers, and a third is for my calendar and to-do list. Having all of these things in separate spaces makes it easier to focus on the current task.

With these tips combined, you’ll find you have way more room to work. Now get to your serious business.

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Most macOS users are not aware of the Services menu or how to customize it according to their liking. The Services menu is basically the menu that appears when you right-click on a selected element on your screen. It’s also accessible from the top menu in macOS.

The Services menu adds lots of extra options to perform tasks directly from inside the application you’re using. For example, you could highlight a sentence in a article and use the Services menu to directly tweet it from inside the menu. Similarly, you may select a name and choose to directly send a message to the person from the Services menu (if the contact is added on your Mac).

In this article we cover how to use the Services menu as well as how to add additional options to the menu.

1. To access the Services menu, select the app’s name from the top menu bar.

2. Select Services in the menu.

If the menu is empty, don’t worry. Simply click on “System Preferences” to add options to the menu.

3. In the System Preferences window that opens, make sure Services is selected from the left menu. In the second menu (on the right), you’ll see various options that you can add to the Services menu. These options are grouped according to the content they work with – for example Pictures, Messaging, Searching, Text, etc.

Also read: How to Add a Delete Option to the Context Menu in Mac

As you might have guessed by looking by the options, the Services menu is contextual, meaning that the menu that appears depends on both the app you’re using and the content (element) you’ve selected.

For example, if you’ve selected some text, the options you get in the Services menu will be different than the ones you get when you select a photo. The same option will be slightly different when you select the Services menu on a folder, etc.

By default, the menu is often empty simply because there are no options relevant to the current task. To enable an option, simply check the box next to it. You’ll then find the option in the Services menu which you can then use when required.

In addition to enabling a certain option, you can also choose to add a specific keyboard shortcut. By doing so, you can easily use the option anywhere in macOS without opening the Services menu. To do this, click on “none” next to the option you want to add a shortcut to and press the desired keys together.

If at any time you want to reset all the options and keyboard shortcuts to their default settings, simply click the “Restore Defaults” button.

How to Add Additional Options to Services

In addition to the Services options available in macOS by default, you can also add extra options that bring increased functionality. Some third-party apps add various options to the menu when installed.

For example, by installing Evernote, you’ll get an option to add selected text to Evernote. Unfortunately there’s no specific list that you can view to check whether an app adds options to the Services menu or not, but if used by more app developers, the Services menu can vastly improve a macOS user’s experience.

You can also make a custom quick action in Automator and add it to the Services menu for use. With Automator, you can add tons of options and create a customized workflow that’ll help you save time in your daily tasks.

Did you find the Services menu useful? Do you have any specific menu option that’s made your life much easier and you’d like us to cover? Let us know in the Comments section below.

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Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube

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One comment

I have a simple question. There is a service in the menu, but I want to reassign an application for its action.
“convert to icon(s)” work with X app, but I want that it will be Y app. How?

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You may or may not have noticed a menu option for apps in macOS called Services. Services is something that will let you use a feature from another app – without having to open that app. So essentially, it is a way to access shortcuts that will allow you to do small tasks quickly. You can either make use of available Services menu shortcuts, or you can create your own. In this article, we will tell you how to access the Services menu, what you can do with it, and how to customize it to speed up your workflow.

How to Use Services

First, to find Services:

1. There are different times when you can use the Services menu, and with different options available; So as an example, open Safari and select some text.
2. Now go to the menu at the top and select Safari, then scroll down to Services.

1. You can see many different options here. Some of the options available may depend on the apps you have installed, and if you have made any modifications to your Services menu.
2. You can also access the services menu by right-clicking on the words you highlighted.

Other types of Services are available when you select files. You can either select files on your desktop or in Finder, then go to Finder in the top menu and scroll down to Services to see what you can do with the selected files.

How to Customize your Services Menu

You can customize your Services menu in System Preferences. You can:

• Select and unselect Service menu items already listed.
• Create keyboard shortcuts for items that you will use often.
• Create new Service menu items using Automator.

