What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard?

Question

I would like to call for a place to list some little things that surprise you about Lion. There are so many articles and lists of all the new features with information overload, I would rather focus this spot of the site on tiny delights with a note why it makes a difference to you.

Please one topic per answer, this isn't a race to enumerate everything that changed. This isn't the place for massive topics like the implications of FileVault 2 on your entire workflow - just a stroll past some little gems, fun oddities or subtle changes specific to Lion.

Answers must relate to why or how you use the feature - links to official tips and tutorials are great, but the intent is to collect little gems that affect how the system gets used. Expect answers that are not specific to lion or lack a personal use case to be heavily edited or deleted.

I can't wait until someone wrote "Natural scrolling" as one of the answers... — Enrico Susatyo, Jul 22 '11 at 13:03
@the_great_monkey I will admit to being totally comfortable with "natural scrolling", and I've only been using Lion since Friday. — Cajunluke, Jul 25 '11 at 19:03
Natural Scrolling only makes real sense if you use a trackpad, if you try that with a scroll wheel, it drives you nuts :) — Martin Marconcini, Jul 29 '11 at 11:38
The finally fixed the bug I filed with them: Stickies windows stay where I put them (on my second monitor) across restarts — DavidPhillipOster, Jul 31 '11 at 15:34
I'm especially happy about the price of Lion ($29.99 upgrade from SnowLeopard), but this isn't worth putting as an answer. — bneely, Feb 08 '12 at 05:42

score 141 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 01 '11 at 20:43

141

Using the FaceTime camera to add signatures to PDFs in Preview.

Click the annotations button in the toolbar and use the drop down menu next to the signature icon to grab your signature from a piece of paper you have written it on. Then just click and drag in the document to place it. Haven't really needed it yet, but it's implemented so nicely that I did it just for fun.

enter image description here

edited Aug 01 '11 at 20:43

Simon Whitaker

794

answered Jul 27 '11 at 20:22

mss

183

Oh that's nice. Speaking of faceTime, I didn't buy it for 99c from the AppStore, but now I have it thanks to Lion. – TessellatingHeckler Jul 31 '11 at 19:23
This is the one I'm most excited about after just doing a bunch of loan documents. – Sam Jul 31 '11 at 21:32
I had no idea this existed. So convenient. Used to do that manually... – nearlymonolith Aug 02 '11 at 14:10
3

Nice! This pretty much replaces PDFPenPro for me. – whaley Aug 02 '11 at 19:59
Mac Pro users are hosed :p (aka: me) – Martin Marconcini Aug 03 '11 at 15:20
Just buy a Cinema Display ;) – mss Aug 03 '11 at 18:15
Another nice touch with this feature is that Lion Preview auto-detects horizontal lines in your document, and if you click one with the signature tool, the signature will be sized to fit perfectly on the line. – Lanny Heidbreder Aug 08 '11 at 19:56

score 117 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 08 '11 at 16:41

117

Finder - make a new folder with a selection of files

Given the number of times I'd have to do the Cmd-Shift-N/highlight/drag dance, this is by far my favorite:

New Folder With Selection

edited Aug 08 '11 at 16:41

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 25 '11 at 01:21

Gauzy

4,854

1

Awesome! Any way to map a keyboard shortcut to that command? – peterjmag Aug 06 '11 at 02:38
9

There already is one! Highlight the items, and go to the Finder's File menu, and you'll see that it is Ctrl-Cmd-N. – Gauzy Aug 06 '11 at 04:22
1

This is really something I've wanted, but never expected to happen. – ocodo Sep 01 '11 at 23:19
2

That command being disabled when only a single file is selected could be the most annoying thing about Lion though. – Lri Dec 12 '11 at 11:41

score 112 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

112

Accessing accented characters has been made a lot easier.

Just hold down the letter and a list of alternatives will show. Awesome.

Example of OS X Lion accented characters popup menu

By pressing the number and continuing to type, the desired letter replaces the e and alows you to keep your fingers on the keyboard. Double Awesome.

This behavior can be turned off. Turning off this new feature allows the traditional key repeat function to work for all keys as shown in the keyboard system preference window.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 20 '11 at 20:06

Aron Rotteveel

1,709

22

wha? I get the letter reppeeeeeeeeeeeating – Joel Spolsky Jul 20 '11 at 20:49
4

Looks like it depends on the app. It's working in Word but not in Chrome... – Joel Spolsky Jul 20 '11 at 20:50
That's strange. It does not work in the comment field or post editor for me either. Try in the URL, that should work. Should be universal, though... – Aron Rotteveel Jul 20 '11 at 20:50
2

Its WORKS for comments in Safari. Like these: áôćÿ :) – clt60 Jul 22 '11 at 10:08
8

Actually this was the first thing I HAD to disable :) Never used accented chars and it keeeeeeeeeepsssss me from the repeating stuff :( – bisko Jul 22 '11 at 10:58
depends on the letter as wèll! :) – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 14:17
Can you post a screenshot of what the menu looks like? – Chas. Owens Jul 22 '11 at 16:10
This is awesome!!! – Aufwind Jul 22 '11 at 16:39
@Owens done! screenshot posted. – Aron Rotteveel Jul 24 '11 at 18:27
Anyone found out if this is configurable? For example, there is no ç available in German, although with a US keyboard setting it is there. – Debilski Jul 24 '11 at 20:58
Frankly I never had a problem with the old way. It was insanely more straight forward than any other OS I've used.
It caused less collisions (Terminal interaction was a bit of a pain), than it does now (having to choose between repeating characters and accented ones).
– Jason Salaz Jul 26 '11 at 00:44
A quick addition (that might address Joel's problem)… this option depends on the keyboard input method selected. If you have the Unicode Hex Input method selected, you'll just get key repeating. If you have a Japanese keyboard selected, you'll also just get key repeating. If you have a European language keyboard selected, you'll get Latin accent options. – Matt Gallagher Jul 31 '11 at 07:58
@Joel Spolsky - It works on Chrome's address bar, but not inside web page text boxes. – ErJab Jul 31 '11 at 20:36
I suppose they (Google Chrome) will include this some time soon. Does it work in Safari, inside boxes too? – Thaddee Tyl Aug 01 '11 at 09:36
Wow, I've been using it for 2 months, still don't know this cool feature. Thanks – mko Oct 12 '11 at 18:43

score 102 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 02 '11 at 16:06

102

All window edges allow resizing

How about ability to resize windows from all edges of the window?

The reduced clutter of not having a resize nub is nice, but the power comes with these options (which can be combined):

shift - maintains aspect ratio while sizing
option - maintains the center point while sizing

edited Aug 02 '11 at 16:06

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 22 '11 at 20:41

AngryHacker

2,375

Actually, this was something that I was disappointed in. It was a stubborn aspect of the Finder, but I appreciated it because there was only one interaction. Now, the Finder is this hodgepodge of interface elements. – Andrew Jul 23 '11 at 04:00
52

And you can hold shift while resizing to maintain the aspect ratio, and alt/option to anchor the window at its center, and both for a combination – Jonathan. Jul 24 '11 at 01:41
@Andrew - Actually, there are less interface elements, with the exception of the "fullscreen" button. The "resize handle" is gone. – Moshe Jul 26 '11 at 14:16
1

@Jonathan That makes it stand out; Windows had edge resizing for some time now. Windows 8 will probably have aspect ratio resize! – Thaddee Tyl Aug 01 '11 at 09:40
@Moshe Yes there are fewer, but I should have been more specific. What I mean, is that the Finder now feels more "twitchy" than before. Scrollbars showing and hiding, bouncy scrolling, no margin/padding between the edge of the window and content (so you don't quite know where to grab the window). All of these things add up and make the Finder just "feel" less stable. Even though the resize handle took up space, it represented the one way to do something, and thus brought stability. I feel like I need to write an entire blog post on this just to explain, since it's very personal and ethereal. – Andrew Aug 01 '11 at 21:41
Aspect ratio and centered resizing?! I must try this! – Jake Petroules Aug 09 '11 at 01:31
I am still using Snow Leopard so I have not yet tried this feature, but why would you want to maintain aspect ratio or center point when resizing? Any practical example? – Rabarberski Oct 12 '11 at 15:53
So awesome!! I haven't upgraded yet, but this will be a definite improvement over SL! – daviesgeek Jan 13 '12 at 22:41
I don't know if it's broken or if I'm using it incorrectly, but sometimes after I release the shift key, i.e after after stopped the dragging, the resized window snaps back to the size it would have been resized to if I had not used shift. It looks like a bug in the handling of the modifier key - or something on my installation is interfering with it, I don't know. – alecail Mar 11 '13 at 18:37
A practical example of aspect ratio resizing: you're viewing a page in Preview and want to make it smaller/bigger. With "Zoom to Fit", you can Shift-drag a corner/edge, rather than having to zoom in/out followed by zooming the window, and there'll be no wasted space around the outside of the page. – Nicholas Riley Jul 21 '13 at 19:29
Also: dragging the horizontal window resize handle (⬌) vertically will move the window instead of resizing. Same applies to dragging the vertical resize pointer ⬍ horizontally. E.g. useful when you cannot grab the window title bar because it is off-screen. – ccpizza Dec 09 '21 at 14:37

score 102 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Stateful Terminal app

When you quit Terminal.app and re-open it it not only re-opens previously opened tabs (without restarting the commands that were running in it, of course), but it shows you the last 500 rows that were output in the closed terminal window.

This has two major advantages to me:

I have the same history in the same tab as I had it
Seeing the old output helps me bring the tab back to the state it was in.

score 101 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

System Information is more visual and speedy

System Information in Lion (which used to be System Profiler in Snow Leopard) has gotten a facelift and a tune up. The information is presented in a much more usable and graphical format. Memory pane in Mac OS X 10.7's System Information

In addition to the facelift, the launch time of the app is optimized to be immediately responsive, delaying any lengthy discovery hardware and software until you ask for that level of detail.

This makes it much more useful to hop in and copy your serial number without waiting for the app to finish launching an inventory of all software on the mac.

Storage pane in Mac OS X 10.7's System Information

score 78 · Answer 7 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

tmutil is a command line interface into Time Machine.

time tmutil startbackup --block is full of win.

You can now start a backup, time how long it takes, and know how much data was saved, all from the command line!

You can flush your local backup store to free up disk space as well (or enable local backups if desired):

 sudo tmutil disablelocal
 sudo tmutil enablelocal

Managing Time Machine from the unix prompt is a bit of a geeky thing, but I wanted to call out this hugely useful tool that is hidden underneath the hood. Being able to analyze the difference between the current mac and the last backup with tmutil compare is also incredibly useful. Particularly useful in addition to managing the on/off and local/remote status of Time Machine, managing exclusion lists - these few commands seem particularly useful to me (and hence make me smile broadly, perhaps Lion-like):

calculatedrift
uniquesize
latestbackup

The man page is great and actually teaches how the backups work and encourage exploration of local storage, inheriting previous backups and much more. Someone deserves beers or better at the next WWDC.

The best feature of tmutil, in my opinion, is tmutil disablelocal. — LaC, Aug 02 '11 at 15:10

score 75 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

75

Quicklook previews within spotlight search results

I usually use Launchbar so I don't rely on Spotlight results (top-right) corner of the screen, but when I do, I always hated that I couldn't quicklook or even see the path of the results. Now it's possible if you wait on a result for a second, you'll see quicklook:

enter image description here

Now try ⌘ and ⌘⌥ combinations! With one you can see where in the file is the string located (like in the screen shot), and with the other you can see the file path.

Also using ⌘ and the arrows will move through the categories.

Nice details.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 29 '11 at 12:00

Martin Marconcini

21,864

That is seriously incredible. I've always kept spotlight around and had LaunchBar use ^-space (control-space) instead of taking over for spotlight. This will come in very handy once I remember it's there! – bmike Jul 29 '11 at 16:41
3

I also like the addition of Control-Option-Space to bring up a search in a Finder window (which I use much more than Spotlight itself). – Matt Gallagher Jul 31 '11 at 08:13
I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but could you tell me how you type those characters. (command, option, up arrow, etc?) – Jamie Aug 05 '11 at 19:32
@Jamie Sure, you can find all about those KBD links here: http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/questions/193/keyboard-icons-terminology - also the symbols itself you can find in the Edit -> Special Characters pane that’s available to most Cocoa applications. – Martin Marconcini Aug 07 '11 at 17:07

score 74 · Answer 9 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

74

Quicklook natively supports animated GIFs

Freaking awesome.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '11 at 21:49

Harv

6,520

score 67 · Answer 10 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 14:45

67

Login sheet for WiFi network TOS negotiation

Lion will open a little window immediately upon connection to a WiFi network that requires a webpage to 'agree' to any terms of service (TOS)

This really helps if you have apps that use http in the background like twitter since those programs might "receive" the agreement form and disregard it before we as the users know to open our browser and see the terms. Most routers will give up after sending the first terms causing a broken network connection for many users.

