Here’s the message I got from Carole R.:

You have just answered a query re accents on letters on the keyboard, which is quite correct, but I have been adding accents in a much easier way.

If you hold down the letter (e.g. “e”) you will get the option to select an accent. Also applies to a, n, o. Haven’t tried any others.

I went ahead and tried Carol’s tip, and yes—she’s absolutely right.

Press a hold a letter key, and a little pop-up will appear with a range of options for accent marks.

Use the arrow keys to select the accent mark you want, then press the Return key or the space bar to type it.

The trick works with vowels and consonants alike, or just about any character that could possibly have an accent mark.

Brilliant—and great catch, Carol. Thank you!

Bonus tip

Back in the day, holding down a key on your Mac or PC keyboard yielded a different result: instead of accent marks, the letter or symbol would appear repeatedly on the screen.

Want that feature back? Here’s a fix from Apple’s support forum, although it requires some experience with the Mac’s “Terminal” feature.

Click here for more Mac tips!

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Hi Angela! Great question—and to be perfectly honest, I’ve just been copying and pasting accent marks (or “diacritic” marks, to get technical about it) too. There must be an easier way, and you’ve inspired me to find one.

Say you want to end up with “á.” Press and hold the Option key, press the “e” key, then release. When you do, you’ll see an acute accent (the “´”) with an underscore. Now, press the “a” key, and the acute accent will land on top of the “a”, like so: “á.”

Here are the five Option- keys for accent marks available on the Mac’s standard U.S. English keyboard:

• Option + ` = ` (grave accent)
• Option + e = ´ (acute accent)
• Option + u = ¨ (umlaut)
• Option + i = ^ (circumflex)
• Option + n = ~ (tilde)

Update: …and here’s an even easier way to add accent marks to letters on your Mac.

Bonus tips

• You can also add other regional keyboards with more esoteric accent marks to your Mac’s palate. Click the Apple icon in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, click Keyboard, select the Input Sources tab, then click the “+” sign to see a list of keyboards that you can install.
• Want an easier way to visualize the keyboard combos for accent marks? Follow the steps directly above to get to the Keyboard preferences, select the Keyboard tab, then check the box next to “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar. Click the new, boxy Keyboard button in the top-right corner of the screen, select Keyboard Viewer, and boom: an on-screen version of the keyboard will appear. Press and hold the Option key, to highlight the accent modifier keys in yellow.

Note: Want to add accent marks to letters on a Windows PC? It can be done, but not all that easily. Here’s a guide from Penn State with a quartet of options, all of which required some tinkering with your system settings.

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Hi Ansley! Don’t worry. It’s easy to create a folder on your desktop that’ll display only the files you’ve created or worked with in the past day, week, month … you name it.

On a Mac, the key is to build a so-called “Smart Folder”; for Windows, we’re going to create a “Saved Search.”

Ready? Here we go…

On a Mac:

Click on your bare desktop, then select “New Smart Folder” from the File menu in the top-left corner of the screen. An empty folder with a “Search” bar along the top will appear on your desktop.

Next, you’ll need to decide on the scope of your search—either your entire hard drive, or just your Desktop. Let’s go ahead and click This Mac.

Press and hold the “Option” key, then press the “…” button for more search filters—including the option to exclude items from your search.

Since you want to see each and every file that you’ve created in the past week, we’re going to leave the search box blank and instead add a search filter. Start by clicking the little “+” button in the top-right corner of the folder.

A new filter bar will appear just below the main “Search” bar, and it’ll contain a couple of pull-down menus for narrowing down our search results. Click the first pull-down menu, select “Created date” (or “Last opened” or “Last modified” date—it’s up to you), then select “this week” from the second menu.

Bam! A big list of files will now appear in the folder, including all files that you’ve created in the past week.

Want to narrow your search even further? Click the “+” button again to add a new filter, then select some new criteria—maybe, say, only a certain type of file (“Kind” is “document,” for instance).

Want to exclude something from your search, such as email messages? Press and hold the “Option” key; when you do, the little “+” buttons in the top corner of the search window will turn into “…” buttons. Click the new button, and you’ll get a search filter that reads “[Any/all/none] of the following are true.” Select “None,” from the pull-down menu, select “Kind” is “Other” in the following search filter, then type “Mail Message” in the blank. Poof! All the mail messages in your Smart Folder will disappear.

Ready to save your search? Click the “Save” button—and, if you wish, click the “Add to sidebar” checkbox.

On a Windows PC:

Right-click on your desktop (make sure you’re in the “classic” Windows desktop environment, not the Windows 8 Start screen), move the cursor over the “New” option, then select “Folder.”

Open the folder you just created, then select the scope of your search by clicking a directory in the left-hand column. Want to search every file on your system? Then click “This PC.”