Some of the things that you will find in the Services menu options aren’t relevant to a particular app. Those items won’t show up in the app’s Services menu, if you can’t actually use them.

Select/Unselect Menu Items

1. Go to Apple menu  > System Preferences. Click on Keyboard, then click on the Shortcuts tab.
2. In the menu on the left side of the window, click on Services.
3. All of the Service menu option will show. You can scroll to see more.
4. To add an option, check the box next to it. To remove it, uncheck the box.

Each of the available options is listed under a category, such as Pictures, Messaging, and Development. You can scroll through the available options more easily if you click on the “carrots” next to the category headings to collapse that category.

Add Keyboard Shortcuts for Services

If there is an option available in the Services menu that you will use often, you can create a keyboard shortcut for it. This will save you the step of going to the menu every time you want to use the service.

From System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, with Services highlighted in the left-side list (see above):

1. Click on a Services menu item. You should see “Add Shortcut” appear next to the item. Click on Add Shortcut.
2. Type the key combination you want to use as your keyboard shortcut.
3. “Add Shortcut” may reappear after you enter your shortcut. Click on Add Shortcut or on another item in the list and you will see your shortcut key combination appear next to the item.

Create New Items using Automator

There are many tutorials out there on using Automator, and many ideas for creating items that will help speed up your workflow. Here are a few of our articles which outline the steps for creating different Automations – that you can add to your Services menu. You can write an Automation to convert files to another type, close all your apps at once, or rename a batch of files to something more meaningful, without renaming each one individually.

Related Articles

Stacey Butler

Dr. Stacey Butler is a tech writer at macReports covering news, how-tos, and user guides. She is a longtime Mac and iPhone user and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Here is her LinkedIn profile.

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Big Sur brings a fresh look, as well as new controls and customization options to macOS. Our tips outline how to make the most of Apple’s latest operating system.

Apple’s Big Sur OS update is now available for download for all Mac users, but what does version 11 of macOS actually offer, and how can you take advantage of the new features? Rather than hunting around on your own to see what’s new and different, peruse our tips to see what awaits you in Big Sur, and how you can get the most out of the new OS.

If you haven’t already updated to Big Sur, click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner and select About This Mac. At the macOS window, click the button for Software Update, then click the button to Update Now and follow the prompts to install the update.

Use the New Control Center

Taking a page from iOS and iPadOS, Big Sur adds its own Control Center, which displays icons for commonly used features. On the menu bar, click the Control Center icon (it looks like two horizontal bars). You can now quickly access controls for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, Do Not Disturb mode, Keyboard Brightness, Screen Mirroring, Display, Sound, and Music. Click a control to expand and use it.

You can add more options to Control Center under System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar. In the left pane, scroll down to the section for Other Modules. You can then select Accessibility Shortcuts, Battery, or Fast User Switching, and check the box for “Show in Control Center.”

Pin Controls to the Menu Bar

Pin controls from Control Center to the Menu Bar for even quicker access. And you can do this one of two ways. Click the icon for Control Center, then drag and drop a specific icon to the Menu Bar. Alternatively, go to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar. In the left pane in the Control Center section, select a specific control and then check the box to “Show in Menu Bar.”

There’s one more trick here: You can hide the entire Menu Bar so it appears only when you move your cursor to the top of the screen. This feature was already available in past versions of macOS, but in Big Sur, you enable this differently. To set this, go to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar and check the box for “Automatically hide and show the menu bar.”

View Notifications and Widgets

Borrowing another feature from iOS/iPadOS, Big Sur now displays notifications and widgets in the same section. Click the date and time in the Menu bar to view any notifications and see the default widgets, such as date, weather, World Clock, and Screen Time. Click a widget to open the corresponding app.

Customize Your Widgets

You can tweak specific widgets in a number of ways. Right-click on any widget to change the size, edit details, or delete it from the screen. As an example, you can edit the weather widget to change the location. You can also reorder your widgets by dragging and dropping them to different spots.