Also, as a bonus, WiFi is now called WiFi instead of AirPort.

edited Oct 07 '11 at 14:45

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 22 '11 at 21:29

Nathan Greenstein

28,910

6

Pedantically, mine's called Wi-Fi, which I find really annoying for some reason. – Jodi Warren Jul 24 '11 at 21:28
This would have been so helpful about 2 months ago... – Jason Salaz Jul 25 '11 at 16:34
@Magnakai: Wi-Fi is the correct spelling; the logo is just trying to confuse you. ;) – Sophie Alpert Jul 31 '11 at 23:01
2

Sadly, the login sheet seems to fail if the Wi-Fi network redirects to a non-validating SSL page. Such "broken" logon pages are unfortunately typical in the enterprise world. – Andrew Aug 09 '11 at 07:56
Isn't this typically called a captive portal? – sudo rm -rf Mar 22 '12 at 02:04
@sudorm-rf Yes, it's a captive portal and what apple has done is implement the WISPr protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISPr) – Martin Marconcini Jun 30 '12 at 23:39

score 67 · Answer 11 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

67

It doesn't qualify as a tiny thing, per se, but since it came up in the comments...

Natural Scrolling

It took a couple of days to get used to it but now it really does feel natural: moving your fingers across the trackpad the same way you would move your hand if the content was on your desk (or iPad) fits and actually makes sense.

I know it's not popular with everyone but the only reason the traditional scrolling direction feels normal is because we're used to it; the scroll wheel on a mouse and the old trackpad response was about moving the scroll thumb in a given direction, not the content.

Even before Lion when I'd been using my iPad for an hour or two and then sat down with the trackpad on my Mac I'd end up using the trackpad wrong for a moment. Why couldn't I push the web page up if I wanted it to move up?

Me, I'm a fan.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 24 '11 at 11:29

Matthew Frederick

6,196

On a trackpad I love it, too. – XQYZ Jul 24 '11 at 11:50
It makes wonder who thought of making the content scroll to the opposite direction you move the scroll wheel (then they didn't have multitouch trackpads). Although I am dreading using my Windows machine. – Jonathan. Jul 24 '11 at 18:04
1

Despite feeling like riding a bike backwards (something you can force yourself to do, but lack trust or good feelings about the change), I can see a month down the road absolutely abhoring "the old way". Moving something is simpler than moving a control that moves data underneath my fixed viewport. Challenging to adapt to this reversal, but I predict most will switch to "riding our bikes backwards" soon. – bmike Jul 24 '11 at 19:34
1

It's a nice feature but I had to turn it off because it really messed me up when I tried to scroll on a Windows or Linux box. – Ferruccio Jul 25 '11 at 12:59
@Ferruccio I have the same problem. Fortunately 95% of my work in on a Mac so it's something I can work around. I'm going to look for a mouse wheel reverser for the PC. – Matthew Frederick Jul 25 '11 at 13:36
I wish you could switch back the scroll direction for the mouse...without switching the trackpad. because THAT IS clunky. my scroll wheel MAKES sense the way it was....NOT THE NEW WAY – mjrider Jul 25 '11 at 15:01
I think the fundamental flaw in this optional feature is that not only is the screen not under your fingers, mice don't fit the paradigm at all. I turned it off, despite wanting to give it a go. I've been doing down is down, up is up scrolling for eleven years. – Nick Bedford Jul 27 '11 at 22:39
3

I love it. Got used to it in about an hour. As for who to blame for the traditiona scrolling with mouse scrollwheel: most likely Microsoft. IIRC they came with first scroll wheels (brilliant idea), but, alas, did not think hard enough and mapped the wrong directions :) – Rimantas Jul 31 '11 at 19:20
12

I donno, it was/is really annoying for me. On the iPad, stuff moves with your finger and you're physically touching it, so it this style makes sense. On the Mac, the monitor is actually perpendicular to your trackpad and the whole thing is disorienting and doesn't feel intuitive at all. – Tejaswi Yerukalapudi Aug 01 '11 at 02:26
This seemed quite cool until I went into VLC, and the video srub was absolutely horrifying. The main problem with this is that every other non-mac device you'll use will work differently, if I could configure it for just scrolling "page" style apps, then perhaps it'd be good, but for it to be universal is not a win for me. – ocodo Sep 01 '11 at 23:19
I just bought a new imac, and couldnt get Lion on my older MacBook, when I used my MacBook 30min after starting up the new iMac, I was scrolling the wrong way, why wasnt it like that before? – Graeme Hutchison Dec 12 '11 at 16:18

score 63 · Answer 12 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

63

Clamshell Mode simplified for external displays

In Lion, if you want to use an external display with a closed notebook (also known as clamshell mode), you can do the following:

Attach the external display and power adapter to the notebook.
Close the notebook.
The external display stays on!

The process is much easier because Lion assumes that closing the notebook doesn't mean "put my Mac to sleep" if you also have an external display attached.

Lion also assumes that opening your notebook means that you want to use its display, so there's no need to manually force display detection.

In Snow Leopard, if you wanted to use an external display with a closed notebook, you'd need to do the following:

With the notebook open, attach the external display.
Close the notebook. Wait as the Mac goes to sleep, and the external display goes dark.
Wake the notebook from sleep (using an external keyboard or mouse) to activate the external display.

If you then opened the notebook so that you could use its display as well, you'd need to force the Mac to detect displays.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '11 at 17:55

cobra libre

206

I don't think this is new. Clamshell has worked for me (exactly as you describe at the top of your post) for years - since Leopard and possibly earlier! – dan8394 Jul 26 '11 at 18:29
Interesting. I've seen the Snow Leopard behavior described above with multiple MacBooks Pro. – cobra libre Jul 26 '11 at 22:28
I think this has to do with whether or not your power cord is plugged in. – jtbandes Jul 30 '11 at 08:12
Ah - I always have my power-cord in when working with an external monitor. That probably makes the difference. – dan8394 Jul 30 '11 at 16:31
It might be related to the age of the laptop also. I swear my non-unibody 17" MacBook Pro did that in 10.6.8 before I upgraded it to Lion. – Rufo Sanchez Jul 31 '11 at 17:20
Is there any way to disable this Clamshell mode and return to the previous behavior? I use both screens while working, and would love to put my system to sleep when I close the lid. – akosma Aug 01 '11 at 10:59
2

Woah. I thought this was a bug in Lion. Because, naturally, when I close the lid of my MBP, I want the secondary display to go off as well. Thanks for sharing. – ayaz Aug 01 '11 at 19:42
A good thing I've noticed is that now with Lion, it doesn't wake up when I move my mouse while lid closed. I need to click it instead, which is great. – Leandro Ardissone Aug 05 '11 at 17:07

score 62 · Answer 13 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

62

Battery, Time and WiFi shown on Login Screen

The clock, battery charge level/status, and wifi status indicators that are now displayed on the Login Screen; three very useful pieces of information even when you're not yet logged in.

enter image description here

Here's a snippet of the top right portion of an iMac showing WiFi and time (default settings).

If you enable a hidden preference, clicking the time will show in order:

The mac's sharing name
The version (10.7) and build (11A511) of OS X that is installed
The IP address of the mac

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo true

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 23 '11 at 05:57

Matthew Frederick

6,196

2

It does have a small bug (I raised a radar on it) that shows the time in 12-hour format even when the computers regional settings indicated 24-hour clock. – Damien Aug 07 '11 at 11:17

score 57 · Answer 14 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

57

Apps like Preview can quit themselves when not needed

Previously, when you opened something in Preview and you were finished with it, it was left running (in the background).

Now, when you close whatever you're previewing and switch focus to another app, Preview quits. This behavior of saving the work and/or closing the app when the last document is closed is a standard feature in Lion for many apps to use.

I'm a bit anal about keeping not required apps running, so was glad that has been introduced in Lion.

The system will quit apps too if resources are low

This is covered in detail at Lion is a Quitter from TidBITS, but the system will step in and automatically terminate apps which adds to confusion for people that pay attention or are habituated to the old way where users had to intentionally quit apps for them to disappear from the dock and app switcher tab.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 24 '11 at 08:34

Michal M

3,796

4

It's not only preview.app, see here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/8#process-model – Agos Jul 24 '11 at 09:55
2

As Agos is referring to, it only does so when you are low on needed resources and when it is clear you are not using it. For example, with more capable computers, this will not happen so much. – John Jul 25 '11 at 07:07
1

@HandyRandy well, in my case Preview closes no matter how many resources I have available. With 2GB of RAM completely free an unused it still quits the moment I focus on other application. – Michal M Jul 25 '11 at 07:14
I believe you. It does the same on my dad's Mac Mini; TextEdit too. However I do not see any such termination happening on my own newer Mac Mini with more RAM. – John Jul 25 '11 at 07:32
Preview doesn't close for me when I close all its open windows. I've got 4GB ram for the statisticians. – Douglas Jul 31 '11 at 21:02
2

Doesn't close 8GB (MBP 2011). – Cedric H. Aug 07 '11 at 09:43
@Agos that Ars Technica page refers to a prerelease URL that is not authorised for public viewing. An alternative, which should be visible to the public: Mac OS X Application Programming Guide: The Core Application Design: The Application Life Cycle: Automatic and Sudden Termination of Applications Improve the User Experience – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:24
At http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19580/what-scenarios-benefit-from-mac-os-x-allowing-apps-to-run-when-no-document-window/20437#20437 see the lines above and below Quit quitting! – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:27
For me, if you close a PDF, Preview remains running until you switch focus to another app, at which point it then quits itself.
This on a mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM, plenty of which is free.
– reaganing Aug 09 '11 at 14:33
In practice - this is really quite disorienting and not in a good way. Text Edit quits itself all the time and now I have an icon in the task switcher that I can't quit without first causing itself to re-load itself. – bmike Apr 30 '12 at 21:02
Preview doesn't actually quit, it stays in the Force Quit menu. I think it simply removes itself from the Dock to remove clutter. Nonetheless, it's still annoying. – Faiz Saleem Mar 22 '13 at 20:56

bmike · Answer 15 · 2011-08-01T02:09:26.160

53

Finder merging of folders and files

I must say that the most smile-worthy thing I have come across is the merge folders / keep both feature. I still cringe a little when I even think about dragging a folder named pictures onto another folder named pictures, but once I learn to trust it, I will be more willing to clean up YEARS of old documents scattered in creaky nested folders named "old" "cleanup" "2002" "Documents from old Mac" and such.

It is a little thing, but boy is it fun to feel like I have an intelligent tool to automate what I want to have happen - and not just having one folder overwrite the other as past versions of OS X felt was the best choice.

edited Aug 01 '11 at 02:09

answered Jul 20 '11 at 13:05

bmike

235,889

9

That might be the last feature I'll try in Lion. It's certainly well done and works like a charm, but 20 years of muscle memory will still prevent me for a long time from doing what I've always assumed to be a huge, unrecoverable mistake. Guess old habits die hard. – Cyrille Jul 21 '11 at 13:12
3

@Cyrille - oh, it's recoverable alright. You are backing up with Time Machine, are you not? :-D – Harv Jul 24 '11 at 01:42
1

How is this feature triggered/accessed? – finiteloop Jul 27 '11 at 17:42
@segfault this feature is automatic but the folders must have unique filenames inside them. If you duplicate a folder and try to copy it onto itself, this feature will not appear (because without unique names, no merge will occur). If there are unique names in each folder, then "Each folder has unique items such as 'Name A' and 'Name B'" will appear as part of the Copy dialog and the Copy dialog will offer a "Keep Both" button that will merge the two folders (obviously: identically named items will be overwritten). – Matt Gallagher Jul 31 '11 at 08:09
1

Hm... No matter what I do, I cant get this functionality to occur. – finiteloop Jul 31 '11 at 23:05

score 51 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

51

Safari offers to set up Mail, Calendars and Chat

When logging into a Gmail account in Safari for the first time (and if that account hasn't been added to "Mail, Contacts & Calendars" in System Preferences yet), Lion will offer to add that account. Great attention to detail that made me smile.

enter image description here

MobileMe, gmail, yahoo all worked for me so far.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 21 '11 at 14:30

René

3,904

I wonder if that's a Lion feature, or Google's feature utilising Lion? – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 13:42
It's native to Safari (it's not a web overlay or something, it's an actual modal sheet), so I doubt that. – René Jul 22 '11 at 14:19
It's listed as a new Safari feature in Apple's gigantic Lion feature list: http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#safari – Ross Churchley Jul 29 '11 at 23:50

score 49 · Answer 17 · edited Dec 31 '11 at 21:14

49

Multitouch gesture to activate the dictionary/thesaurus/Wikipedia

A three fingered double tap will highlight the tapped word and then bring up a nice sheet with all the results relevant to the selected word.

enter image description here

edited Dec 31 '11 at 21:14

Nicholas Shanks

103

answered Jul 29 '11 at 23:37

Gu1234

101

10

Control + Command + D has always done this. – X-Istence Jul 31 '11 at 21:31
It's a nice feature, but the gestures like "three fingered double tap" are so obscure that there's not a chance I'll ever remember them. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:39
Really nice, the look has been upgraded too! +1 for the tip and the bonus meta reference – Agos Dec 12 '11 at 14:35
That gesture and many more are configurable System Preferences -> Trackpad. I've turned that one off as it's too confusing for me. I do like the three finger drag and some of the other more esoteric gestures. They've made a really nice preferences panel, too. Love the animations. – Old Pro May 28 '12 at 06:51

score 47 · Answer 18 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

47

Drag flocking with multiple selections

Drag flocking:

enter image description here

The nice animations of collapsing all objects to a neat pile while dragging and then smartly re-exposing the individual components as you hover over a potential destination helps you understand better what will happen if you end the drag with a drop at that point.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '11 at 04:03

jtbandes

11,074

2

I like this so much that I want it to happen sooner with less delay. If anyone knows how to shorten the delay for this transition, let me know! – John Jul 25 '11 at 07:04
6

I don't think I like the sensation of the thing I'm picking up wriggling under my fingers! – joerick Jul 31 '11 at 16:54
@HandyRandy agreed, I'd like this if it happened instantly. as it stands it happens about midway through my drags, which disorients me as what I'm dragging is flying all over the places. – Gauzy Jul 31 '11 at 23:36

score 45 · Answer 19 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

45

Multi-touch swiping of page history in Safari.

