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This question serves to share and collect the enhancements which are not documented by Apple, or documented poorly.

Please justify your answer; if it is something that is well documented by Apple and elsewhere on the web, it does not belong here. Your answer should put the feature into context, explaining how to use it. Add a picture if necessary.

Please add only one topic per answer. Try to find and edit existing features / answers rather than posting a duplicate answer which will end up getting deleted. Note that answers which are not specific to Mountain Lion will be removed as well. You can post such answers here.

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gentmatt
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    I wish I had enough rep on Apple.SE to downvote. As it is, you'll have to make do with an angry glare: ಠ_ಠ – Buns Glazing Jul 25 '12 at 18:47
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    @GnomeSlicE That makes me ಥ_ಥ. If you don't like the wording you can edit it. If that's not enough, you'll have to wait. – gentmatt Jul 25 '12 at 18:50
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    I'm sorry, I just think it's not a very good question for the Q&A format of the site. No amount of editing will change that, in my opinion. – Buns Glazing Jul 25 '12 at 18:51
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    @GnomeSlicE We've done these type of wiki collections several times in the past. While they are disputed, they always receive a lot of resonance. It's better to avoid them, especially for little things. But as Apple does not document everything they introduce in their software this question can be useful to many. Feel free to discuss these type of questions on meta. – gentmatt Jul 25 '12 at 18:54
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    Disagree with GnomeSlicE. Agree with gentmatt. These types of questions, when well cultivated, can be very useful and discourage (to some extent) the really bad CW posts. – daviesgeek Jul 25 '12 at 19:02
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    The 200+ improvements mentioned by Apple can be found at http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html – Hope4You Jul 25 '12 at 19:12
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    Ars Technica has an in depth review. Check the TOC – Rich Homolka Jul 25 '12 at 21:20
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    @gent provided you are VERY STRICT about the "is not documented anywhere else and definitely not by Apple" requirement. The danger is that this turns into an "infinite list of opinions about X", so the criteria need to be strict enough that is prevented from happening. – Jeff Atwood Jul 26 '12 at 00:04
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    To that end, 13 out of 17 answers are documented on the page Hope4You linked. The ones that aren't are Exposé for all windows, the AppleScriptability of Messages (something all built-in OS X apps have), WPA2 support for internet sharing, and zoom for PDFs in Quick Look cc: @JeffAtwood –  Jul 26 '12 at 02:46
  • @MarkTrapp Far too many Apple apps have either no AppleScript support or utterly trivial AppleScript support. Messages having a real Event Handler Script is a big deal. – Daniel Jul 26 '12 at 06:01
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    @JeffAtwood Yes, just because it's documented elsewhere means that it can't possibly exist as an answer on a Stack Exchange question... – Jason Salaz Jul 26 '12 at 18:36
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    @jason 38 answers and counting... Stack Exchange does not exist to merely duplicate information that is available elsewhere, and present it as a poll. For example the "How Things Work" beta site ended up as little more than reformatting content that was elsewhere on the web, and was shut down as a result. http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/15025/how-things-work – Jeff Atwood Jul 26 '12 at 19:20
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    @JeffAtwood As of now the requirement for answers is not limited to undocumented features. This makes sense as some features are only found hidden in support documents or blog posts. The average user - who is targeted by this site - will surely not go through all of these documentations himself. So this Wiki does also serve this specific purpose. However, if the SE network does not want to support this, I think we should start to clean up AskDifferent in general and define a more strick FAQ for the future. – gentmatt Jul 26 '12 at 19:26
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    @JeffAtwood This is one question. There are a handful like it (as compared to the number of non-CW questions on the site). One large question surely has better odds than an entire site. – Jason Salaz Jul 26 '12 at 19:27
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    @gent undocumented or under documented. I just want there to be some rational, objective criteria for answers here other than "I like to type this on the web page." – Jeff Atwood Jul 26 '12 at 19:33
  • @JeffAtwood Ok, I understand and I also like your adjustments in the latest edit of the question. – gentmatt Jul 26 '12 at 19:35
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    @GnomeSlicE totally disagree, It might not fit the Q&A format for the SE network, but for this site, it fits great, and when a big product launch happens, we get to create a sort of peer reviewed list of cool things that interest our members. Indeed most of the active and certainly all time participants here take part in these CWs. It's not simply a case of redocumenting existing material, it's a way of presenting those bits which we find most interesting or useful. We rarely have CWs, perhaps someone can quantify what %age are, but the ones we do have are usually welcome by our users. – stuffe Jul 26 '12 at 19:49
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    @JeffAtwood There are only 78 open community wiki questions on AD (thanks to Jason for pointing that out), which is an average of 39 a year. I went through them and many of them are highly upvoted questions that have many good answers. I have gone through many of these CW questions (in particular, the Lion CW) and gained much new information from just browsing through answers. – daviesgeek Jul 26 '12 at 22:44
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    I guess my point was that this question can't possibly generate a single 'accepted' answer. It reads more like a forum. – Buns Glazing Jul 26 '12 at 23:55
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    @GnomeSlice CW was developed for... exactly this reason in the first place! Jeff is grumbly because the feature was abused ad nauseum due to the scale of Stack Overflow. Something that really isn't as proportionally relevant here. What's good for SO is good for SE, or something like that.