To add widgets, click the Edit Widgets button at the bottom or right-click on any widget and select Edit Widgets. Scroll down the screen to see all the widgets you can add, or select a specific category in the left pane. You can also search for a widget by name. Hover over a widget you want to add and click the green plus icon in the upper-left corner of its icon, or just drag it to the Widgets pane.

Even cooler, you can download widgets from third parties by searching “widgets” in the Mac App Store. You can then use the app as a widget in the Notification center or on the Menu bar.

Turn Off Startup Sound

You can now disable the built-in chime sound that plays when your Mac fires up. Go to System Preferences > Sound and uncheck the box for “Play sound on startup.” Now your Mac will remain quiet whenever you boot it up.

Check Your Mac’s Battery

Big Sur now offers more details and a dedicated system preference just for your battery. Click the battery icon on the Menu bar to see the percentage of charge left. Then select the option for Battery Preferences to determine when the display shuts off battery power, enable Power Nap in battery mode, and optimize video streaming on battery power.

Even better, you can take certain measures to preserve your battery life. Make sure the option for “Optimized battery charging” is on. This feature will learn your daily charging routine so your Mac won’t be charged past 80% until you need the extra boost.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Sticky Keys enables the user to enter key combinations by pressing keys in sequence rather than simultaneously. This will benefit users who are unable to press or have difficulty pressing shortcut key combinations.

Turning On Sticky Keys

By default, Sticky Keys may be turned on in the Universal Access panel of System Preferences:

Chose Apple menu > System Preferences, and click Universal Access. (Alternatively, click on the System Preferences icon in the dock.)

Click on the Keyboard tab.

Check the radio button labeled On in the Sticky Keys section (Figure 1).

If desired, check the box labeled Press the Shift key five times to turn Sticky Keys on or off. This will allow you to enable or disable Sticky Keys using the shift key rather than via system preferences.

Figure 1. OS X Universal Access Keyboard options. Check the On radio button (circled above) to enable Sticky Keys.

How To Know That Sticky Keys is Working

By default, OS X will play a sound when enabling or disabling Sticky Keys and when a modifier key is pressed. Further, an overlay icon will be shown for each modifier key that is pressed. If the option to Show Universal Access status in the menu bar is enabled in the Universal Access system preferences, a marquee will appear next to the Universal Access icon in the menu bar stating that Sticky keys is on (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Sticky Keys Marquee.

Turning Off Sticky Keys

To turn off Sticky Keys, check the Off radio button in the Sticky Keys section of the Universal Access system preferences. If the options to enable or disable Sticky Keys via the shift key was checked, pressing the shift key five times will also turn off Sticky Keys.

For More Information

To read more about Sticky Keys for OS X, click on the following links:

You can quickly find and replace text strings in the current document. Using different options, you can narrow your search process, use regular expressions in your search, and manage your search results.

Open your file in the editor.

Press Ctrl+F or select Edit | Find | Find from the main menu.

If you want to extend the search of your target beyond the current file, press Ctrl+Shift+F . For more information, see Search for a target within a project.

In the search field that opens, enter your search string. PhpStorm highlights the results of your search in the file. Alternatively, in the editor, highlight the string you want to find and press Ctrl+F . PhpStorm places the highlighted string into the search field.

Place a caret at any string in your file and press Ctrl+F to find its occurrences or from the main menu, select Edit | Find | Next Occurrence of the Word at Caret .

Find in selection

You can search for a text string inside the multi-line selection.

PhpStorm handles replacing in the multi-line selection the same way.

Select a multi-line fragment and press Ctrl+F .

Click and type your search string. PhpStorm will search for the target inside the selected fragment first.

If you release , PhpStorm will switch the search process back to the whole file.

If you want to search for the multi-line fragment itself, select it and press Ctrl+F .

Manage your search

PhpStorm lets you adjust your search process and perform various actions with the displayed search results.

If you want to see the list of previous searches, press ⌥↓ in the search field.

If you want to enter a multi-line string, click the icon in the search field for a new line.

With selected, PhpStorm automatically escapes special regex symbols with backslash \ when you search for a text string that contains them.

Keep in mind that if you copy ( Ctrl+C ) the string first and then paste ( Ctrl+V ) it in the search field, the regex symbols will not be taken into account.