The animation for swiping back and forth through pages in Safari makes me smile every time. It's also a great example of transforming a slightly clunky (IMO) interaction into a useful and delightful one with a slight interface lift.

enter image description here

The animation is smooth and fluid.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 16:12

Jodi Warren

1,158

This has me stuck for a while before I relished that the swipe action is inverted to the 3 finger swipe of SL. – Jonathan. Jul 24 '11 at 01:42
So far, it's the most successful example of physical analogue in Lion that I've found. I'm using a Magic Mouse, so maybe there are better ones on a Magic Trackpad. – Jodi Warren Jul 24 '11 at 15:04
7

One major "gotcha" is swiping will easily trash whatever comments you have entered into most web pages. Normally, the system warns you before navigating away from a text entry, but this swipe just undoes whatever you have done on most occasions causing you to lose work :-( – bmike Jul 27 '11 at 18:34
Too bad the image of the old page is saved using JPEG compression. The artifacts make me cringe. – Zr40 Jul 31 '11 at 14:52
3

And an off-guard item: other things in Lion which have back/forward buttons such as the System Preferences or the iTunes store do not work with the two finger back/forward gesture. – TessellatingHeckler Jul 31 '11 at 21:13

score 44 · Answer 20 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 20:15

44

Show a message when the screen is locked

Set this in the Security system preferences panel and the message shows up at the bottom of the lock screen. Great for setting a "please return to..." message.

Security system preferences screenshot

answered Aug 01 '11 at 20:15

Simon Whitaker

794

3

That is a great use case! – bmike Aug 01 '11 at 20:17
6

You can set this text in Snow Leopard too but you'll have to go into Terminal: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "This computer belongs to ..." – root Oct 07 '11 at 18:09

finferflu · Answer 21 · 2014-12-29T23:55:51.737

42

Man page viewer / smart data selectors in Terminal app

I like how right-clicking on any text in Terminal and selecting Open man Page brings up a GUI-fied manpage window. It is far easier to read and navigate the manual while still having the original context in plain view.

enter image description here

The apropos and spotlight menu items are useful as well if the man page doesn't hit the article you hoped.

enter image description here

edited Dec 29 '14 at 23:55

answered Aug 01 '11 at 15:41

finferflu

101

2

Since you're at the command line it might also be worth mentioning that immediately after typing a command you can type Command-Option-? to open this window. – Samuel Mikel Bowles Sep 12 '11 at 14:36
Nice, I hadn't spotted this one. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:40
Works also for URLs! Just right-click on one. – Carmine Paolino May 11 '14 at 21:31
1

It needs to be command-control-shift-?. – ganbustein Dec 28 '14 at 23:28

score 39 · Answer 22 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

39

Safari opens new tabs relative to the current tab

Opening new tab in safari does not go to the rightmost tab, but immediately adjacent to the current tab. Multiple tabs spawning from one page stack up with the next one after the prior - but all as a group before other existing tabs.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 13:01

Enrico Susatyo

2,998

1

So its like Firefox now. – GEdgar Jul 22 '11 at 15:25
2

@GEdgar - Chrome. Chrome did this tab behavior first. – Fake Name Jul 22 '11 at 21:40
I think firefox did this even before chrome was out in 2009. – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 23:43
This annoy me... ;( – clt60 Jul 23 '11 at 06:29
5

Most. Awesome. Thing. – XQYZ Jul 24 '11 at 00:27
5

well it's about time. – John Jul 25 '11 at 06:53
Doesn't work for me actually. Any idea? – ySgPjx Jul 29 '11 at 23:48
I think this could be enabled with Glims (plug-in for safari) for a few years now. Of course, maybe Glims could have been copying Chrome, IDK, I don't use chrome. Either way, not built-in before. – NOTjust -- user4304 May 13 '13 at 18:09

score 38 · Answer 23 · edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

38

QuickLook in Stacks

You can now press space over any item in a Stack:

edited Mar 09 '17 at 18:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 19:13

jtbandes

11,074

score 37 · Answer 24 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

37

Safari download controls and animations

I love the new Safari download controls (menu bar / pop-up dialogue / iPad menu thingy).

enter image description here

It's great to have downloads not be another loose small window cluttering my workspace. Sorting by recency of download is nice as well.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '11 at 05:30

Alexander

8,363

I'm not sure if this is Safari 5.1 or Lion, but probably should remain nevertheless. – bmike Jul 25 '11 at 18:04
1

It does not work like this in Safari 5.1 on SL. – jpc Jul 25 '11 at 22:02
3

I wish there was a way to assign the old KB shortcut to this without needing to use a script (like this). It's a nice solution, but I'd rather not a separate program just to assign that shortcut. – Gauzy Jul 26 '11 at 02:25
The best things about the new animations like this is that it makes it clear to average users where a file goes when they click a download link. – NReilingh Jul 29 '11 at 04:45
1

Too bad I cannot have the downloads as a separate window that I don't have to click every time. This is a huge letdown for people who use keyboard shortcuts as this is not possible anymore. Costs some time every time I need this. (Apple sadly has removed a lot of keyboard controle in Lion.) – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:26
The keyboard shortcut no longer recognised by Safari is now recognised by Finder. – Graham Perrin Aug 02 '11 at 18:49
1

You can also drag from the download list to move the downloaded file in the finder. You can drag to your desktop and the file will move from your downloads folder. – ridogi Aug 02 '11 at 21:13
LOVE THIS. Freaking way to go Apple devs. – alt Aug 15 '11 at 11:40
@MacLemon Yeah, I don't always like this either. There are certainly times when I only want the download window open, without any actual browser windows cluttering my desktop. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:36
And its called a popover. – David Holdeman Feb 03 '13 at 02:57

score 35 · Answer 25 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

35

Right clicking on dock icon gives a list of recently opened items.

Particularly handy for apps like TextEdit and Pages!

Also: If you activate Application Exposé, via ctrl+down arrow, or hot-corner, it shows the recent items as icons.

If you assign a mouse gesture to App Exposé (via Preferences - Trackpad - More Gestures), you can use it to activate App Exposé for any application in the Dock. Just hover over the app icon with your mouse and do the gesture. The application doesn't need to have the focus.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 26 '11 at 12:45

Enrico Susatyo

2,998

you can also do a ctrl-down on a focussed app to get the same effect. – Vaibhav Bajpai Oct 10 '11 at 15:36
1

Four finger down sweep will also do this if you enable it. This is one of my most commonly used features now. – qubyte Dec 12 '11 at 10:07

score 33 · Answer 26 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

33

The redesigned lock screen

The lock screen is a small, relatively unimportant thing that made me smile. (Quite literally, when I was asked for a photo at the end of set up.) I like the fact that there's that little window that appears over the Andromeda Galaxy wallpaper. It simply feels more polished than the old black screen.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 13:33

Moshe

8,761

Ah, that would annoy me. I have an unreasonable hatred of wallpaper. Give me a flat gray or black background and I am happy. Is that configurable? – Chas. Owens Jul 22 '11 at 16:13
@Chas.Owens - Not sure, sorry! – Moshe Jul 24 '11 at 01:35

score 33 · Answer 27 · answered Jul 31 '11 at 12:30

QuickLook runs in the background

I often use QuickLook as a de facto replacement for QuickTime X because they do essentially the same thing (minus trimming and exporting, of course). Now that I can click away from the Finder and the QuickLook window will continue to play, it makes everything so much simpler for me!

score 33 · Answer 28 · edited Aug 02 '11 at 14:12

33

Interface buttons are now RoundRects

The rounded "Aqua" buttons of previous OS X versions have now been replaced with RoundRects in the style of Classic Mac OS.

The new buttons and the animated pop-in of the dialog boxes etc. is way better than what it used to be.

enter image description here

edited Aug 02 '11 at 14:12

Dan Andrew Brendstrup

3

answered Jul 31 '11 at 18:35

AJ digitalFocus

1

Do they actually call them square buttons and not rectangular? – GEdgar Jul 31 '11 at 18:47
LoL oops...you're right..."rectangular" – AJ digitalFocus Aug 01 '11 at 01:39
Technically, they were RoundRects before, with corner radius maxed out at half the buttons' height. :) – Lanny Heidbreder Aug 08 '11 at 20:05

score 32 · Answer 29 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

32

OS support for full screen apps!

I only have a 13" laptop, and when building iPad apps I never see the whole UI of the iPad in XCode - which is a slight nuisance. Now with XCode supporting fullscreen, that issue is less painful.

Also, Pages & Safari just look beautiful in full screen.

With Pages, if you have a second monitor, it will use that for palettes e.g inspectors, fonts and colours. Not all apps appear to support this yet, but it makes full screen much more sensible on multiple monitors. .

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 22:16

Martin S. Stoller

127

37

"Fullscreen" is an absolute nightmare for multi-monitor users. It completely disables any secondary or tertiary monitors. Fullscreening an app currently sends the app to the primary monitor with no option of changing it. One of the biggest workflow fails in Apple history in my humble opinion. – Nick Bedford Jul 27 '11 at 22:42
1

Sad to hear that - I love working multi-mon, just haven't yet had a chance with my laptop. Hopefully a future version will address this... – Martin S. Stoller Jul 28 '11 at 01:40
3

Yeah this is actually one of those facepalm moments. I don't actually know how they could have wanted this... – Nick Bedford Jul 28 '11 at 03:43
Btw, it is not the app but the window that is full-screen. One app may have multiple windows, with only some of them full screen. – Peter Štibraný Jul 31 '11 at 06:50
I like it even though i have multiple monitors, it's nice when i'm only using my 13" macbook screen – Alexander Jul 31 '11 at 20:56
1

At least it's possible to see the dock if you drag your mouse over the lower side of the screen and then drag again (weird gesture). If you do that, the dock appears. – Martin Marconcini Aug 01 '11 at 17:34
1

Doing anything when you make a window full-screen other than obliterating all secondary monitors is a non-trivial UI problem. For novice users — for whom full screen mode is surely mostly intended — it could quickly get very confusing. Apple doesn't implement features until it fully believes they are ready for prime-time; someday they will figure out (what they think is) the best way to do something useful in this situation. – Lanny Heidbreder Aug 08 '11 at 20:03
1

Late to the party with this comment, but a possible explanation for why fullscreen takes both monitors: it appears that when you full-screenify an app that OS X slaps it on its own Space - hence its appearance among the other Spaces in Mission Control. Since switching Spaces effects both displays, this may explain why the contents of other Spaces vanish when you set a window to Full Screen. Presumably this is something developers could take advantage of, doing something similar to Pages's behavior. – Dan J Sep 25 '11 at 01:17
@NickBedford The multi monitor behavior is indeed terrible, but of course the answer is simply not to bother using full screen mode, and just maximize windows yourself if need be. Can't say I feel like I'm missing out. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:38

score 30 · Answer 30 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Mail.app is full of smiles and neat animations

It's gotten a VERY serious overhaul, and feels integral and integrated into the OS itself. For the first time since I started using my gmail account full-time, I'm not using a browser window to get my mail.