    This discussion should probably go to meta...

     – Jason Salaz Jul 27 '12 at 00:08
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    @GnomeSlice That's why it's not a question, it's a Community Wiki post. We did some maths in the chat room, reckon we are running at about 0.4% questions that operate like this, and even that is skewed because there used to be more, there have only been 3 or 4 this year - and Jeff has even posted answer to them in the past... – stuffe Jul 27 '12 at 09:11
  • ...apart from Apple removing the "hours" from the battery icon, and making years of archived RSS feeds unaccessible? :-( (Okay, the RSS is still on my disk; no idea how to convert that though.) – Arjan Jul 27 '12 at 09:58

53 Answers53

47

You can now silence bouncing application icons in the Dock by just hovering over them, instead of needing to click and activate them.

Gerry
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44

'Do Not Disturb' Mode for Notification Center

In the Notification Center drawer, scroll up a bit past what appears to be the top. There's a switch 'Show Alerts and Banners' that is checked by default. Uncheck it to disable notifications for the rest of the day.

Alternatively, option-click on the Notification Center menu bar item to activate Do Not Disturb mode quickly.

enter image description here

Nathan Greenstein
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    The ⌥-click trick is particularly awesome. The Notification Center icon turns gray when in do-not-disturb mode! http://i.imgur.com/MV3Tt.png – Daniel Jul 25 '12 at 17:20
39

Exposé for all windows

Mountain Lion re-introduces the pre-Lion feature to be able to disable group by application in Mission Control, this was enabled by default in Lion and could not be disabled.

You can disable this in:
System Preferences → Mission Control → Group windows by application.

enter image description here

Community
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gentmatt
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38

Save As

...is back!

Try the following keyboard shortcut: option-shift-command-S. Or simply hit the OPTION key while the file menu is pulled down:

enter image description here

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houbysoft
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    I love how they count this as a feature. They could have many more features if they removed them in previous versions and then added them back in in the later versions – Jonathan. Jul 26 '12 at 16:41
  • @Jonathan They don't, we do (count it as a feature). – jpc Jul 27 '12 at 14:04
  • @Jonathan Looking at this list, it seems that most “new” features fall into this category: they’re just fixes of what Lion botched up. Not sure if I should be disappointed or delighted. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 27 '12 at 14:40
  • @jpc, it is listed on Apple's website, on the page which lists all the new features. Therefore they count it as a feature. – Jonathan. Jul 27 '12 at 14:58
  • @KonradRudolph, it is called Mountain Lion though, so the changes arent going to be radical. I can't wait for OS 11 – Jonathan. Jul 27 '12 at 14:59
  • @Jonathan I’m fine with that. It just seems that Apple has finally conceded that Lion was a load of bullcrap to begin with. Fixing usability bugs should not require a paid upgrade. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 27 '12 at 15:05
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    If you assign a shortcut for duplicate in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts The menu entry Save As... will be shown permanently - without the need to press ALT. – gentmatt Jul 30 '12 at 11:49
  • Also see http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/29/get-save-as-back-on-mountain-lions-file-menu-easily-and-without/ for some more tricks around Save As – nohillside Jul 31 '12 at 16:24
  • Warning: Save As may not do what you expect, if you're used to the old Save As. See the next-to-last paragraph of my article here: http://tidbits.com/article/13187 – matt Aug 16 '12 at 01:11
36

Mountain Lion offers direct video/audio encoding from Finder.