Click the “Date modified” button to narrow your saved Windows search to “this week.”

Click in the search box in the top-right corner of the folder window. When you do, a new Search tab will appear at the top of the search window, and you should see a “Date modified” button just beneath. Click the button, then select “This week” from the drop-down menu.

To narrow your search even further, click “Kind,” “Size,” or “Other properties” drop-down menus to add more search filters.

All done? Click the “Save search” button.

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Hi Lee! Sounds like the previous owner of your Mac made liberal use of the keyboard settings shortcuts and other input settings available in the OS X Control Panel—and yes, with enough tweaks, the keys on your keyboard may begin playing some nasty tricks on you.

The good news, though, is that it’s relatively easy to restore the keyboard settings to the be what’s out of the box — or the default settings — and start fresh.

Want to restore the default settings for your Mac’s keyboard? Open the System Preferences window and head to the Keyboard section.

Here’s how…

• Click on the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, then click Keyboard.
• Make sure the Keyboard tab is selected, then click the Modifier Keys button. (This is a setting that lets you disable the Caps Lock key, among other things.) In the window that slides open, click the Restore Defaults button, then click OK.
• Next, select the Text tab, then check out the list of text shortcuts (a.k.a. “macros”) saved to your Mac. There should only be a few default shortcuts listed (such as “(c)” and “c/o”). See a lot more, or anything unusual? If so, go ahead and delete the entries you neither need nor want; just use the “-” button near the bottom of the window.
• Let’s move on to the Shortcuts tab; this is where you’ll find keyboard combinations like SHIFT + COMMAND + 3 (to take a screenshot) and COMMAND + SPACE BAR (to open the Spotlight search box). Go ahead and click the Restore Defaults button to return all your keyboard-combo shortcuts to their default settings.
• Last but not least, click the Input Sources tab and make sure your language is selected. If you’re in the U.S., for example, the “U.S.” input source should be selected at the top. Don’t see the right language? Click the “+” button in the bottom corner of the window, click a language (like “English”), then select an input source (anything from “Australian” to “U.S. International — PC.”

Hope that works, Lee. Still having trouble? Let me know!

Want more information? No problem — click here and here for more Mac tips! 

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I downloaded the most recent Java for Mac and there were icons for these downloads placed on my desktop. Presumably, these applications were downloaded to my hard drive, although Finder just shows them under Devices.

Once you double-click a “.dmg” file, it’ll mount itself on your system—and that’s when you’ll see the icon that looks like a disk drive.

Surely there is a way to hide them from view. I would drag them to the trash, but I’m afraid that would delete the files altogether.

I was fairly proficient on my MacBook Pro, but this Air has got me a little rattled!

Hi Nancy! Don’t worry. I think I know what’s happening.

What you’re seeing on your desktop is a “disk image”—a virtual disk drive (or “volume”) that’s been “mounted” onto your MacBook Air’s desktop.

When you downloaded Java for Mac, the file probably arrived on your system with a “.dmg” extension, as well as the image of a hard drive stamped on its file icon.

Once you double-click the file, it’ll mount itself on your system—and that’s when you’ll see the icon that looks like a disk drive. The new volume will also appear in the Finder window under “Devices,” as you mentioned.

Is the installation process all finished? Then go ahead and drag the disk image into the Trash.

Anyway, this is all normal. Many downloads for new applications arrive as disk images, which get mounted to your desktop during installation.

Once the installation process finishes, you can go ahead and “eject” the disk image by dragging it to the Trash bin.

Feel free to trash the “.dmg” file as well, although you could always keep it as a backup if you’re so inclined.

Hope that helps, Nancy. Still have questions? Let me know!

Nancy replied: “Yes, it worked! I was thinking I could do that, but as I said previously, I’m still a little skittish on this new Air.”

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Even after emptying the trash, your deleted files are still sitting on your hard drive, waiting to be recovered by anyone with enough know-how.

So, why aren’t your trashed Mac files actually trashed—and how can you make sure that deleted files are, in fact, completely deleted?

Yes, there’s an easy way to securely wipe files on your Mac, but it can be a time-consuming process.

By default, your Mac will take your trashed files and simply tag the space they’re occupying with a “this space available” sign.

To the average user, deleted files will appear to be gone—and given enough time, your Mac will overwrite previously deleted files with new data.

But for anyone who knows what they’re doing, recently trashed files on your Mac are as easy to recover as junk sitting in a garbage bin.

You can set your Mac to securely delete your files whenever you empty the Trash.

The good news, though, is that your Mac boasts a “secure erase” feature that’ll do a pretty thorough job of wiping sensitive files off your hard drive.