Tiny, unexpected, smile-producing behavior?

When you hit send, the message you've just composed whooshes up the screen and off into the internet.
The concertina effect when quoted text expands
animations when moving from grouped message to another (or grouping happens)

These little animations don't help the mail app do it's job, they help us see and visualize what is happening. Altering the age-old phenomenon of sending email isn't something I expected to enjoy, but I love it.

score 28 · Answer 31 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

28

The loupe magnifier in Preview (is smart and context-aware)

Preview now has a magnifier. Select Tools → Show Magnifier to activate it. Its exact hotkey will depend on the localization being used; if using US-English, the hotkey is `

Open up an image and the magnifier will be a circle, open up a PDF and the magnifier will be a rectangle.

Definitely something that caught me by surprise.

What is even more elegant than prior loupes, is the smart loupe will detect content and re-size itself to show you entire objects of interest rather than be bound to a static size.

Also, you can pinch to increase/decrease the size of the loupe.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 05:07

paddykontschak

1

1

Backtick key isn't underneath Esc on all keyboards, btw. On my UK keyboard it's above Ctrl. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:43
It looks like Apple's iPad comparison! – daviesgeek Jun 08 '12 at 05:46

score 27 · Answer 32 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:33

27

Mission Control: move all app windows by mouse

In Mission Control, to move all of an app's windows to another space has changed. You now do this by grabbing the app icon/badge on top of the stack. (Before it was ⌘ Command-drag or Shift-drag)

enter image description here

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:33

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 31 '11 at 20:55

Paul Eccles

1,356

oh man, this is so neat. I wish I could up vote this twice! – Eimantas Aug 06 '11 at 10:05
1

Sadly, this only seems to work for dragging to another Space on the same screen. If you drag the app's icon to a Space on a different screen, it highlights during the drag to suggest that it will move the windows there, but doesn't actually move them. – Ken May 30 '12 at 17:17

score 27 · Answer 33 · answered Aug 02 '11 at 16:36

27

You can trash things whilst trash is emptying

No more refusals!

If you move things to trash whilst trash is emptying, the moves simply form a queue.

After trash empties: the system attends to your queue — those things appear in trash.

answered Aug 02 '11 at 16:36

Graham Perrin

7,739
14
81
245

Why, oh why did we have to wait until 2011 for this :-) – bmike Aug 08 '11 at 16:46
@bmike a guess, maybe it couldn't be done easily without file coordination. – Graham Perrin Aug 09 '11 at 16:08

score 26 · Answer 34 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

26

FileVault 2 encrypts all your data on the drive

(not just the home directory of users opting for FileVault)

enter image description here

Storing the keys in the Recovery HD and requiring an admin to unlock the volume before network and non-white-listed users makes this much more useful to both home users as well as lab settings where many people access one mac.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 20:48

Paul Maunders

1

4

File Vault 2 does NOT encrypt the whole disk, but only a whole partition which is a serious difference. If you have more than a single partition you can have some partitions unencrypted and others encrypted. The fact, that there are multiple partitions cannot be hidden (as it would be with full disk encryption. If you don't know about this, you'll inadvertedly end up with unencrypted partitions. You also cannot add encryption to a partition with DiskUtility, this is only possible with /usr/sbin/diskutil. – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:30
@maclemon - you are correct it's not whole disk - I edited the "title" to still let new users think all their stuff is encrypted while not being "technically wrong". – bmike Aug 01 '11 at 15:35
Title is much improved now, thanks. Still implies that the user's home resides on the system boot volume but it is safe to assume that this is the case for most users. – MacLemon Aug 02 '11 at 13:59
1

I would not recommend FileVault 2 for a lab, where it might be necessary to remotely restart a computer. See FileVault 2 prevents remote restart and other answers under Apart from being able to encypt an entire volume, what are the other differences of Filevault 2 over Filevault? – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:54

score 26 · Answer 35 · edited Aug 08 '11 at 16:47

26

Improved app switcher - pause at the end of the loop

It's interesting to see how now the ⌘TAB doesn't loop like crazy if you leave those keys pressed; instead it stops at the rightmost item and only if you press it again it will loop (once) until it reached the rightmost item again.

This avoid crazy looping when you get past the last item if you had a lot of apps open.

edited Aug 08 '11 at 16:47

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 02 '11 at 20:31

Martin Marconcini

21,864

5

That is so cool! I can't believe they put that in - wow! – bmike Aug 02 '11 at 20:58
I've always wondered why it sometimes loops like crazy. is it really my key got stuck or was it a software bug? – Enrico Susatyo Aug 04 '11 at 02:58
@the_great_monkey do you have that behavior in Lion? – Martin Marconcini Aug 04 '11 at 09:22
sometimes yeah. Maybe a key is stuck? – Enrico Susatyo Aug 04 '11 at 09:23
it's amazing!!! – mko Oct 12 '11 at 19:12
1

You can always still use CMD SHIFT TAB to reverse the direction if you pass up what you were looking for. – styfle Dec 12 '11 at 06:31

score 25 · Answer 36 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

25

Finder remove (cut) happens after move is complete

I love that you can move items in the finder by using ⌘-C to copy and ⌥-⌘-V to move. Kind of like cut and paste (which doesn't work), but it doesn't cut the original until the new one is pasted.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 01 '11 at 02:07

swingmonkey

1

Anything else would be quite a bit dangerous. – Debilski Aug 01 '11 at 07:39
2

This isn't new at all... – Tim Büthe Aug 03 '11 at 07:53
How did you find this out? – Strawberry Aug 06 '11 at 08:55
@Tim Büthe, which OS X version introduced this one? – ocodo Sep 01 '11 at 23:29
1

I don't know, but Tiger and Snow Leopard did that too. BTW: Windows does that as well I I guess Linux distros / Desktop environments as well. – Tim Büthe Sep 02 '11 at 09:55
Isn't the posting wrong? I should read cmd+x and cmd+v, not cmd+c. – Tim Büthe Sep 02 '11 at 09:55
4

@Tim Büthe - Leopard and Snow Leopard and prior versions of OS X never did this, of course Linux and Windows did it using CUA shortcuts (C-x, C-c, C-v) That's not of use/interest when you're not actually talking about one of those platform. Please cut down the noise, we want signal here. The shortcut on Lion is new, and it's designed in such a way that it addresses Apple's "semantic issue" with "Cut", and instead is copy / move, and not cut / paste. – ocodo Sep 05 '11 at 01:47
2

The cut/paste method we had previously on Finder was drag/drop (for same Volume move) or drag/Cmd-drop (for moves to external or network volumes) - There was no keyboard equivalent. – ocodo Sep 05 '11 at 01:54
I have cut and paste in Snow Leopard with total finder. – Fake Name Oct 10 '11 at 07:52

score 23 · Answer 37 · edited Jul 28 '11 at 22:07

23

Easy access to unicode characters and glyphs (Emoji)

System-wide pictograms, or, as you might call them, “Emoji” are built into the standard edit menu.

Choose Edit ▸ Special Characters…, then select Emoji in the sidebar of the character palette. Double click (or drag) an Emoji to insert it into the active text field. Nice!

Finder => Edit => Special Characters...

Finder, Edit Menu, Special Characters Item

Some of the newly available Emoji characters

Emoji characters in the Character Viewer

edited Jul 28 '11 at 22:07

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 22 '11 at 22:16

Metasequoia

3

Winner winner, chicken dinner! (or , ) Great pictures! – bmike Jul 25 '11 at 13:41
Is it true (as on the iPhone) that others (like Windows users) won't see your lovely characters you send to them? – GEdgar Jul 29 '11 at 14:40
1

The addition of "South Asian Scripts"->Kannada is a big advantage for those of us that need the look of disapproval often ಠ_ಠ – Matt Gallagher Jul 31 '11 at 08:26
I wonder what I get if I "look up 'chicken'"? http://i.imgur.com/R17dx.png – TessellatingHeckler Jul 31 '11 at 19:21
One word: ;-) – Simon Whitaker Aug 01 '11 at 20:46
Control+Command+Space in Mavericks to rule them all. – Carmine Paolino May 11 '14 at 21:37

PEZ · Answer 38 · 2011-08-02T14:06:58.257

23

No scrollbars!

I wasn't aware how ugly scrollbars are. I love the iOS-ish approach.

edited Aug 02 '11 at 14:06

answered Aug 02 '11 at 12:10

PEZ

133

5

I hate it. Scroll bars give a lot of useful context at a glance... so I'm very pleased there's an option to leave them turned on. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:47
1

@scottishwildcat just touch whatever device you use to scroll and they briefly appear – Steve Moser Mar 22 '12 at 02:18
I'm often just using the keyboard with PgUp/PgDn to scroll, so that's not very efficient as I have to take my hands off the keyboard. – calum_b Mar 22 '12 at 10:21

score 22 · Answer 39 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:08

22

Quick Look previews URL contents directly from Mail/iChat

iChat and Mail have a way to preview webpage links. A small button (black square with a white down-arrow) appears when you hover the mouse over the link in these apps.

A small button appears next to webpage links in iChat when mouse hovers over them

Clicking this button opens a Quick Look window in-place with a preview of the linked page.

Quick Look preview of the image opens when button is clicked

This powerful feature is very iOS-like. It is particularly useful when you are using Mail in full-screen mode, or your browser is off in another space.

Clicking the link itself still opens the page in your default browser as always. The presentation of a link flows from minimal, to expanded to full access in a browser very naturally.

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:08

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 01 '11 at 00:04

MJRasoBarnett

21
3

This feature caught me by surprise too and made me smile! :) Just like your post. Apple Exchange question inside Apple Exchange question? Questionseption? :P – kevin9794 Sep 04 '11 at 14:45
1

I like this feature, but I find the little button you have to click a bit finicky. Would rather it just showed the preview it when mousing over the link, but I guess there were performance issues doing it that way. – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:46

score 21 · Answer 40 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

21

Local Time Machine snapshots

When not connected to your primary backup drive, time machine can make use of the local hard drive for backing up changes. Yes, I know it doesn't produce any real reliable backup since it's on the startup disk, but it gets merged into the main backup when you connect and preserves the backup history. It's a nice improvement to TM.

This feature will police itself and start to clean up local backups when the free space on your local drive reaches 80% full / 20% free space. As the drive fills, the duration of local backups gets shorter and shorter. This really is working well in practice and I have yet to see any slowdowns with this enabled.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 23:01

David

2,228

Although it won't save me from a hard drive failure, it sure is nice to be saved from myself or (my nephew) when I'm away from my second drive. This is a delightful addition alone and together with versions for narrowing my ability to lose work done on a mac. – bmike Aug 01 '11 at 15:47
This will finally get me to use TM – r00fus Aug 05 '11 at 23:21
Oddly enough, this wasn't turned on by default for me when I upgraded... I had to turn it on myself via the command line (sudo tmutil enablelocal). – calum_b Oct 07 '11 at 16:44
1

FYi for others, you can tell if local backups are enabled in the Time Machine prefs. If enabled it will say something like "local snapshots as time permits". More info in the unofficial FAQ. – studgeek Jan 16 '13 at 13:42

bmike · Answer 41 · 2011-08-08T14:34:32.750

21

Hide or filter System Preferences

The customize menu item is new and let's you visually slim down the main icon view. enter image description here

If you only use a few of the preferences, you can hide most of them from view and have quick access to them all by clicking and holding on the Show All button until the alphabetical full list is drawn.

enter image description here

edited Aug 08 '11 at 14:34

answered Aug 02 '11 at 19:29

bmike

235,889

The initial build of Lion has a bug where if you customize a second time, you can't tell which are hidden, but I expect that to be resolved in the next patch. – bmike Aug 02 '11 at 19:40
1

Please, how do you present the checkboxes? – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 06:05
3

@Graham Perrin - System Preferences > View > Customize... – ocodo Sep 05 '11 at 01:59

score 20 · Answer 42 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

20

Multitouch in Safari

This is hard to describe but Apple made Safari feel like mobile Safari and it's great. When you scroll past the length of a page it bounces like mobile Safari. You can double tap with two fingers to zoom in on a column and ignore the ads or you can use Safari reader to do the same. Also there is a nice animation when you swipe left and right to navigate forward and back. The the end of this video shows the animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kSoYCp3mrY

Also there are a lot of multitouch gems in this Apple support article like when in Mission Control swipe down with two fingers to expand a group of windows belonging to one app.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4721

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 20 '11 at 20:17

Steve Moser

8,734

I couldn't get to three finger double tap for dictionary. can you? – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 14:19
I'm the opposite. I really don't want the bounce. It's Ok in safari, but it's enormously obnoxious in Finder, and there is no way to turn it off. – Fake Name Jul 22 '11 at 21:43
@the_great_monkey Three finger tap works for me. Just make sure you are using a Magic Trackpad (Not sure if it works with a Magic Mouse) and a Cocoa app (like Safari). – Steve Moser Jul 22 '11 at 23:26
@steve ok, kinda works for me, i wonder if I have to select the text first or not. command-shift-d is still easier and faster for me. – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 23:43
@the_great_monkey my answer not my comment is correct it is a double three finger tap not a single three finger tap. – Steve Moser Jul 22 '11 at 23:52
@steve I realised that, but somehow the text sometimes get deselected after the first tap. I think I just need to get used to it since it might have registered it as two fingers. – Enrico Susatyo Jul 23 '11 at 11:41
I hate that you can't search google from the address, and that you can't have the tabs on top, and that a three finger click doesn't open in a new tab, and that Undo closed tab only works once, yet the history overflow thing is amazing and the "integration" with the OS is great, but otherwise I'm itching to get back to chrome, but for some reason I keep with Safari. Oh and iCloud only syncs bookmarks not autofill/passwords/etc. – Jonathan. Jul 24 '11 at 18:02
Any way to turn off the time consuming bouncing animation? – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:37

score 20 · Answer 43 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:17

20

Finder menu for video encoding / conversion

The ability to encode video and create different resolutions and sizes natively within 10.7

CTRL Click on a video file and select "encode selected video"

Right click selected video

Select video

enter image description here

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:17

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 13 '11 at 15:05

Slick

1,051

1

Nice, I didn't know about this one! There goes Handbrake... – Steve Hill Sep 02 '11 at 11:30
Handbrake still has a place. Namely, working with terribly source codecs/formats. – Jason Salaz Oct 10 '11 at 08:26
I don't have this option when I right click a video. What file type does it have to be? – styfle Dec 12 '11 at 06:38
.MP4 and also .avi are the only options I've noticed – Slick Dec 13 '11 at 11:07

score 19 · Answer 44 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

19

QuickTime saves audio recordings as M4A.