Select one or more audio/video files, then right-click and choose “Encode selected video files”. You’ll get something like this:

Note: this doesn't work for already compressed audio files (like aac and mp3). This does work for CAFF, AIFF, AIFC, S2df, and WAVE as per the -2700 error message that shows up if you attempt this on an already compressed audio file.

Also, this may be found as a Sub-Menu Item of the Services menu (contextual or from the File menu) for those with a number of third party service actions enabled/installed.

Additionally, this does not preserve meta data like locations of movies or ID3 tags for AIFF files, etc!

NOTjust -- user4304
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Mathias Bynens
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  • I don't see this option when I right-click a mp4 file. Could it be a feature of Handbrake or some other application you have installed? – jtbandes Jul 26 '12 at 21:44
  • @jtbandes I did a fresh OS X 10.8 install this morning and have only installed XCode, some browsers, and some text editors since — no video software at all. I get this context menu on any *.mp4 file: http://i.imgur.com/NFNj7.png – Mathias Bynens Jul 26 '12 at 21:46
  • Oh I see — it's hiding under the Services submenu for me. Apparently it's an Automator action. – jtbandes Jul 26 '12 at 21:48
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    This was on Lion too, I'm pretty sure I've used it before yesterday. – Jonathan. Jul 27 '12 at 10:13
  • Is there anyway it can preserve the meta information of the original movie? I'd like to compress the videos I've created with my iPhone but when I do this I lose the location information embedded in the original movie. – Gerry Shaw Nov 17 '12 at 17:07
31

Inline progress for downloads and file copies

Bars show progress.

enter image description here enter image description here

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gentmatt
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29

Scrollbars get a bit wider when hovered over

Now it is easier to grab them.

screenshot showing normal scrollbar, and new wider scrollbar

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Szymon Bęczkowski
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27

Chess

...can now be played over the internet via Game Center.

enter image description here

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houbysoft
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27

Internet Sharing

Internet Sharing now supports WPA2 encryption (and no longer supports WEP, apparently) when sharing a wired connection to Wi-Fi.

enter image description here

gentmatt
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Scot
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  • Glad to finally have WPA2 but removing WEP is disappointing. Some older devices only support WEP. – Kevin Mark Jul 27 '12 at 08:31
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    @KevinMark WEP is still (kind of) supported in Internet Sharing and AirPort Utility. If you option-click the drop-down menu in Security (in Internet Sharing), WEP 40-bit and WEP 128-bit appear as new options. – Ethan Lee Aug 30 '12 at 16:58
25

Messages is AppleScriptable, including an Event Handler Suite! This could get fun.

enter image description here

gentmatt
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Daniel
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    Excuse-me, it's maybe a very dumb question, but where did upi find this Messages.sdef file, and what is this application you are using to reed it? Thank in advance! – Pascal Qyy Jun 21 '14 at 13:28
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    Use AppleScript Editor and open the dictionary from the file menu – Daniel Jun 21 '14 at 21:36
  • Thanks a lot, it's very powerfull as we can script actions for messages sends from any iOS device! – Pascal Qyy Jun 24 '14 at 12:19
25

Customizable sidebar

You can now drag/drop sections in the Finder side bar again.

moving around the Favorites section of Finders side bar

Graham Perrin
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leberwurstsaft
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25

Show scrollbars without scrolling

If you have a multi-touch input device (a multi-touch trackpad or Magic Trackpad), resting two fingers on the device will make the scrollbar appear as an indicator of your scroll position. You no longer have to scroll the document to see where you are.