With the feature turned on, your Mac will take deleted files and overwrite them several times with random data, enough to obliterate your files for all but the most tenacious hackers.

OK, so why isn’t the Mac’s secure-erase feature turned on by default?

Yep, you guessed it: because securely erasing data from a hard drive takes a lot longer that simply marking deleted files as available disk space.

Example: I just secure-erased more than 300 files that were sitting in my Mac’s trash bin, and the process took about five minutes—or about four-and-a-half minutes longer than it normally takes.

Wish you could securely wipe files just once every so often? You can, if you open the Finder menu.

Those 300-or-so files were probably just tiny Word files, by the way. If I tried to secure-erase a few gigabytes of video files, well … get ready to sit back and wait.

That’s why the Mac’s “secure erase” feature isn’t for everyone. If you’re using a Mac desktop and home and you’re mostly dealing with innocuous household files, switching on the secure erase setting for the Trash is probably overkill.

But if your MacBook Air is stuffed with spreadsheets full of, say, critical company data or old, unneeded bank statements, you might want to consider the Mac’s secure erase option—particularly if you and your MacBook are frequently on the road.

Here’s how it works…

• Want all the files in your Mac’s trash bin securely wiped? Click your desktop, open the Finder menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select Preferences, click the Advanced tab, then check the “Empty Trash securely” box.
• Only need to secure-erase the trash every so often? If so, leave the Finder preferences as-is. Instead, just open the Finder menu and select “Secure Empty Trash” for some on-demand data wiping.

Click here for more Mac tips!

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[Updated 3/13/2018] If scrolling on your Mac trackpad or Magic Mouse feels strangely upside-down, topsy-turvy, or just plain wrong, there’s a simple explanation—and an easy fix.

Back in the olden days of Mac (not all that long ago, mind you), you’d flick “up” on your mouse wheel or trackpad to scroll up, or down to scroll down. Seems logical, right?

“Natural scrolling” is the reason scrolling on your Mac feels backwards

Well, Mac users got a little surprise with 2011’s “Lion” update for OS X: “natural scrolling,” which means (somewhat counterintuitively) that you flick up on your mouse to scroll down, and down to scroll up.

So, what’s the deal here?

Well, the idea behind “natural scrolling” is that it mimics the way you swipe with your fingertips on an iPhone or iPad touchscreen.

On the iPhone, when you want to scroll down a web page, you touch the screen and drag up—and the page scrolls down. And if you want to scroll back up, you touch the screen again and drag … down.

Related: Miss the Mac’s scroll bars? Here’s how to get them back

Personally, my brain gets the whole “natural scrolling” concept. But even after a few years, my fingers still stubbornly trying to flick up when I want to scroll up.

How to turn off natural scrolling on your Mac

In any case, we’ve got two options here. One: get used to the new “natural” (or at least as far as Apple defines it). Or two: forget “natural,” and go back to normal.

Visit Mouse or Trackpad preferences on your Mac to turn natural scrolling off.

If you’re opting for the latter, here’s all you have to do:

1. Open the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the page, then select System Preferences.
2. Click the Mouse or Trackpad icon (depending on which one you’re using), then make sure the “Point & Click” tab is selected.
3. See the first option, labeled “Scroll direction: natural”? Uncheck that box to return to … well, unnatural scrolling.

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Now, if you’re looking for something specific in your mountain of old files, you can always use Spotlight, the Mac’s handy search tool. (Just click the magnifying glass in the top-right corner of your desktop to get started with Spotlight.)

But what if you just want to take a gander at your old documents, or what if you’re not exactly sure what you’re looking for?

Just click the Cover Flow button in a Finder folder for a scrollable 3-D view of all your files.

Well, plowing through a gigantic list of files can be a daunting task, especially if you’re trying to open them one by one.

Instead, try this: Cover Flow, a visual way of browsing files that’s akin to flipping through albums in an old-school record store.

The Mac’s Cover Flow feature isn’t all that new; in fact, it’s been around for the better part of eight years, starting with iTunes in 2006 and eventually landing on the Mac a year later.

If you haven’t seen it in action, Cover Flow takes you on a virtual 3-D tour of your files, displaying your documents in a scrollable row and twirling each file open as you swipe with your mouse—perfect for anyone who needs to quickly scan through a pile of old photos, Word documents, text files, or just about anything else.

To activate Cover Flow, just open any folder on your Mac, open the View menu at the top of the screen, then select Cover Flow.

You can also click on the Cover Flow icon in the View section of a folder toolbar, or simply press COMMAND + 4.

To open a file you found in Cover Flow, just double-click it.

Want to scan through every file on your Mac with Cover Flow? Click the Finder icon in your Mac’s desktop dock, open the Go menu at the top of the screen, then select All My Files. You can also select Documents, Desktop, Applications, or other popular destinations on your hard drive.