For more details on regex , refer to the search with regex documentation.

Use the and arrows to navigate to the previous or the next occurrence.

Work with the list of occurrences Alt+F7 in the Find tool window, where you have other options, for example, to group your results or to open them in a separate window.

Click the or icon to add a selection of the next occurrence or deselect the previous occurrence Alt+J or Alt+Shift+J .

If you want to quickly replace the target of your search in the whole file, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J and type a new string.

You can narrow your search when you click , in the search field, or click to select a scope for your search.

You can press ^⌥X (previously known as ⌥G ) to quickly toggle the Regex option. You can use regular expressions to opt for more challenging searches.

Replace the search string in a file

Press Ctrl+R or select Edit | Find | Replace from the main menu to open the Replace in File window.

In the top field, enter your search string. In the bottom field, enter your replacement string. If you need to preserve the case, click located in the replace field.

Click for a multi-line replace. For example, if you want to replace a comma with a comma and a new line, enter a comma in the search field and a comma and the new line in the replace field.

Click Replace to replace items one by one, Replace all to replace all items in your file, and Exclude to omit some items from replacing.

The options that appear in the Replace window, are similar to the Find window and you can refer to the manage the search results section.

I have a Macbook Air with Mac OSX 10.8.2 . I have been wondering how do I select the File Menu which I am so used to doing in Windows using Alt + F , so that I do not have to click on the File menu each time I need to do something. I googled and checked out a bunch of articles as well. This Wikipedia article suggests

CTRL + F2 then F . I tried this in Sublime Text and did not work for me. Any clues?

4 Answers 4

On OS X, anything that has a keyboard shortcut will be shown next to the relative task.

To access and browse the upper menu bar it is Ctrl F2 . You will see the  icon highlight and you are able to browse the menus with the arrow keys at that point.

If you have the function keys set as special function keys, eg. dim display, play/pause, etc. you either must change them to perform as standard function keys in System Preferences » Keyboard or use the shortcut fn Ctrl F2 .

I also miss the ease at which I could navigate Windows menus from the keyboard 🙁

A couple people mentioned that you can use ctrl-F2 to get to the menu bar. This seems really awkward to me, so I took the advice of this CNET article and changed it to option-downArrow. As the article mentions, the advantage to this shortcut is that after using it, your finger is now ready for more navigation via the arrow keys. Of course you can change it to what ever seems easiest to you.

From the article, here is how to change your keyboard shortcut to access the menus:

To do this, open the Keyboard system preferences, and in the Keyboard Shortcuts section, select the Keyboard category. Then locate the option called “Move focus to the menu bar” and ensure it is checked. Then click the “^F2” hot key text so it highlights, then press the hot key of choice.

It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good.

The answer from @Bohemian is correct – but not practical. You will want to change the key-binding for accessing the menu:

Type keyboard in Spotlight and select the Shortcuts tab:

The one you want to change is Move focus to the menu bar : I have chosen Ctl-; that is much more do-able than the crazy default finger pattern

This only reduces the pain of accessing menu items. They are still v clumsy versus counterparts on Linux variants as well as windows, the defunct OS/2 etc.

This is an ongoing HUGE miss by Apple – and it shows their disdain for keyboardists and accessibility (not to mention carpal tunnel issues) – by disallowing use of the keyboard to access the many menu items in complex applications. Intellij , Pycharm , and friends have well over one hundred menu items: it is far out of possible to create – let alone remember – that many custom shortcuts. Apple instead doubles down on their keyboard mnemonics bashing by insisting that developers remove them – even from applications originally intended for other operating systems.

Note: I have been using Macos full time 7 days/week since 2013 – and had already run into this problem – and found it essentially unsolvable – in 2010. It is not a matter of “education” about so-called alternatives.

If there’s only one keyboard shortcut you should remember in Mac OS X it’s this: Go To Folder. We refer to this keyboard command so frequently here on OSXDaily that we just sort of assume everyone knows it, but it’s so useful and powerful that it’s worth making an individual post about it.