QuickTime audio recordings are now saved as M4As, instead of MOVs. This makes is so much easier to use the sound in movies and GarageBand rather than having to use a tool to extract the audio track before using it.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 20 '11 at 14:36

Nathan Greenstein

28,910

score 17 · Answer 45 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

17

Select Multiple Ranges

open finder to a location with some files
click file in finder
hold shift
click another file (selects range)
hold cmd+shift
click another file out of selected range
hold shift
click another file out of selected range

Now you've selected 2 ranges.

You can keep selecting individual files and ranges this way all you want. This was working well in windows but never worked on Mac before Lion.

EDIT: This is not new to Lion, actually. I didn't know this either until I started to share this with friends, but they've insisted, and I've just confirmed, that this behavior was also possible in Snow Leopard.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 22:12

Max Chernyak

109

This is in list view, I suppose. In icon view (also on Leopard, I believe), you can drag a "lasso" with the mouse to select, then hold cmd or shift and drag another lasso to select more. – Henrik N Aug 01 '11 at 17:35

score 17 · Answer 46 · edited Aug 02 '11 at 18:55

17

Yearless Birthdays

Want to keep track of your friends/family birthdays? Addressbook now lets you add just the month and the day so you don't have to guess how old they are or add a generic year like 2000. These birthdays will then display nicely in iCal to remind you. Makes life nicer for me! :)

edited Aug 02 '11 at 18:55

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 02 '11 at 18:47

Jamie

683

score 16 · Answer 47 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

16

Mouse movement no longer wakes a display

Moving your mouse around can no longer wake the display. It requires a click/tap with your mouse or keyboard key press.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 29 '11 at 10:57

John

1,658

It looks as if touching/tapping (no clicking) MacBook's built-in trackpad doesn't seem to wake the display either. Preferred it when it did. – Michal M Jul 29 '11 at 11:06
1

Is the logic behind it... because it's more subtle to touch than to click/press? If so than it's a damn great design decision. – Enrico Susatyo Aug 01 '11 at 14:08
Clicking on the Magic Trackpad / Magic Mouse will wake the machine up. It probably is a design decision like the_great_monkey suggests. – Bryant Luk Aug 01 '11 at 14:35
I see, I was inaccurate. I have now corrected my answer. It applies to all mice and will still wake for a click/tap. – John Aug 03 '11 at 05:08
7

I always use the shift key... it won't actually enter a command or accept a dialog or change the caret, but will wake the screen. – r00fus Aug 05 '11 at 23:30

score 16 · Answer 48 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Multiple SMB share operations are queued rather than parallel

I often copy files around from my media machine in the living room to my laptop. Previously, if you selected a bunch of files, then a few more, then a few more -- the different batches would be done in parallel, slowing each of them down. Now, in Lion, they're queued such that one batch starts when the previous one is completed.

Graham Perrin · Answer 49 · 2011-12-12T07:59:19.693

16

Terminal is more keyboard accessible

⌥←

⌥→

Those are Apple's standard keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor from word to word.

And so on …

edited Dec 12 '11 at 07:59

answered Aug 02 '11 at 15:05

Graham Perrin

7,739
14
81
245

What does this do? – styfle Dec 12 '11 at 07:00
@Lri if these are new to Lion, feel free to edit the answer :-) – Graham Perrin Dec 12 '11 at 17:58

score 16 · Answer 50 · edited Mar 16 '17 at 15:45

16

PILE OF POO

PILE OF POO in Character Viewer in Lion

Credit to bmike for the hint and thanks to calavera for applying humour to controversy — the tag caught my eye (no pun intended) at Can one ask Hackintosh questions on Ask Different?

edited Mar 16 '17 at 15:45

Community

1

answered Aug 03 '11 at 15:08

Graham Perrin

7,739
14
81
245

Now that I can see imgur images, this post suddenly makes a lot more sense... – Jason Salaz Aug 04 '11 at 03:56

score 15 · Answer 51 · edited Aug 02 '11 at 18:57

15

More desciptive security dialogs

In past versions of OS X, the "SomeApp wants to make changes" dialog was king.

In Lion, these dialogs are more descriptive. For example, I've seen:

"SomeApp wants to install software"
"SomeApp wants to modify system files" (or something to that effect)

(Seen another cool one? Add it to this post!)

edited Aug 02 '11 at 18:57

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 31 '11 at 23:39

Nathan Greenstein

28,910

score 15 · Answer 52 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 01:26

15

New services for opening a New Terminal Window/Tab at Folder

It's disabled by default, but you can enable it in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Services

answered Aug 01 '11 at 01:26

jaydisc

475

score 14 · Answer 53 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

14

easy assignment of an app to a Desktop using the Dock

The option to make a program belong to all spaces is very handy. I only am surprised once when I am taken to a new space as it's easy to change the behavior when you have the program running.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '11 at 17:56

bmike

235,889

If you can't see those menu items, be aware that they are only visible when you actually have multiple desktops (spaces). – Peter Štibraný Jul 25 '11 at 18:16
Indeed - that is also a thing of beauty (to me). There is no need for options until there are more than one desktop defined! – bmike Jul 25 '11 at 18:38
2

It's nice to have a way to easily bind an Application to a space that way. It's terrible that Apple took away the whole list view so now I have to check each and every Application manually by itself, instead of being able to look up all bound Applications. – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:35
@MacLemon I added a comment to http://apple.stackexchange.com/q/18995/8546 encouraging more answers … – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 06:16

score 13 · Answer 54 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:24

13

Smart Zoom on a two-finger double tap

Once you enable (or verify) the system-wide preference, two-finger double tap to zoom in Safari. It lets you zoom into the content of a web page, just like in Mobile Safari. Coupled with full screen mode, it is really easy to resize the page content to fill the screen.

Double tap with two fingers to zoom into content

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:24

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 31 '11 at 21:11

Douglas

101

The counter point to this: if you use "tap with two fingers" for secondary clicking disabling Smart Zoom will speed up response time. With Smart Zoom enabled there is a short delay before the secondary click is registered. – Samuel Mikel Bowles Sep 12 '11 at 15:11
@Samuel: Yep, I asked if anyone had any tips on that over on super user, though I ended up answering my own question. I should probably have asked it here instead... http://superuser.com/questions/319229/how-do-i-enable-smart-zoom-in-osx-lion-only-for-safari/330521#330521 – Douglas Sep 13 '11 at 13:06

score 13 · Answer 55 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

13

Full screen Photo Booth.

I'm serious. I have twin four year olds and they love Photo Booth but the old Snow Leopard version only filled a small amount of the screen. The new is far more engaging and fun.

It works MUCH better in full screen view.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 23:00

David

2,228

The face recognition is cool too. (Choose the "Dizzy" or "Lovestruck" effects then move your head and see how the effect follows your head around the screen.) – Simon Whitaker Aug 01 '11 at 21:06

score 12 · Answer 56 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

12

Mission Control enables new workflows

(whilst frustrating some existing workflows)

My wife was very positively pleased with how Mission Control improves her workflow. MC window grouping, MRU in App Exposé and Spaces management are exactly what she wants.

I have been very negatively surprised at how much Mission Control is a regression for my workflow. It feels like I'm back to the awkward Tiger/Leopard days. I was really flying at window management with Snow Leopard Exposé and App Exposé, minimized windows in app icons and fixed spaces. I find Mission Control lacking in many areas (see my questions for details).

Mission Control fails to scale if you have many windows per application as windows get align-stacked with more than three windows per application. Spreading an application windows with the zoom-in gesture ought to help but does not as they don't spread apart enough nor show minimized windows. Besides one can't work around those limitations by going to the full-spread out App Exposé from Mission Control or preventively handle windows by minimizing them and having them show in Mission Control.

The primary downside is for workflows that expect to go to a space by number or place in the ordering. This is a big interruption for people that don't want Mission Control reordering spaces.

Luckily this reordering can be disabled and you can assign shortcuts to go to existing spaces too.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 07:49

Lloeki

1,846

Oh god this. I actually rolled back to snow leopard just because I find mission control unusable for managing lots of windows. – Fake Name Jul 22 '11 at 21:41
Like any big UI change - Mission Control can be hard for people not wanting change or interfering with long-held habits. What about Mission Control makes your wife smile - why have it in this list? How is it better (if at least for her case) – bmike Jul 25 '11 at 18:52
I strongly disagree that MissionControl helps workflow. It takes away spacial orientation in spaces for linearly lined up spaces. It takes away to have a spaces overview AND Exposé at the same time. All the windows are now stacked (similar to Window's Flip-3D) which obstructs all windows instead of giving you a good overview. It changes Focus (and applications) when entering and leaving. I personally consider MC the worst UI Apple has forced upon us in years. A HUGE productivity hindrance for me. – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:34
I prefer the way apps are stacked - it is much more visually organized than the grid if you have many windows.
Also App Exposé is still there, as a hot corner or shortcut.
– Paul Eccles Aug 01 '11 at 14:40
I think MC will take getting used to but I discovered that control + ↓ displays all open application windows. – mark Aug 15 '11 at 09:33
@Paul Eccles If you have more than three windows of an app, then the 3+ ones are stacked without any spread. I regularly use something like 5+ terms and 5+ browser windows. With Lion's MC+AE I can't move quickly from a term to a specific browser window nor the other way around. Previously it was one untargeted swipe+one wide-target click. Now it's one of: 3F swipe up for MC + 2F swipe up again (so with one finger less) for spread, look for window, click on part of an partially visible window; or move to reach dock, point over small application icon, 3F swipe down, pick window. It's a pain. – Lloeki Aug 16 '11 at 12:25
@mark, that's App Exposé (previously Dock Exposé in SL) and is of no help in my use case. You can reach it by swiping three fingers down on a TrackPad. – Lloeki Aug 16 '11 at 12:31
While writing about that new paragraph it occurred to me that the solution would be to replace the useless app window spread out triggered by the zoom in gesture in MC with App Exposé (atop MC), which would both show windows non-overlapping and include minimized windows, plus allowing one to switch between apps when on App Exposé. tl;dr: merge/integrate App Exposé into MC when zooming in. – Lloeki Oct 10 '11 at 07:46
I personally find the Mac unusable without something like Quicksilver for app launching (or Alfred) and Witch for window switching. Probably because I am keyboard person. – studgeek Jan 16 '13 at 13:45

score 12 · Answer 57 · edited Aug 03 '11 at 18:32

12

Window/dialog open animations

These animations are elegant and work well when other transitions are in play.