Bonus tip

As you’re browsing through your files in Cover Flow, don’t forget that you can change the order of your documents by clicking the Arrange button in the toolbar. You can sort your files by Name, Kind, Size, Date Created, Date Modified, and other options.

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Indeed, you can skip the mouse and use your keyboard to create new Finder folders, start a Spotlight search, snap a screenshot, log out of your Mac, or toss a file into the trash.

Read on for 20 (or, actually, several more than 20) of my favorites Mac keyboard shortcuts, starting with…

1. COMMAND + TAB

Just like on a Windows PC, this keyboard command calls up a horizontal bar of icons representing all your running applications; hold the Command key and keep hitting Tab until the cursor lands on the app you want to use, then release.

2. SHIFT + COMMAND + N

Instantly creates a new folder on your Mac desktop, or in the active Finder window.

3. COMMAND + ARROW KEY (within a document)

Miss the “end” key on your old Windows PC? Tap Command + right-arrow to zip to the end of the current line.

You can also press Command + left-arrow to send the cursor to the beginning of a line, Command + up-arrow to go to the very beginning of a document, or Command + down-arrow to zoom to the very end.

4. COMMAND + SHIFT + ?

Opens the Mac “Help” form, either for the Mac OS X “Finder” or the active application; just start typing to search for help.

5. FN + DELETE

Here’s another shortcut for Windows aficionados. On a Mac, the “Delete” key behaves more like a backspace key, deleting the characters behind the cursor. But what if you want to delete characters in front of the cursor, as the “Delete” key does on many Windows keyboards? Fn + Delete (or CONTROL + D) is the answer.

6. SPACEBAR (or COMMAND + Y)

Activates the Mac’s powerful “Quick Look” feature for the selected document—anything from a PDF or Word file to an image or an MP3.

7. OPTION + COMMAND + Y

Select a group of files, then use this keyboard command to jump to Quick Look’s “slideshow” mode—perfect for launching an impromptu slideshow of, say, a batch of images on your desktop.

8. SHIFT + COMMAND + U

Takes you straight to your Mac’s Utilities folder, where you’ll find such tools as Disk Utility (good for managing, repairing, and erasing drives mounted on the desktop), Grab (for taking screenshots), and Keychain Access (which stores the usernames and passwords you’ve saved in Safari).

9. COMMAND + SPACE

Opens the Spotlight search form in the top-right corner of the screen; start typing, and your search results will appear within seconds.

10. OPTION + COMMAND + SPACE

Opens the full-on Spotlight search window, good for performing a more thorough search of your Mac, complete with filters such as “Created date is within last 7 days.”

11. OPTION + COMMAND + EJECT

Puts your Mac straight to sleep, no Apple menu needed.

12. OPTION + SHIFT + COMMAND + Q

Need to log out of your Mac in a hurry? Then here you go; just keep in mind that this keyboard combo will log you out immediately, without waiting for confirmation.

13. OPTION + COMMAND + D

Press this keyboard shortcut once to hide your Mac’s desktop dock, then press the keys again to make it reappear.

14. F11

Want to sneak a peek at the desktop? Press this key, and all your open windows will fly off the screen, revealing the bare desktop; press it again, and all the windows will zip back into place.

15. COMMAND + CONTROL + D

Displays a definition of the selected word. (Note: works best in Apple’s Safari web browser, less so in other applications.)

16. COMMAND + DELETE

Sends the selected file directly to the Mac’s trash can.

17. COMMAND + SHIFT + DELETE

Empties the trash once you click “OK” in the confirmation window. Want to dump the trash immediately, no confirmation needed? Then try Command + Shift + Option + Delete.

18. COMMAND + OPTION + PLUS (or MINUS)

Zooms in on (or out of) the entire Mac display.

19. SHIFT + COMMAND + 3

Takes a screenshot, then saves the image file to your Mac’s desktop. You can also take a screenshot of just a selected area by pressing SHIFT + COMMAND + 4.

20. CONTROL + SHIFT + COMMAND + 3

Takes a screenshot, again, but copies it to your clipboard rather than saving it to your desktop. Another option: copy a screenshot of the selected area to the clipboard (CONTROL + SHIFT + COMMAND + 4).

Bonus tips

• Wish you could customize and/or create your own Mac keyboard shortcuts? Well, you can; here’s how.
• Having trouble wrapping your fingers around the longer keyboard shortcuts? If so, give “sticky keys” a try.
• Annoyed that you must press the “Fn” key while tapping a function key? Actually, you don’t necessarily have to.

Got more Mac keyboard shortcuts you’d like to share? Post ’em below!

Click here for more Mac tips!

Note: This updated and expanded tip was first published in January 2012.

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