How to Use “Go To Folder” on Mac

You have two ways of accessing the Go To Folder function from the Mac OS X desktop and Finder:

1. Go to the Finder of Mac OS if you have not done so already
2. From the “Go” menu navigate down to “Go to Folder” ….or better yet…
3. Hit Command+Shift+G from the Mac OS X desktop or a Finder window

Ideally, you’ll remember that keyboard shortcut of Command + Shift + G. It’s very powerful and becomes incredibly efficient once committed to memory and utilized to jump around the file system with ease.

Whether you just like to make customizations to Mac OS X, dig around in preference and cache files, go deep in system folders, or you want to navigate to complex directory path structures, this keyboard shortcut saves you a tremendous amount of time by allowing you to jump into paths in the Mac OS X file system without clicking around.

“Go To Folder” Tips

There are a few additional tips that are worth remembering when using the Go To Folder command: tab completion, and drag & drop support.

Use Tab Completion

Tab completion works like this, you start to type a directory path or filename and hit the Tab key to complete the text for you, preventing you from typing out the entire thing.

For example, if you want to navigate to /Users/YourName/Library/iTunes/ you can just do to this type /U (TAB) /Yo (TAB) /Li (TAB) /iT(TAB) where each time you hit the tab key the rest of the path will autocomplete. If you hear the system alert sound instead, that means there are other alternatives that start with the same first letters, so just type an additional letter in the sequence and hit tab.

We discussed tab completion a while ago but it’s worth mentioning again since it makes Command+Shift+G even speedier when digging deep.

Drag & Drop Support

The Go To window also supports drag and drop, so if you already have a folder open somewhere or you just want to quickly retrieve the full path of something, just drag and drop a directory or file into the Go To Folder window.

The full path will type out for you, which you can either go directly to or quickly copy and paste to provide to another user. This also works with network paths and mounted volumes, so if you wanted to provide someone on your LAN with a quickly accessible path to a file or directory, that drag & drop feature is all the more useful.

“Go To” Works in Save & Open Dialog Boxes Too

You can also use the “Go To” command from Save dialog boxes, so if you want to save or open a file from a long directory path, hit Command+Shift+G from an Open or Save window to bring it up.

Again, tab completion and drag and drop support works in here, and this is a much quicker way to access some directory paths than clicking around.

Is there a keyboard shortcut that is more useful than “Go To Folder”? I don’t think so, but let’s hear about it if there is one!

In this Tip’s N Tricks article, I want to point out a very important tip for getting around one of Apple’s more peculiar security precautions in Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion. By default, the User Library folder is hidden in Mac OS 10.7 and above. We’ll cover a few different methods to easily access this hidden folder.

The User Library is home to many “under the hood” files and folders that correspond to the various Apps and system processes in your computer. The user library’s location is here: Macintosh HD > Users > [YourUserName] > Library

Only one problem… The User Library is hidden From view in the latest versions of the OS. (Lion / Mountain Lion and above)

Most users won’t need to get into this important folder, and it was Apple’s idea to hide the folder, to prevent novice users from accidentally trashing important docs. However, for professionals and especially those users that use music applications, there are many files and folders in the User Library that we need access to.

One of the most commonly used folders in the Library is Application Support. For instance, If you need to load custom mappings for MIDI controllers in Ableton, they need to be placed in the User’s Library > Application Support Folder.

There are a few easy ways to “un-hide” the Library Folder.

Temporary access to the hidden User Library

1. From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.
2. In the window that opens, enter

/Library, and click Go.

1. Go to the Finder (or desktop).
2. Hold the Option key on your keyboard, and click the Go menu at the top of the screen.
3. With the Go menu open, you’ll notice that pressing and releasing Option will display or hide the Library choice in this menu.
4. Select Library from the Go menu (while holding down Option) to access the hidden folder.

Permanently Unhide the User Library

This is a reversible process, but the folder will remain un-hidden until you run the Terminal command again.

1. From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Utilities.
2. In the window that opens, locate and open the Terminal utility.
3. Enter the following text exactly as it is written.

chflags nohidden

/Library/