Also a tip, holding ⌥ Option while clicking on a space in mission control switches the mission control view to that space rather than switching to that space normally. This allows for multiple window management operations in one use of mission control

edited Aug 03 '11 at 18:32

Daniel Serodio

2,206

answered Jul 25 '11 at 05:00

Alexander

8,363

4

you can also swipe with 3 or 4 fingers to switch space in Mission Control – Jonathan. Jul 25 '11 at 06:51
2

ohh +1 for that trick with “option” – Agos Jul 28 '11 at 17:42
Jonathan you don't get it, try it and see what i mean. Open mission control and option click on another space, instead of activating that space as the current one, it just shows you it allowing u to manipulate it's windows in one mission control operation – Alexander Jul 29 '11 at 21:09
1

I didn't like this, use defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO to disable. – joerick Jul 31 '11 at 16:58
1

Anyone know a defaults command to get rid of the spaces-switching animation? It's really annoying to have the desktop icons fade out and in again each time I switch. Also it takes more than a second each time which is way too long for me. – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:37
@MacLemon make the question a question ;-) – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:38

score 11 · Answer 58 · answered Jul 26 '11 at 06:51

11

TextEdit got a serious facelift

answered Jul 26 '11 at 06:51

Samantha Catania

3,499
5
27
48

What's changed? – John Jul 29 '11 at 10:59
It has a Toolbar much like Pages. – Martin Marconcini Jul 29 '11 at 11:50

score 11 · Answer 59 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

11

Incremental backup with FileVault and TimeMachine

FileVault no longer cripples Time Machine.

Your data gets backed up whether you are logged in or not and the speed of the backups is much improved over Snow Leopard.

You incremental backups of the encrypted bundle took much longer than incremental backups of actual files. Coupled with the delay in backing up changes until a reboot or log out, this delayed the writes and let the backup drive's speed be a bottleneck.

With the new FileVault, they just work nicely together - incremental, background, unnoticed and up-to-date.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 22:28

nevan king

336

A huge improvement in usability - great call out! – bmike Jul 31 '11 at 22:32
identi.ca/conversation/77065575#notice-79639825 links to an overview (work in progress, begun before I joined Ask Different) with this opening statement: Do not rush to abandon FileVault 1-secured home directories (Snow Leopard) in favour of Core Storage FileVault 2 (Lion). If you have any questions concerning what's there — in particular, how to backup FileVault 1 home directories using Time Machine without logging out — I'd now love to be amongst those answering in Ask Different! – Graham Perrin Aug 02 '11 at 16:43

score 11 · Answer 60 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:16

More International Localizations for system Text to Speech

The new text to speech voices included in Lion (or downloadable, post-install) are now no longer US English only - but with many diverse variants of English, and select other foreign languages - e.g. Swedish.

This is helpful for learning foreign languages, in combination with the "say" command, for example.

Built-in voices VoiceOver in OS X Lion includes built-in voices that speak 22 languages: Arabic, English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Turkish, Cantonese, Mandarin (China), and Mandarin (Taiwan). In addition, other languages are available for downloads including Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Romanian, Slovak, and Thai, as well as alternative voices with different dialects such as English (UK), English (Australia), English (South Africa), and Spanish (Mexico).

High-quality voices In addition to the built-in voices in Lion, you can download higher-quality versions of the languages from VoiceOver Utility. Choose Customize from the Voice pop-up menu in the Speech pane.

score 11 · Answer 61 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 17:41

Disconnecting an iPhone doesn't wake display anymore.

With Leopard, I would often put the computer to sleep only to realize I hadn't disconnected my iPhone. Disconnecting my iPhone would wake the computer back up.

With Lion, unplugging the iPhone does seem to wake the computer up, but the screen stays asleep. And it seems to fall back asleep in a minute or so if left untouched.

score 11 · Answer 62 · edited Aug 02 '11 at 15:54

11

DJ your mac using Album Artwork screensaver

Quicklook works from the iTunes "Album Artwork" screensaver!

This lets you play music by clicking on the albums. You can even do this without unlocking the screen.

edited Aug 02 '11 at 15:54

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 02 '11 at 13:34

Geoff

1

what? How did you find this one? – Tim Büthe Aug 03 '11 at 07:56
Good job finding that out!! – reg Aug 09 '11 at 19:20
Very, very, very cool! – daviesgeek Jul 08 '12 at 22:25

score 11 · Answer 63 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:35

11

Mission Control supports unique backgrounds per space

The ability to have different desktop backgrounds in different spaces. Set the background, add a space, then set a new background in that space. Not sure if it is a bug or a feature, because it doesn't specify that it is for that space only. When you change it, it changes your default, but not backgrounds on existing spaces. enter image description here

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:35

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 09 '11 at 12:02

xdumaine

517

It is the feature not bug. But I don't see the reason why don't they mention space/desktop name while changing. – palaniraja Aug 09 '11 at 18:24

score 10 · Answer 64 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

10

Autocorrect services from the system

I am happy to see that one of the most helpful-yet-annoying features of iOS has made it into Lion - Autocorrect. Seeing the little pop-up with the suggestion and then seeing my spelling error automatically corrected made me smile. (I'll have to play with it a bit more to figure out exactly how to see other suggestions and cancel an incorrect one, but this is a great feature in the right context.)

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 22 '11 at 13:35

Moshe

8,761

do you know how to disable it in safari? – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 13:41
I checked Safari preference but couldn't find anything. A quick google search though, led me to this. – Moshe Jul 22 '11 at 13:52
Ok I got it – i want it in some apps, but not safari. The day to do it is to click on any text box in safari (like this one), and the right click, then spelling and grammar -> untick correct automatically. :) – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 13:56
4

You mean the "way to do it", not the "day to do it", yes? ;-) – Moshe Jul 22 '11 at 14:13
Ha! That's correct! Maybe I should turn the auto correct back on :) – Enrico Susatyo Jul 22 '11 at 14:20
That would be some auto-correct, if it takes "the day to do it" and suggests "the way to do it" for you! – GEdgar Jul 22 '11 at 15:27
2

How do you enable this? I love apples autocorrect, it completely removed the need for English teachers moaning about spelling. – Jonathan. Jul 24 '11 at 01:46
@Jonathan it's enabled by default – Enrico Susatyo Jul 26 '11 at 12:44

score 10 · Answer 65 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

10

Spell check service is aware of a document's language

The spell checker auto detects what language you're writing it and switches to the correct dictionary!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 22:09

ccs

1

I think this worked in Snow Leopard too... And it rocks! – reg Aug 09 '11 at 19:18

score 10 · Answer 66 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:30

Finder: select items & create a new folder containing them.

Upon having the thought to organize some documents, the workflow is much accelerated. Simply select the items, activate the service to make a new folder and then rename the new folder.

This is so much better than the old, interrupt your thought to make a new folder, find it (if you sort by name), rename it, go back and select the files, and drag it to the new folder.

As a bonus, Undo support (Command-Z) of the "New folder from selection" has a very cool animation like the drag flocking. I spent 10 or 15 minutes just "New folder from selection", command Z, shift command Z.

score 10 · Answer 67 · answered Aug 06 '11 at 01:07

Photo Booth now has an option to disable screen flash

Before you could suppress the screen flash by holding Shift but I don't recall there being a persistent option. For those of us with glasses who are sick of taking pictures that look like we're witnessing nuclear weapons testing, this is a welcome feature.

score 9 · Answer 68 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

9

external keyboard `F1`/`F2` control brightness

Pressing F1 or F2 keys on an external keyboard will brighten or dim the display.

Previously those keys does nothing. This was very un-handy having to reach up to the laptop keyboard to dim its screen.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 29 '11 at 02:21

Enrico Susatyo

2,998

Previously this was on F14/F15 if I remember correctly. – MacLemon Aug 01 '11 at 12:38
@MacLemon Oh really? My keyboard only goes up to F12 :( shame on apple for not selling full sized keyboards anymore. (Anyway, the F1/F2 keys have the brigthness logo on there!) – Enrico Susatyo Aug 01 '11 at 13:29
2

I run Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and my F1/F2 keys on the usb keyboard brighten and dim my display. – atroon Aug 02 '11 at 12:56
If the brightness symbols are already printed on keys, then those keys will usually work that way. F14/F15 will work on other (full sized) keyboards without printed brightness keys. (Like the Apple Pro Keyboard I just tested on Lion and I can confirm this still works.) – MacLemon Aug 02 '11 at 14:03
it worked on imacs in SL, doesn't work if you plug it into laptops in SL. In Lion it works in both imac and macbooks. – Enrico Susatyo Aug 02 '11 at 14:21

score 9 · Answer 69 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:20

9

Automator can send a URL to Quick Look rather than a browser.

With automator, you can now make a website open as a web app. You just have to make Automator open a URL as a “Website Popup”. Very nice unadvertised feature.

Andy Ihnatko explains it well - you can make a minimalistic desktop web app with ease.

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:20

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 31 '11 at 18:41

Pierre Touzet

1

Where from Apple can I get the Website Popup action for Automator? (When I used Automator in Lion, the action described by Andy Ihnatko was not available.) – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 09:45

score 9 · Answer 70 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

9

Unsupported hardware notices

This caught me off guard, but it did not make me smile:

enter image description here

The icon in System Preferences has also been renamed from "Print & Fax" to "Print & Scan".

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 31 '11 at 23:29

Kyle Cronin

23,242
21
83
143

score 9 · Answer 71 · edited May 20 '13 at 05:54

9

Wi-Fi Diagnostics are pretty and useful

Option-click the Wi-Fi status menu to reveal options such as Wi-Fi Diagnostics …

Wi-Fi Diagnostics

It's very good for monitoring and testing wireless networks.

If you prefer to not show Wi-Fi status in the menu bar, then to find the app:

Finder
Go
/System/Library/CoreServices

edited May 20 '13 at 05:54

Graham Perrin

7,739
14
81
245

answered Sep 05 '11 at 22:37

Slick

1,051

score 8 · Answer 72 · edited Mar 05 '13 at 10:55

8

Launchpad Background Wallpaper Effects

Being able to change the Launchpad background effect with Control + Option + Command + B in 10.7.3 and 10.8, or ⌘ + B, is pretty cool. You can make any Desktop Wallpaper black and white, blurred, sharp, color, or any combination of those. It only is capable of using your current desktop's wallpaper however, unless any of you know how to specify a different wallpaper just for Launchpad. It's really a nice customization option!

edited Mar 05 '13 at 10:55

Graham Miln

43,776

answered Aug 16 '11 at 16:18

artemisc360

37

In 10.7.3, this has changed to Control+Option+Command+B. (via http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/06/switch-background-styles-of-launchpad-in-os-x-10-7-3/) – program247365 Sep 14 '12 at 02:55
Command-B doesn't work for me in 10.8, but control-option-command-B does. Great find! – daGUY Mar 05 '13 at 14:15

score 8 · Answer 73 · edited Oct 11 '11 at 15:47

8

Motion Blur in Mission Control

While Mission Control is open, press ⌘+M to enable a motion blur effect.

You can see the effect when application windows gather/disperse to/from Mission Control and, also, when changing desktops (in Mission Control).

To disable it, press ⌘+M again.

edited Oct 11 '11 at 15:47

Jari Keinänen

8,210

answered Oct 07 '11 at 16:54

calum_b

5,921
30
37

I don't see this in 10.7.3 – gentmatt Apr 02 '12 at 14:49
I concur, seems to be gone, or they've changed the shortcut. – calum_b Apr 02 '12 at 21:52

score 8 · Answer 74 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 08:56

8

Terminal.app now supports 256 colors.

You can test this yourself by running the “Colortest: xterm 256 color test and visual colors list” script.

Before (screenshot taken under OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard):

After (screenshot taken under OS X 10.7 Lion):

answered Mar 23 '12 at 08:56

Mathias Bynens

11,642
13
66
111

score 7 · Answer 75 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

7

Native support for Microsoft DFS

We use Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) at work and for years mounting Windows shares has always been a headache because of DFS. With Lion, DFS works like a charm, no more 50 individual mounts now its just smb://server/dfsroot

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 01 '11 at 15:02

Ryan Horrisberger

553
1
4
11

score 7 · Answer 76 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

7

Wireless Internet Sharing supports 5Ghz channels (802.11n)

I use an old Mac Mini in my bedroom as a media center, and have used OS X's built-in Internet Sharing to make it act as a wireless access point and share the ethernet connection.

Up to Snow Leopard, it only supported sharing on the 2.4Ghz frequency, which in my neighborhood is so congested as to be nearly useless. But in Lion there are four 5Ghz frequencies available to share on.

Now if they'd only allow better wireless security than WEP-128, it'd be perfect!