Note: doesn't work with Magic Mouse.

jtbandes
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  • I hate having to move my fingers on the trackpad to show the scrollbars in Lion. This is a much improved feature! – daviesgeek Jul 26 '12 at 22:50
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    This seems to be Apple apps specific? Like I can see it in Finder and Safari, but no joy in Chrome. – Arjan Jul 27 '12 at 10:12
  • @Arjan I suppose Chrome is not properly handling the event, since it looks like it's using standard scrollbars but you're right that it doesn't work. – jtbandes Jul 28 '12 at 05:41
  • Surely Chrome will soon get a new build that does it right. – leberwurstsaft Jul 31 '12 at 10:20
24

New date picker

A small calendar appears in date entry fields. Example:

enter image description here

Graham Perrin
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Szymon Bęczkowski
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19

Photo Stream and other screen savers

Mountain Lion includes a bunch of new kinetic photo-based screen savers.

You can select from several categories of stock images or choose a folder, iPhoto event, or Photostream as the source of images.

Go to System Preferences -> Desktop and Screen Saver -> Screen Saver and select one of the screen savers in the Slideshows category to try them out.

Personally, I'm a fan of Shifting Tiles.

enter image description here

Graham Perrin
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Nathan Greenstein
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Re-enable Web Sharing for individual users

May be more a "feature" than a feature, but anyway:

Per-user Web Sharing is gone from Preferences but can be easily re-enabled via Terminal.app. Copy the following snippet into /etc/apache2/users/USER.conf:

<Directory "/Users/USER/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride AuthConfig Limit
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

and restart Apache with sudo apachectl restart.

Community
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nohillside
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  • Or, you can use that software, to activate/deactivate web sharing easily :) (from VirtualHostX editors) : http://clickontyler.com/blog/2012/02/web-sharing-mountain-lion/ – rdurand Jul 27 '12 at 07:28
  • I can't get this to work, Web Sharing stays on irregardless of the position of the switch in the preference pane?! – nohillside Jul 27 '12 at 07:46
  • Maybe you can contact the developer ? I really don't know how I can help here lol. I know they're active on twitter for their main app (@virtualhostx), maybe they can help you there ? Sorry it doesn't work, it seemed pretty good.. – rdurand Jul 27 '12 at 08:16
18

Enhancements to Launchpad

There's now a search bar on top, and when you mouse over the Launchpad icon while an app is downloading, you get progress information:

enter image description here enter image description here

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houbysoft
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    It's good to know that you do not need to click the search field first - instead: search by typing from anywhere in Launchpad. – gentmatt Jul 25 '12 at 17:39
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    @gentmatt: the reason for the large screenshot was to see the dock icon too... – houbysoft Jul 25 '12 at 17:42
  • Yeah, sorry. I did not notice that :) But I did read about it in your text. – gentmatt Jul 25 '12 at 18:11
  • I'm confused. What does Launchpad have to do with an app being downloaded?! – Pooria Azimi Jul 25 '12 at 18:27
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    @PooriaAzimi: well it lists all the apps. Whenever you install a new app in the App Store, the icon of that app "jumps" to the Launchpad, so it makes sense for launchpad to show the progress. – houbysoft Jul 25 '12 at 18:28
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    @PooriaAzimi: also note that a progress bar is now displayed under the "Applications" folder as well. – houbysoft Jul 25 '12 at 18:28
  • For opensourcers / Apple noobs: Launchpad, not Launchpad. – Alba Mendez Jul 25 '12 at 21:50
  • Another enhancement to the Launchpad is the (possibility to) reduction of "clutter" apps. I noticed this with Diablo3 for example, where in Lion 2 apps where added "Diablo III" and "Diablo III Launcher", now it hides one of the two from the Launchpad. – Gerry Jul 28 '12 at 10:17
18

The Mac App Store can be navigated with two-finger swipes

Back and forward are (finally) bound to the two-finger swipe gestures in the MAS just like they are in Safari.

