For starters, you can…

Method No. 1: 

Here’s the classic way of right-clicking on a one-button Mac trackpad: press and hold the CONTROL key, then click. A bit clunky, yes, but it works.

Method No. 2:

Tap the trackpad with two fingertips rather than just one (a method that didn’t come into vogue until so-called “multitouch” several years ago).

You can visit your Mac’s trackpad settings to unlock a couple of additional right-click options.

Those are the two best-known ways to right-click on a Mac, but what if you’d like more options? No problem, provided you’re willing to take a few extra steps first.

Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, click the Trackpad icon, then make sure the “Point & Click” tab at the top of the window is selected.

Now, see the “Secondary click” heading? Click the “Click or tap with two fingers” setting to reveal…

Method No. 3:

Click in bottom-right corner, or…

Method No. 4:

Click in the bottom-left corner.

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Indeed, the function keys often have to share their keys with volume controls, screen brightness buttons, and various media playback controls—and in most cases, you’ll have to press and hold the “Fn” key to make a function key actually work like a function key.

By tweaking a single setting, you can switch things around so you don’t need to press and hold “fn” to use a function key.

Want to switch things around so you don’t need to press and hold “fn” to use a function key? No problem.

Here’s what you do:

• Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, then select System Preferences.
• Click the Keyboard icon, then check the box marked “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys.”
• Close the window to save your changes.

Now, you can tap a function key without pressing and holding the “Fn” key first.

Keep in mind, though, that you’ll now have to press and hold “Fn” to change the speaker volume on your Mac, brighten or dim the screen, or use any of the other controls that share space with the function keys.

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Clever? Sure. Personally, though, I find clicking the newfangled MacBook trackpad feels squishier—not to mention harder to press—than the old-school button.

If you feel the same way, here’s an alternative. You can set the Mac trackpad to “click” with a simple tap rather than an actual click.

If you’re having a tough time clicking your MacBook’s trackpad, here’s an alternative: setting the Mac trackpad to “click” with a simple tap rather than an actual click.

Yes, tapping to click takes a little getting used to. But once you get the hang of it, though, you won’t want to go back.

Here’s what you do…

• Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, then select System Preferences.
• Once the System Preferences window opens, click the Trackpad icon in the Hardware section, then make sure the “Point & Click” tab is selected.
• Check the “Tap to click” checkbox near the top of the window.
• Now, open a document or a web page and try tapping rather than clicking.

Want to drag a window around the screen? Just tap and hold with three fingertips, then start dragging.

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Luckily, both Windows and Mac systems come with a handy feature called “sticky keys.” Turn the feature on, and you’ll be able to press individual keys in a two- or three-key combination one at a time, rather than all at once. It’s a clever alternative to playing “Twister” with your fingers.

You can set your Mac’s “sticky keys” feature to display pressed key combos on your desktop.

Ready to give sticky keys a try? Let’s get started.

For Mac:

• First stop: System Preferences, which you’ll find under the Apple menu in the top-right corner of the screen. Under the “System” heading, select the “Accessibility” icon.
• On the next screen, click “Keyboard” in the left column, then check the box next to the “Enable Sticky Keys” setting.
• Click the “Options” button to customize how the “sticky keys” features works. For example, you can toggle sticky keys on and off by pressing the shift key five times in a row (recommended), as well as having your Mac make a sound and/or display the label for any “modifier” key (such as shift, control, or command) that you press.

You can find your Windows PC’s “sticky keys” setting in the Control Panel.

For Windows 7 or 8:

• Go to the Windows “Ease of Access” control panel; open the Start menu and type “Ease of Access” in the search box, or click Start, All Programs, Ease of Access, and Ease of Access Center.
• Click the “Make the keyboard easier to use” link under “Explore all settings,” then check the “Turn on Sticky Keys” box.
• Next, you can tweak your sticky keys settings by clicking the “Set up Sticky Keys” link. Among the options: turning sticky keys on and off by pressing the shift key five times in a row (same as on the Mac), playing a sound any time a “modifier” key is pressed,” and displaying the sticky keys icon in the Windows task bar.

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Just like the timer on your coffee machine, the built-in clock on your iMac or MacBook can start up—or shut down—your Mac on any schedule you choose, perfect for anyone (like me) who’s tired of waiting for their system to rouse itself after a night’s slumber.

You can set your Mac to start up, go to sleep, restart, or shut itself down on any schedule you choose.