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 01 '11 at 18:10

rodbegbie

109

2

The fact that there is still 40-bit WEP as an option proves that Apple doesn't take security seriously. – Kornel Aug 07 '11 at 16:26

score 7 · Answer 77 · edited Jul 06 '12 at 21:30

7

Rich Text welcome banners for labs or corporate settings

I have to manage Macs at work, and it has always been a challenge to have an acceptable use login banner for people to agree to before logging in. Either editing .plist files, or downloading 3rd-party software was required. However, now Lion lets you put a text or rich-text file in /Library/Security and it will show up at login. Apple even puts a little example for you on this webpage

This is a very welcome development!

edited Jul 06 '12 at 21:30

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

answered Aug 04 '11 at 00:16

Matthew

1

And it has Comic Sans on it. What a travesty. – Jason Salaz Feb 03 '13 at 11:03

score 7 · Answer 78 · answered Aug 12 '11 at 20:41

7

Calculate all sizes in Finder is ridiculously fast now

I've always avoided using the Calculate all sizes option.

( ⌘ + J ) It made Finder run so slowly in the past.

enter image description here

It runs now like butter on a hot skillet.

answered Aug 12 '11 at 20:41

bmike

235,889

score 7 · Answer 79 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

7

QuickLook in Mission Control

When in Mission Control, you can invoke Quicklook on a certain window that your cursor hovers by pressing space.

enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Apr 02 '12 at 14:56

gentmatt

49,722

This is not new in Lion — Exposé in Snow Leopard had the same behavior. – Mathias Bynens Apr 02 '12 at 15:02
@MathiasBynens Really? I did not know that. Thanks! – gentmatt Apr 02 '12 at 15:06
3

In Snow Leopard, once you hit space, you could mouse around and it would zoom whatever window your cursor was over. In Lion, this no longer happens. I can't decide if I prefer this or not... – daGUY May 16 '12 at 15:42

score 6 · Answer 80 · edited Sep 12 '11 at 15:17

6

Mutitouch Page Turning in iCal

You can move between months in iCal with a 2 finger drag - it has the same page turning animation as iBooks on iPad.

edited Sep 12 '11 at 15:17

Samuel Mikel Bowles

4,176

answered Aug 03 '11 at 09:25

ajc

21

score 6 · Answer 81 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:47

6

Quick Look to Track Shipments from within Mail.app

I love the ability to track shipments straight from Mail.app without going to a browser...opens it right there in the thread for you with a neat little window (assuming the tracking number doesn't have a crazy format)... :-)

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:47

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 04 '11 at 21:52

Mark S.

1

score 5 · Answer 82 · edited Jan 19 '15 at 16:15

I found that iCal allows you to drag an event (so you can open another one).

Click on any event to get the popup:

enter image description here

Then click on the areas in the green boxes of that popup and drag until it transforms into some sort of "palette".

The truth is that you can drag from any gray piece, but if the popup has a scroll area (because it's too large) then dragging from the scrollable area may not work. Try creating an event and adding a very large note to see the difference.

Once you drag it, it will look like this, so you can click another event and do the same, and you can have as many as you can pile :)

enter image description here

_{Sorry about the blurring on the images, but there were names there ;)}

score 5 · Answer 83 · answered Oct 21 '11 at 05:59

5

Lion allows you to create user names containing dots.

The lack of this frustrated standardisation with our corporate networks back in Leopard. Now I have the same user name over Mac, Windows and Unix.

answered Oct 21 '11 at 05:59

nOw2

276

score 5 · Answer 84 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 08:53

OS X Lion comes with Vim 7.3 installed.

Older OS X versions had Vim 7.2.

$ vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Jun 24 2011 20:00:09)
Compiled by [email protected]
Normal version without GUI.  Features included (+) or not (-):
-arabic +autocmd -balloon_eval -browse +builtin_terms +byte_offset +cindent 
-clientserver -clipboard +cmdline_compl +cmdline_hist +cmdline_info +comments 
-conceal +cryptv +cscope +cursorbind +cursorshape +dialog_con +diff +digraphs 
-dnd -ebcdic -emacs_tags +eval +ex_extra +extra_search -farsi +file_in_path 
+find_in_path +float +folding -footer +fork() -gettext -hangul_input +iconv 
+insert_expand +jumplist -keymap -langmap +libcall +linebreak +lispindent 
+listcmds +localmap -lua +menu +mksession +modify_fname +mouse -mouseshape 
-mouse_dec -mouse_gpm -mouse_jsbterm -mouse_netterm -mouse_sysmouse 
+mouse_xterm +multi_byte +multi_lang -mzscheme +netbeans_intg -osfiletype 
+path_extra -perl +persistent_undo +postscript +printer -profile -python 
-python3 +quickfix +reltime -rightleft -ruby +scrollbind +signs +smartindent 
-sniff +startuptime +statusline -sun_workshop +syntax +tag_binary 
+tag_old_static -tag_any_white -tcl +terminfo +termresponse +textobjects +title
 -toolbar +user_commands +vertsplit +virtualedit +visual +visualextra +viminfo 
+vreplace +wildignore +wildmenu +windows +writebackup -X11 -xfontset -xim -xsmp
 -xterm_clipboard -xterm_save 
   system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
     user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
      user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/share/vim"
Compilation: gcc -c -I. -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=0 -Iproto -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe
Linking: gcc -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -o vim -lncurses

(That “Compiled by [email protected]” line looks awesome.)

score 4 · Answer 85 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 16:06

4

The Zoom ⊕ button will attempt to maximize

The Zoom button on the windows behaves more like Maximize on Windows OS rather than the old behavior where it usually made the window smaller (or the alternate saved/previous size). Be sure to experiment with the shift key when using the Lion controls.

edited Oct 07 '11 at 16:06

bmike

235,889

answered Jul 22 '11 at 20:42

AngryHacker

2,375

The Zoom button has been around for a long time. Has it changed its behavior or something? – Chas. Owens Jul 23 '11 at 19:53
@Chas Maybe its called something else. This is what I am referring to: http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/07/04/lion/zoom-widget.png and http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/07/04/lion/unzoom-widget.png – AngryHacker Jul 23 '11 at 23:58
That is fullscreen apps, and I hear it is broken for multiple monitors. – Chas. Owens Jul 24 '11 at 00:28
“zoom” is the traditional name for the green button in the “traffic lights” top left of each window :) – Agos Jul 24 '11 at 09:54
6

I think you'll change your mind once you plug in a second monitor :( – Nick Bedford Jul 27 '11 at 22:46
@Chas using two displays here, I believe the use of one screen for full screen (not full screens) is by design — at least for Build 11A511. Link to a question where multiple full screens are required, I'll provide an answer. – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:14

score 4 · Answer 86 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

`⌥⌘L` opens the Downloads window in Finder

In Snow Leopard, this key combination was recognised by Safari.

In Lion

~~Safari no longer recognises the keys (see comments beneath Safari download controls and animations)~~ ⌥⌘L was restored in Safari 5.1.1.
⌥⌘L is recognised by Finder.

Before Lion, I often used the orderly and sizeable downloads window of Safari as a tool for organisation, so the disorderly popover in Lion was a shock to the system. I particularly hate the disorder. Also I often thought to myself … "One day, I'll accidentally click Clear … that button's far too near the scroll bar.".

When eventually that accident occurred I cursed, loudly. It was comparable to losing a list of to-dos.

I no longer hate the popover in Safari, but I haven't learnt to love Finder (it fails to find most folders that I seek), so I'm in limbo, somewhat disorganised.

score 4 · Answer 87 · answered Oct 12 '11 at 19:01

I don't know whether this is lion exclusive feature or not:

three fingers momentum drag

select three finger dragging in the trackpad gesture panel.
place 3 fingers in the trackpad still on the item you want to drag.(I use forefinger middle and ring finger)
use only one finger( I use forefinger) swipe like nature scrolling, you'll see the item move momentum

score 4 · Answer 88 · answered Mar 23 '12 at 10:01

4

Mail now displays custom header

Under

Mail->Preferences->Viewing->Show Header Detail->Custom

enter image description here

you can specify custom headers that will be presented to you above the mails: enter image description here

answered Mar 23 '12 at 10:01

bot47

7,742

score 4 · Answer 89 · answered May 16 '12 at 15:40

Authentication dialogs shake when you enter your password incorrectly

The "shaking head" animation that has long been used in OS X's login screen to indicate an incorrect password has been added to the authentication dialogs present throughout the OS. I love this! It's so clever and you immediately "get" what it means.

score 3 · Answer 90 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Safari and background tabs

Safari appears to aggressively manage its memory footprint by unloading unused pages then reloading them as needed, much like Safari in iOS.

You can see this in action if you open up a large number of tabs and then leave some of them alone and unviewed for a while. When you return to a tab that hasn't been viewed in a long time, Safari will quickly reload it.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Jul 24 '11 at 16:48

cobra libre

206

2

Do you know if this can be turned off (maybe on a session to session basis)? Sometimes one may not want to have pages to reload silently. – Debilski Jul 25 '11 at 22:00
Yes, I hate this so much. I'm a programmer with so many open tabs while Eclipse is eating my RAM :( – Enrico Susatyo Jul 26 '11 at 13:25
This sounds terribly dangerous. You can't just reload some pages. – Chas. Owens Jul 27 '11 at 18:52
i hate this tab-reloading. Any way disable it? – clt60 Jul 28 '11 at 23:13
1

It seems to only be doing it for pages that have their cache preferences set correctly. So it won't do it if there is a web form that is half filled out, or if a page is set to non-caching. – X-Istence Jul 31 '11 at 21:34
@Chas and all there is representation of content, but I believe that it is not reloading. Use the Activity window of Safari to reassure yourself that it is not; in that window, double-click the title of any page. – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '11 at 05:31

score 3 · Answer 91 · answered Aug 03 '11 at 10:48

3

Mission Control + Spaces

You can use Mission Control to easily drag and drop apps from one Space to another.

enter image description here

answered Aug 03 '11 at 10:48

gary

228

3

it used to be easier -- in snow leopard, you could drag from a different space to the current one, now you have to switch to the other space and drag it to the one you want :( – Noah Aug 08 '11 at 02:00
dang. (i was one of those people who didn't know about spaces before) – gary Aug 08 '11 at 02:43
1

Yeah... this is definitely a thumbs down when compared to the way Spaces worked. – TheWellington Sep 13 '11 at 16:29
1

@Noah: hold option and click the space you want - it'll slide that space into view without activating it. Then you can move windows between spaces without having to jump in and out of Mission Control every time you switch spaces. – daGUY May 16 '12 at 15:46
@daGUY: cool, that at least makes it less annoying. – Noah May 17 '12 at 01:27

score 3 · Answer 92 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Trackpad scrolling in Stickies Windows

Scrolling with the trackpad now works in Stickies windows, and scroll bars appear. I wish the scroll bars would honor my preference to always be visible, but at least this is an improvement.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 05 '11 at 19:08

Andy Lee

1

score 3 · Answer 93 · edited Aug 14 '11 at 16:11

3

Thumbs up: Display icon in the menu bar has been modernised.

Display Icon in menu bar

Thumbs down: But the grey for Back/Forward button is not dark enough to contrast with the inactive state.

Back button

edited Aug 14 '11 at 16:11

Community

1

answered Aug 09 '11 at 18:21

palaniraja

664

score 3 · Answer 94 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Finder gives better feedback when Trash has an error

Specific, actionable feedback. enter image description here

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 12 '11 at 12:39

DublinJimbo

314

score 3 · Answer 95 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Use a date in Mail.app to make a quick iCal event

I just saw something while reading TidBITs in Mail. When you hover over a date, a dashed outline appears around it. When clicked, it pops up a window like this, which allows you too add an event to iCal with this date and the email subject. It's pretty useful!

iCal Popup

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Aug 16 '11 at 16:55

artemisc360

37

I'm relatively certain this feature was introduced in Leopard... Though the UI for creating the event looks vastly improved! – Dan J Sep 25 '11 at 17:37
The improvement in the UI makes this Lion worthy. It's certainly a tiny thing compared to the overall feature as well. – bmike Oct 07 '11 at 15:46

score 3 · Answer 96 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Removed Auto-Column Resizing

This tiny change annoyed me yesterday after finishing my first Lion upgrade, auto-column sizing has vanished.

This used to work on any grid/column control, double click the right edge of a column heading and it would size to the widest content of that column.

This WAS a really handy tool in, well... pretty much everywhere. It's a complete mystery why it's been killed off.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Sep 02 '11 at 00:10

ocodo

1,673

I suppose this is an oversight. Is it just broken in Finder? It works in Activity Monitor for example. – Andrew Vit Sep 03 '11 at 10:39
Interesting, I just assumed TBH that it was the UI control. I did check, and this dbl-click sizing works in Finder's Column Mode. Hopefully it'll get patched. – ocodo Sep 04 '11 at 22:49

score 3 · Answer 97 · edited Dec 16 '11 at 00:25

Launchpad

This feature migrated from iOS brings the home screen of iOS to the mac.

I have a few applications that I do not want sitting in the dock as they aren't used often. But I hated having to go through finder to find them. With Launchpad, I can tap a button which opens up a swiping iOS style menu where I can easily find an app I want to use, and open it with just the one click.