Nathan Greenstein
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AirPlay Everywhere

AirPlay devices like Apple TV and Airport Express now show as system audio output devices, so any audio on your Mac can be streamed to them. There are two ways to do it.

The fiddly way

System Preferences > Sound > Output

The easy way

option-click on the volume control in the menu bar

Simon Whitaker
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  • Is this limited to newer Macs? I only tried with a software receiver, which works with iTunes and iOS as a sender, but the option for AirPlay as System Output won't show up. This is a Macbook Late 2008. – leberwurstsaft Jul 26 '12 at 08:06
  • Not as far as I know. It works fine with my mid-2010 Macbook Pro. – Simon Whitaker Jul 26 '12 at 08:10
  • Nevermind, I just made a dry run with my old Airport Express. Didn't actually try to get audio out, but it shows up in the drop down menu. I wonder what the performance is like, for a system output it better have a much shorter delay than it has when playing music or video through iTunes or QuickTime. – leberwurstsaft Jul 26 '12 at 08:40
15

Three-finger tap for QuickLook

Tap (but don't click) with three fingers over an item in Finder to open QuickLook for that item. Tap again to close the QuickLook window. This is exactly like pressing the spacebar.

Community
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Redandwhite
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14

Go full screen on any display

It is now possible to use a fullscreen app on a screen other than the primary one.

To do so, drag your app on the screen of your choice and hit the fullscreen arrow or the fullscreen shortkey of the app.

Graham Perrin
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Ermiar
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    What happens on the other screen? My understanding was that the other screen was useless in Lion when you had an app full screened. – Keen Jul 25 '12 at 20:18
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    @Keen Unfortunately it is same as before in Lion, the other screen is useless. – Ermiar Jul 25 '12 at 20:19
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    that's a step in the right direction, though full screen mode is still utterly useless for me, since I work with two monitors. – daviesgeek Jul 26 '12 at 01:45
  • that is a misleading use of "support". "support" would mean that you could actually still USE more than monitor.. you know.. for more than one thing… you know.. like how it was for 20 years before Lion. don't get me started on that "basically-Ballmered" feature! – alex gray Jul 29 '12 at 02:47
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    This feature is documented by Apple. – Graham Perrin Jul 30 '12 at 12:57
  • Multimon supports using the other display when an app is full screened. – Joe Masilotti Dec 27 '12 at 17:35
14

Slightly better Dock appearance

The Dock "shelf" (when the Dock appears at the screen bottom) is drawn in a less glassy way (looks more like brushed metal, less reflection, less wasted space).

Also, the active appication indicator lights are much more subtle that the glowing "orbs" that used to sit on the glass and look awful, and now look like little LEDs set into the edge of the shelf

enter image description here

stuffe
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matt
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  • This is useless for everyone (like me) who has their dock on the side of their screen. That dock's appearance has not changed. – Fake Name Aug 05 '12 at 12:43
  • Yes, @FakeName, but the side dock appearance is the good one. In fact, there's a way to make the bottom appearance look like the side appearance, and that's what I actually do. Makes the dock more compact, and the active application indicators are a lot clearer. So stay with your side dock and don't worry, be happy! – matt Aug 06 '12 at 22:09
  • I wish they had made this same change in iOS! – daGUY Nov 14 '12 at 20:19
13

Zoom in PDF with Quick Look

Easily zoom in to a PDF with Quick Look (without Preview).

Methods include:

  • spread your fingers apart whilst the cursor is over the Quick Look window
  • smart zoom, Magic Mouse double-tap with one finger.

It doesn't seem to work on anything but PDF documents.

