Pragmatism in the real world

Keyboard shortcut to resize Finder columns

I like to use Finder in Column mode (⌘+3). i.e. this view: One feature of this view is that you can resize all the columns to fit by alt+double clicking on the move handle between each column. There doesn't appear to be a keyboard shortcut for this operation though, so I created one using Keyboard Maestro. Keyboard Maestro can move the mouse around the screen and click with it which is exactly what I need.… continue reading.

Making Slack accessible on macOS

I've written before about how I tend to use my Mac via the keyboard as much as possible to minimise pain in my arm. Possibly the best application on macOS to facilitate this is Shortcat which enables me to point and click at any UI element in any native Mac app. I rely on it a lot and it makes nearly every app I use accessible to me. Recently, Slack updated their desktop app so… continue reading.

Screenshot of the active window on Mac

I find myself needing to take screen captures of the currently active window in OS X reasonably frequently. The built-in way to do this on a Mac is to use shift+cmd+4, then press space and then use your mouse to highlight the window and click. For a good proportion of the time, I'm not using a mouse, so this doesn't work great. There's a built-in command line utility called screencapture which requires you to know… continue reading.

Notes on keyboard only use of macOS

It's been a while since I could use a trackpad without pain and even longer since I could use a mouse or trackball. Currently I use a Wacom tablet as my mouse which works really well as long as I don't use it too much. Fortunately, keyboard usage doesn't seem to be a problem (yet?), so I try to use only the keyboard as much as possible on macOS (née OS X). These are some… continue reading.