Splendid.

score 3 · Answer 98 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

3

Pinch to Zoom

Snow Leopard had this feature, but it didn't work in every application. With Lion, this works in pretty much every application. A major one for me is Final Cut Pro. Being able to pinch to zoom makes video editing so much easier.

edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Feb 22 '12 at 17:18

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 2 · Answer 99 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Use Keyboard to Control Slideshow Screensaver

In the slideshow screen saver, pressing the space bar or arrow keys pauses and navigates between the pictures in the slideshow.

In Snow Leopard, I can't count the number of times I saw a picture in the screen saver I loved that I wanted to look at more closely or go back to. When I accidentally found this in Lion, it literally made me smile.

gary · Answer 100 · 2011-09-24T13:45:09.357

2

Launchpad

In Launchpad, holding down Option makes your icons dance or "jiggle". This also occurs when you click and hold an icon. I don't see the point other than making the user smile.

Edit: JAG2007's comment points out that apps which you've downloaded from the app store can be deleted from launchpad by using the Option key and selecting X.

edited Sep 24 '11 at 13:45

answered Sep 04 '11 at 12:30

gary

228

2

Neither did I. – Jari Keinänen Sep 04 '11 at 13:13
1

For apps you've installed from the Mac App store, you'll notice an "X" to delete them from launchpad, just like on iOS. Presumably that uninstalls them from launchpad (though they are saved in your Mac App store account). – Joel Glovier Sep 24 '11 at 13:17

score 2 · Answer 101 · edited Feb 03 '13 at 03:17

2

QuickLook now shows the pages of a PDF in scrollable sidebar:

I just found this one and it is really helpful. I don't really need Preview anymore, as Quicklook suffices for almost all my PDF needs.

edited Feb 03 '13 at 03:17

David Holdeman

992

answered Aug 03 '12 at 06:21

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 1 · Answer 102 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:40

The three finger drag is confusing

The three-finger-drag gesture does what it says it will, not what I thought it would.

What I expected:

Put three fingers on the trackpad, move them, the window under the cursor moves.

What happens:

Put three fingers on the trackpad, move them, the window under the cursor acts as if you have click-and-dragged. If the cursor was on Mail you might drag an email around. If it was on Safari, you drag some text snippet or image about.

To actually move a window, you need to move the cursor to the title bar and then drag with three fingers.

I thought it would be a nice meta-way to move "a thing I am working on" out of the way like shuffling paper on a desk. It's not, and I find it just as clunky as double-tap-drag. Try moving around in Google Street View with it, for instance.

I love this feature, I find it very intuitive – Samantha Catania Mar 04 '12 at 11:12 — Samantha Catania, Mar 04 '12 at 11:12

score 1 · Answer 103 · edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:41

1

Mail defaults to date sort by most recent

In Mail, when creating new mailboxes/folders, the emails are now sorted by default by date in descending order, i.e. freshest email first. Previously, you had to switch from ascending to descending, so from reverse chronological order to chronological order, for every new folder/mailbox created. A small change that made me smile and is most welcome!

edited Oct 07 '11 at 15:41

bmike

235,889

answered Aug 08 '11 at 11:00

Andreas Karsten

1

1

It's only welcome to people who like to read their email backwards. :-) – zzz Aug 12 '11 at 14:21

score 1 · Answer 104 · answered Feb 03 '13 at 03:16

1

Safari being two processes

When a site has some javascript that hangs the web content process, I can still add new tabs, navigate in other tabs, etc.

answered Feb 03 '13 at 03:16

David Holdeman

992

score 0 · Answer 105 · answered Feb 21 '12 at 18:27

0

System Preferences is so much faster when loading a preferences pane. Click on a pane and it loads almost immediately. I'm constantly amazed at this one every time I go into System Preferences.

answered Feb 21 '12 at 18:27

daviesgeek

38,901
52
159
203

score 0 · Answer 106 · answered Mar 04 '12 at 11:13

0

App Exposé shows all windows of an application even windows in other spaces and full screen apps!

answered Mar 04 '12 at 11:13

Samantha Catania

3,499
5
27
48

score -2 · Answer 107 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

only These Three New Features

made me want Lion, and I've mitigated all of them

so I don't want Lion, nor any subsquent version of Mac OS X,

and neither should any conscientious and responsible admin

(Control is an illusion: ignoring request for one feature per answer. Sue me.)

purge

Generally, OS X has decent memory management. But a minor annoyance that many have noticed is that, when watching in Activity Monitor while using Applications over time, the inactive memory will begin increasing, and while the system will eventually return that memory to free memory, when it does this is arbitrary and not consistent. The result is there are times when Applications need more memory, and while it should be available, instead of the system immediately returning inactive memory to the system, the application will squeeze what ever it is doing in the available memory without doing so.

The purpose of the purge command is detailed in its man page that I linked above, but a side-effect of running it is that all inactive memory will be returned to free memory. So running purge in the Terminal is a manual way for a user to free up that inactive memory.

Technically, the command first appeared in 10.6 Snow Leopard, but only if you installed the Developer Tools (xcode_3.2.6_and_ios_sdk_4.3.dmg), which is what I did to avoid the temptation of upgrading unnecessarily.

realistic New Text-To-Speech Voices

I found them to be quite amazing, especially Emily, Jill, Samantha, and Tom. Samantha, btw, is the same as the voice of Siri. I found upgrading difficult to resist for these alone, until I discovered how to install these new voices in Snow Leopard, which thankfully has entirely quelled this irrational temptation to upgrade.

full-screen Applications

Pretty much System-wide, Lion introduced the ability to take applications full-screen, hiding the Dock, the Menu Bar, and other applications. But there are only two applications that I really wanted to use full-screen.

full-screen Safari

Thankfully, Apple released Safari 5.1 for Snow Leopard, and that was one less temptation to upgrade.

full-screen Terminal

This was the one last temptation to upgrade to Lion, and the strongest one. I was envious for a long time of this single and long-time functionality available to users of Windows and its command prompt (cmd.exe). When this feature was revealed in Lion, I nearly fell out of my chair. I was only able to duplicate this functionality in Snow Leopard after discovering iTerm2. But the MacPorts port of iTerm2 was no longer supported in Snow Leopard, and the build would fail immediately. So I edited the Portfile for the iTerm2 port to allow it to build. I'll explain how I did this for other Snow Leopard lovers below:

How to build iTerm2 on Snow Leopard using MacPorts

MacPorts

MacPorts is a robust, stable, mature and easy to use package management solution, for OS X. It is modeled after FreeBSD's ports system, which has been adopted as the basis of NetBSD's pkgsrc.

install Xcode 3.2.6 for Snow Leopard

MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_3.2.6_and_ios_sdk_4.3.dmg is the most recent version for Snow Leopard (after registerring for a free developer account, and logging into developer.apple.com, that link will begin your xcode download). Once the download completes, open your Terminal.app and complete the installation:

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ hdiutil attach -quiet -noverify -nobrowse -noautoopen ~/Downloads/xcode_3.2.6_and_ios_sdk_4.3.dmg
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/Xcode\ and\ iOS\ SDK/Xcode\ and\ iOS\ SDK.mpkg -target /
 Password: 
 ...
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ hdiutil detach -quiet /Volumes/Xcode\ and\ iOS\ SDK/
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

build MacPorts 2.1.1 for Snow Leopard

Get to know MacPorts

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.1.1.tar.gz
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ tar xzvf MacPorts-2.1.1.tar.gz
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ cd MacPorts-2.1.1
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ ./configure
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ make
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo make install     # *not war!*
 Password:
 ...
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ cd ..
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ rm -rf Macports-*
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate
 Password:
 ...
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ diskutil quiet repairPermissions /
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

add MacPorts to your $PATH:

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/ man:$MANPATH
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

edit iTerm2 Portfile

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ cd $(port dir iTerm2)
 1337haX0r@snobox:/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports/aqua/iTerm2$ sudo cp -p Portfile Portfile.orig
 Password:
 1337haX0r@snobox:/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports/aqua/iTerm2$ cd
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port edit --editor vi iTerm2
 ...
 # change original line 36: "if {${os.platform} eq "darwin" && ${os.major} < 11} {"
 #                 to read: "if {${os.platform} eq "darwin" && ${os.major} < 10} {"
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ # or just download this edited Portfile http://pastebin.com/51VWPySF
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ # and replace the original:
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ curl -O  http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=51VWPySF && mv download.php\?i\=51VWPySF Portfile
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ cd $(port dir iTerm2)
 1337haX0r@snobox:/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports/aqua/iTerm2$ sudo cp -p Portfile Portfile.orig
 Password:
 1337haX0r@snobox:/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports/aqua/iTerm2$ cd
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo mv Portfile /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports/aqua/iTerm/Portfile
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

build iTerm2

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port -vsc install iTerm2
 ...
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ # iTerm2 will appear in /Applications/MacPorts/
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

And you can keep everything updated simply with:

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port -vsc selfupdate
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port -vsc upgrade installed
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

If for whatever reason you are unsatisfied and/or need to remove MacPorts:

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed
 Password:
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo port -dfp uninstall all
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo rm -rf /opt/local  
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ 
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ # you can keep the GUI applications you built, or delete them:
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$ sudo rm -rf /Applications/MacPorts
 1337haX0r@snobox:~$

and Overcome Your Lion-envy !!

The comment about how Inactive Memory keeps increasing reflects the common misperception that this is a Bad Thing. What's actually bad is Free Memory, which is RAM you bought and paid for but is not being used. Yosemite describes Inactive Memory as File Cache, which more accurately describes what it is and why it's a Good Thing. — ganbustein, Dec 29 '14 at 01:16

What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard?

107 Answers107

Using the FaceTime camera to add signatures to PDFs in Preview.

Finder - make a new folder with a selection of files

Accessing accented characters has been made a lot easier.

All window edges allow resizing

Stateful Terminal app

System Information is more visual and speedy

tmutil is a command line interface into Time Machine.

Quicklook previews within spotlight search results

Quicklook natively supports animated GIFs

Login sheet for WiFi network TOS negotiation

Natural Scrolling

Clamshell Mode simplified for external displays

Battery, Time and WiFi shown on Login Screen

If you enable a hidden preference, clicking the time will show in order:

Apps like Preview can quit themselves when not needed

The system will quit apps too if resources are low

Finder merging of folders and files

Safari offers to set up Mail, Calendars and Chat

Multitouch gesture to activate the dictionary/thesaurus/Wikipedia

Drag flocking with multiple selections

Drag flocking:

Multi-touch swiping of page history in Safari.

Show a message when the screen is locked

Man page viewer / smart data selectors in Terminal app

Safari opens new tabs relative to the current tab

QuickLook in Stacks

Safari download controls and animations

Right clicking on dock icon gives a list of recently opened items.

The redesigned lock screen

QuickLook runs in the background

Interface buttons are now RoundRects

OS support for full screen apps!

Mail.app is full of smiles and neat animations

The loupe magnifier in Preview (is smart and context-aware)

Mission Control: move all app windows by mouse

You can trash things whilst trash is emptying

FileVault 2 encrypts all your data on the drive

(not just the home directory of users opting for FileVault)

Improved app switcher - pause at the end of the loop

Finder remove (cut) happens after move is complete

Easy access to unicode characters and glyphs (Emoji)

No scrollbars!

Quick Look previews URL contents directly from Mail/iChat

Local Time Machine snapshots

Hide or filter System Preferences

Multitouch in Safari

Finder menu for video encoding / conversion

QuickTime saves audio recordings as M4A.

Select Multiple Ranges

Yearless Birthdays

Mouse movement no longer wakes a display

Multiple SMB share operations are queued rather than parallel

Terminal is more keyboard accessible

PILE OF POO

More desciptive security dialogs

New services for opening a New Terminal Window/Tab at Folder

easy assignment of an app to a Desktop using the Dock

Smart Zoom on a two-finger double tap

Full screen Photo Booth.

Mission Control enables new workflows

(whilst frustrating some existing workflows)

Window/dialog open animations

Incremental backup with FileVault and TimeMachine

More International Localizations for system Text to Speech

Disconnecting an iPhone doesn't wake display anymore.

DJ your mac using Album Artwork screensaver

Mission Control supports unique backgrounds per space

Autocorrect services from the system

Spell check service is aware of a document's language

Finder: select items & create a new folder containing them.

Photo Booth now has an option to disable screen flash

external keyboard F1/F2 control brightness

Automator can send a URL to Quick Look rather than a browser.

Unsupported hardware notices

Wi-Fi Diagnostics are pretty and useful

Launchpad Background Wallpaper Effects

Motion Blur in Mission Control

Terminal.app now supports 256 colors.

external keyboard `F1`/`F2` control brightness

`⌥⌘L` opens the Downloads window in Finder