Jason Salaz
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Redandwhite
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  • Well, it's a step in the right direction. I've been lamenting the limitations of Quick Look for a while now. There's a step higher than skimming that this zoom enables, especially when the font used in the PDF is absurdly small. – Jason Salaz Jul 26 '12 at 00:06
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    Typical Apple doing something people want but not going all the way. This would be useful on images too... – Jonathan. Jul 26 '12 at 16:40
  • @Jonathan. Well, they need something to save for the next release, now that they have a note and a reminder application. rolls eyes – Harold Cavendish Jul 28 '12 at 08:48
  • I have normal vision, but find the difficulty I have reading plain text documents with QuickLook (and the inability to change those text rendering settings) to be a: needlessly inflexible b: maddeningly frustrating and c: an uncharacteristic F-you to anyone that doesn't have the vision of a 5-year old (aka, everyone, brailees, etc). – alex gray Jul 29 '12 at 02:44
12

Dictation

You can dictate text wherever you can type text - even in an application that has not been rewritten for Mountain Lion. You must go in System Setting -> Dictation & Speech to activate the feature.

Note that you must have an Internet connection, since this is Siri behind the scenes and your speech must be sent to Apple's servers for interpretation.

enter image description here

Philippe Gilbert
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12

New "Edit" toolbar in Preview.app

There is a new toolbar in Preview.app to replace the old "Annotations" toolbar that brings all the basic editing features that Preview offers (including their awesome smart lasso and instant alpha) plus the addition of speech bubbles! enter image description here

Alexander
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11

Accidental Dock icon removal prevention

When moving and icon outside of the dock, it doesn't delete automatically, you need to stay out for a little at a minimum distance before it deletes.

There is a follow up question asking how to disable this feature - preferebly using a defaults write command.

Community
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Philippe Gilbert
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11

Applications in the Get Info dialogue window are now expressly listed as 32-bit as opposed to just "Intel," which has been entirely dropped.

enter image description here

gentmatt
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Week numbers in Calendar.app

Calendar.app can now display week numbers.

Week numbers in Calendar.app

Gerry
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    I always wondered who used week numbers. is it a thing that accounting people are into? – estephan500 Aug 07 '12 at 04:11
  • Good one :) About two-three times a year I have someone saying he/she can do some task "starting week X". Used to subscribe to some public calendar for those rare occasions. – Marie Fischer Aug 22 '12 at 03:57
  • I used it a ton working Meteorology. – Jason Salaz Sep 28 '12 at 22:15
  • It can be usefull for task repartition: "You do this even week, I do it odd week. We also can use it with statistic, eg: "how many money week 1, 2, 3, etc". The most important is to use the same mathod of counting, there are 3 or 4… – Pascal Qyy Jun 21 '14 at 13:35
9

In-App File Manipulation

When you hover over the file name in the application bar you can Rename, Move to iCloud, Move to.., Duplicate, Lock and Browse all Versions.

Other than that, you can also have specific services that appear there.

enter image description here

Community
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Philippe Gilbert
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  • In my view, this is the best new feature of Mountain Lion (especially in combination with the option to bring back the "Save Changes?" dialog when closing a document). The screen shot does not represent its full yummy goodness: you may also see a menu item letting you Revert to the state of the document when it was last opened or last saved (or both). – matt Jul 26 '12 at 18:27
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    Provided a better screen shot – matt Jul 26 '12 at 19:01
  • by the way, what do you use to make your screenshot? it's really great! – Philippe Gilbert Jul 26 '12 at 19:30
  • Probably Snapz Pro X. – matt Jul 26 '12 at 21:06
  • @matt thanks, never heard of it but it look awesome. It's not cheap though... – Philippe Gilbert Jul 26 '12 at 21:08
9

User prompt for address book access

This has only been officially announced for iOS 6 but quietly made it's way into Mountain Lion.

Your address book data is located in:

/Users/my_name/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

So far, I've used a firewall to controll read/write access on a per-application basis, but Mountain Lion does this now itself:

enter image description here

Community
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gentmatt
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8

Safari Tab Sharing:

If you have more than 1 Mac signed into the same iCloud account, then you can access a list of any open Safari tabs on your other machines by clicking the button in the toolbar as follows:

enter image description here

So far so yeah yeah we all knew about this months ago, but:

Start: Previously undiscussed material

In addition to opening the tab it even captures certain state definitions, such as whether or not you have the page open in Reader mode or not (and opens the tab to match accordingly). In reader mode on the remote tab? You will be if you open it locally via iCloud tab sharing.