Here’s how to get started…

• Click the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of the screen, then select System Preferences.
• Next, click the Energy Saver icon, then click the “Schedule…” button in the bottom-right corner of the window.
  Want your Mac to power itself up every weekday at 7 a.m.? Check the box next to “Start up or wake,” then select “Weekdays” from the pulldown menu. Finally, set the timer to 7:00 AM.
• You can also set your Mac to shut itself down, restart, or put itself into “sleep” mode at a given time. Check the box next to the “Shut Down” pull-down menu, then set a weekly schedule and time. And don’t worry—your Mac will give you fair warning (10 minutes, to be exact) before it shuts itself down.
• All done? Click the blue “OK” button.

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Well, there are actually five ways to snap a screenshot on your Mac, and they’re all just a few keystrokes away.

1. Take a screenshot of the entire screen

Press and hold the SHIFT, COMMAND, and NUMBER 3 keys, and an image file of the screenshot will appear on your Mac’s desktop.

2. Copy an image of the entire screen to your Mac’s clipboard

Press and hold CONTROL, SHIFT, COMMAND, and the NUMBER 3 keys to snap a screenshot and copy it to your Mac’s clipboard, perfect for pasting the image (COMMAND + V) into another document.

You can take a screenshot of just a portion of your Mac’s screen; press and hold Shift, Command, and the number 4 key, then click and drag.

3. Take a screenshot of a selected area of the screen

Want to capture an image of, say, just a single corner of your Mac’s desktop, rather than the entire screen?

Press and hold the SHIFT, COMMAND, and NUMBER 4 keys; when you do, your mouse pointer will turn into a target.

Click, hold and drag your mouse over the area you’d like to capture, then release the mouse button. Your screenshot will appear as an image file on your desktop.

4. Copy an image of a selected area of the screen to your Mac’s clipboard

Same basic idea as the command above, except you’re copying a picture of the selected screen area to your Mac’s clipboard.

Press and hold CONTROL, SHIFT, COMMAND, and the NUMBER 4 keys, then paste the screenshot into a document by pressing COMMAND + V.

The Mac’s “Grab” app boasts a “timed screen” feature, which takes a screenshot ten seconds after you activate the timer.

5. Use the “Grab” app

Hiding in your Mac’s Applications folder is a handy little tool called Grab, and it does a great job of snapping screenshots when you need a bit more flexibility than what’s available in the Mac’s “native” screenshot feature.

For example, Grab will let you take a screenshot of just the active window, and it’ll also (optionally) include the mouse cursor in your screenshot.

Best of all, Grab boasts a “timed screen” feature, which takes a screenshot ten seconds after you activate the timer.

Yes, firing up Grab takes a bit more effort than simply using one of the Mac’s screenshot shortcuts, but sometimes the extra power is worth it—and indeed, I use Grab all the time to snap images for my Mac tips.

Bonus tip

Having a hard time pressing and holding all those keys? You can create new, easier keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots from the Keyboard preferences pane.

Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System Preferences, click the Keyboard icon, then click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.

From here, you can tweak all kinds of keyboard shortcut settings—including those for screenshots. Just click the “Screen Shots” heading in the left column to get started. (I went ahead and picked the F5 key for snapping a screenshot of the whole screen.)

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Note: This updated and expanded tip was first published in June 2013.

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Well, there is, actually—and in fact, you can make Safari (or just about any browser) put your downloaded files anywhere you want on your Mac.

You can make Safari put downloaded files anywhere you want on your Mac.

Here’s the trick…

• Open Safari, click the Safari menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select Preferences, then click the General tab.
• Next, see the “Save downloaded file to” pull-down menu? The default setting is the Downloads folder. To change it, click the menu, select “Other,” pick a place on your Mac’s hard drive (like Desktop). then click the blue Select button in the bottom corner of the window.

Now, go ahead and close the Preferences window, then try saving a file using Safari. When you do, Safari will save your download to the directory you picked, skipping the Downloads folder.

Bonus tip

You can change the “Save downloads to” setting on just about any browser, not just Safari.

With Chrome, for example, click the Chrome menu in the top corner of the screen, select Preferences, click Setting in the left column of the page, go down and click “Show advanced settings,” then pick a new directory under the Downloads section.

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Since 2011’s “Lion” update to Mac OS X, however, Apple has adopted an “barely there” policy when it comes to scroll bars.

Indeed, scroll bars on the Mac are now just as wafer-thin as they are on the iPhone and iPad—and in some cases, they may disappear completely when you’re not actively scrolling.

Luckily, it’s easy to get those scroll bars back—not the old, larger versions, mind you, but at least you can keep the Mac’s new, skinny-mini scroll bars visible at all times.