Also things like dynamic page titles are carried over such as the (1) that appears when a new question with activity is identified on this site for example Have an open but unattended SE site tab open? You'll be able to see how many new questions with activity just by watching the tab title change. Same thing applies to Facebook chat windows etc, anything that alters the page title without you needing to navigate elsewhere in order for it to do so.

To open the shared tab in a new tab rather than replace the contents of the current one, simply Command+Click it

End: Previously undiscussed material

When iOS 6 is released, the same features will be available cross platform between Safari and Mobile Safari.

stuffe
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Better Dashboard Widgets Management

The "widgets bar" at the bottom of Dashboard is gone. To manage what dashboard widgets appear, click the + button to enter a mode where you see all available widgets; click one to add it to your default set of widgets. A new search bar helps you find the widget you want just like in the refined Launchpad. So, click...

+

..at the bottom left to enter the "add widgets" mode:

enter image description here

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matt
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8

Mountain Lion removed the option to show the estimated battery time remaining from the battery menu bar item.

This data can still be accessed if your battery is not fully charged and isn’t charging, though. In those cases, ⌥ + Clicking the battery icon in the menu bar shows something like this:

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Mathias Bynens
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7

Ask to keep changes when closing documents

You can now force Mountain Lion to ask whether you want to keep changes you made to a document when closing it, which effectively allows you to sidestep autosaving.

System Preferences > General > [√] Ask to keep changes when saving documents

Clearing the checkbox, as shown below, allows unsaved changes to be saved automatically.

enter image description here

houbysoft
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    Please try to avoid bloating answers. I think in this specific case the picture wasn't necessary. – gentmatt Jul 25 '12 at 21:30
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    I think having a nice screenshot for each one would be nice, in order to get TL;DR type people up to date in a quick skim through the page – Alexander Jul 25 '12 at 22:12
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    Whoever downvoted this : you are wrong. The "Close windows when quitting an application" was there in Lion, but not this. – houbysoft Jul 26 '12 at 02:48
  • This is incorrect. That checkbox does not disable automatic saving. It brings back the "Save changes?" dialog when you close the document, which is great; but in fact the document has already been autosaved behind the scenes. – matt Jul 26 '12 at 18:24
  • @matt: I am aware of that, but for the user, this feels as though Autosave is disabled, imo. For me the most annoying part of Autosave is that when you made a bad change and then you closed the document it automatically kept your change even though I was used to being able to just say "Don't save" to effectively revert to the old version. – houbysoft Jul 26 '12 at 20:24
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    @houbysoft I totally agree, and I think this is a terrific change, but then that's exactly what your tip should say. Don't say you can disable autosaving; you can't. Be accurate. – matt Jul 26 '12 at 21:08
  • The screenshot shows allowance of automatic saving at close time. I edited the answer to make this clearer. – Graham Perrin Jul 30 '12 at 12:39
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    @GrahamPerrin The answer is still inaccurate. I repeat, you cannot avoid automatic saving. At close time, the document changes have already been automatically saved. Regardless of the wording of the checkbox or the dialogs, what's happening is only that you are alerted to this fact so that you can revert if you like (using the Versions feature). That is something you could have done anyway. So the alert is all that is new. It's good, but you are not in fact avoiding / allowing automatic saving; it's happening, regardless. – matt Aug 07 '12 at 17:24
  • @matt interesting, thanks for clarification. It's a community wiki so (I guess) please go ahead with whatever corrections you feel are necessary. – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '12 at 07:07
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    @GrahamPerrin I already did what I could - I downvoted the answer and have made several comments trying to correct this. My full explanation of what's new with Mountain Lion auto save is here: http://tidbits.com/article/13187 – matt Aug 08 '12 at 16:33
  • @matt I made some additional changes. You should be able to edit the answer yourself too. FWIW, I still think this is nit-picking. We all know that this doesn't completely disable autosaving, but it disables its most annoying aspect, and as a user you won't really tell the difference between this and no autosaving. – houbysoft Aug 08 '12 at 20:23
  • As the question evolved to focus on features that are under-documented, I think it's important to be accurate in the answers. After reading @matt's article, I find this answer in it current form potentially misleading … – Graham Perrin Aug 08 '12 at 20:58
6