Here’s how:

• Click the Apple menu at the top-left of the screen, then select System Preferences.
• Next, select the General preferences pane; it’s the very first one, up at the top.
• Under the “Show scroll bars” heading, you’ll find three options: “Automatically based on input device,” “When scrolling,” and “Always.”
• Go ahead and select that last “Always” option. You’re done!

Bonus tip

Wish you could get the missing scroll bar buttons back, too? You can’t, unfortunately, but you can always use your arrow keys for precision scrolling.

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Hi Paul! I feel your pain—or your son’s pain, that is. iPhoto on my Mac used to freeze a couple of times a week, until finally it crashed and burned, leaving thousands of blank boxes where my photos used to be.

Like your son, I could see my images sitting on my hard drive, but iPhoto stubbornly refused to display them.

You can turn on iPhoto’s “First Aid” mode in just a few clicks.

The good news, though, was that all my carefully curated iPhoto library wasn’t gone for good—and with a little time, effort and luck, your son may be able to restore his iPhoto library, too.

Before you do anything, though, back up your hard drive, using either Time Machine or another method. That way, you can turn back the clock if anything goes wrong during the (potentially extensive) iPhoto restoration process.

You’ll also want to set aside some serious time for your iPhoto repair work. It took several hours for iPhoto to fix my photo library, for example, and while I was still able to use my Mac while the the work was underway, your system may feel a little sluggish during the procedure.

So, all set? Let’s get started…

First, let’s turn on iPhoto’s “First Aid” mode. Press and hold the Option and Command keys, then launch iPhoto. In a few seconds, a panel should appear with a quartet of maintenance options: “Repair Permissions,” “Rebuild Thumbnails,” “Repair Database,” and “Rebuild Database.”

So, which option should you start with? My suggestion: start with “Repair Permissions” and work your way down the list, stopping after each procedure to see if your photo library has reappeared.

As you move down the fix-it list, the repair work gets more and more involved, with “Rebuild Database” being the most intrusive and labor-intensive (on iPhoto’s part, not yours).

In my case, my iPhoto library came back to life after the “Repair Database” step, so I didn’t bother with “Rebuild Database.” And once all the first aid was finished, my copy of iPhoto ran better than it had in months.

Give that a try and see if it works, Paul. Still no luck? If so, it might be time for your son to pack up his Mac and take it to a Genius Bar for expert help.

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That usually means something (hopefully minor) is amiss on your system. Maybe your computer is running low on memory because it’s doing a few too many things at once; or, perhaps, the program you’re using has wandered into a corner that it can’t get itself out of.

Now, the best way to deal with either the spinning Windows disc or the Mac’s beach ball is, typically, to do nothing. With any luck, your system or application will settle down after a few seconds or so.

But if several minutes have passed and you’re still staring at a frozen program, it might be time to take matters into your own hands and force the stalled program to quit.

Doing so may, of course, lead to losing any unsaved data; then again, you may not have much choice.
Ready to unstick a stuck program? Here’s how.

Stuck with a frozen Windows program? Open the Task Manager, select the app that’s causing you trouble, then click the End Task button.

For Windows:

• If you’re still seeing the spinny circle after waiting a few minutes, it’s probably time to call up the Task Manager, a tool that details all the programs and other system “processes” that are currently running on your PC. To do so, press and hold the CONTROL, ALT, and DELETE keys all at the same time, then click the Task Manager option.
• Once Task Manager is running (if you’re using a Windows 7 PC, make sure the Applications tab is selected), check out the list of running programs; you should see the misbehaving program flagged with a status of “Not Responding.” Click the program, then click the “End Task” button at the bottom of the Task Manager window.
• Next, you’ll be prompted to either a) wait a little longer for the program to right itself, or b) go ahead and quit the program. Waited long enough? Then click “quit.”

You can force a frozen Mac program to quit in just a few clicks.

For Mac:

• Open the Apple menu (just click the Apple icon in the top-left corner of the screen) and select “Force Quit”—or, if you like, press the COMMAND, OPTION, and ESCAPE buttons all at the same time.
• You should now see a list of all the running programs on your Mac, including the application that’s frozen (probably labeled “Not Responding”). Click the name of the program, then click the “Force Quit” keys in the bottom corner of the Force Quit menu.
• A prompt will appear warning that you may lose any unsaved changes if you force the program to quit. Ready to put your program out of its misery? Click the Force Quit button once more, or Cancel if you’re rather wait it out.

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