Quickly Renaming Bookmarks in Safari

When you click and hold on a bookmark on the Safari bookmark bar you can quickly rename it.

robmathers
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Can Sürmeli
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6

Documents in iCloud

If an application is iCloud-savvy, its Open dialog has an iCloud tab. You can not only open documents here, but you can also drag documents into the cloud from the Finder, and you can create folders (drag one document onto another to do so).

enter image description here

Graham Perrin
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matt
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  • This open dialog is very good, but the save dialog with iCloud is downright stupid. – Jonathan. Jul 27 '12 at 10:17
  • Note that you can only access iCloud documents from the app that they were created/saved in. For example, Word won't be able to open a .txt file you created in TextEdit. – Matt Aug 01 '12 at 11:06
6

Document auto-locking removed!

In Lion, an auto-saved document would automatically lock itself after two weeks of inactivity. (This time interval could be adjust thru a pref hidden deep in Time Machine.) In Mountain Lion, this "feature" has been quietly removed; no more auto-locking.

Barranka
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matt
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    Could you please change the tone of this post to something less ranty? – Jason Salaz Jul 26 '12 at 19:27
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    Or just delete your answer and win the Peer Pressure badge like I just did :) – stuffe Jul 26 '12 at 20:41
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    It's an important change that has not been advertised by Apple, so it answers the original question. And the tone is right too; this was a bad Lion feature and annoyed everyone, so it's good that in Mountain Lion they withdrew it. – matt Jul 26 '12 at 21:11
  • @matt: Your second sentence is subjective--I for one used this feature quite often. – Matt Aug 01 '12 at 11:05
6

Quick access to Accessibility settings

Press ⌥+⌘+F5 to bring up a new Accessibility Options window that offers quick access to a subset of the settings from the Accessibility prefpane.

enter image description here

gentmatt
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jtbandes
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    Nice find! I wish that Apple would also include an option to toggle dictionary or location services here. – gentmatt Jul 30 '12 at 12:49
5

Reading List caches content for offline use

Reading List in Safari is not new (it was introduced in Lion). But in Mountain Lion, a Web page stored in the Reading List stores the page, not just the URL, so you can read the page later without having to download it from the network.

Graham Perrin
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matt
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  • Should have been like that from the beginning. I mean, seriously: The Reading List in Lion was just a hall of fame for bookmarks. – gentmatt Jul 30 '12 at 12:46
5

When updating apps, Mac App Store reopens apps and offers to skip open apps

When Updating All in the Mac App Store, rather than going straight down the list and demanding you shut down each open app along the way, it offers to let you skip the apps that are running:

enter image description here

Even better, if you do let it close an app, it will automatically reopen it when the update is complete. Furthermore, once you have initiated the update, the apps that are going to be changed are locked and a helpful error message is presented from the App Store if you try to launch an app that is about to be (or in the middle of) being updated. All together, these make updating apps less prone to error or conflicts due to files being in active use during an update.

bmike
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Lanny Heidbreder
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5

Multiple Time Machine Backup Destinations

In Time Machine you can now select multiple backup destinations.

enter image description here

That was from the "OS X Mountain Lion Core Technologies Overview".

You can select additional disks from System Preferences:

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pasawaya
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  • Unfortunately, the UI for this is somewhat broken. Most importantly, the menu bar no longer shows when the last backup was taken (it shows only the last backup and status for one of the drives). – Thilo Aug 06 '12 at 10:12
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    Re: broken UI: 10.8.1 has improved this. Now it does show when the last backup was taken, even if it was to the "wrong" disk. – Thilo Sep 04 '12 at 01:50
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    Re: improved in 10.8.1: Maybe not, after all. – Thilo Sep 25 '12 at 10:01
5

Kernel Exclusively 64-Bit

"Starting with Mountain Lion, OS X exclusively uses a 64-bit kernel, but it continues to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications (OS X Mountain Lion Core Technologies Overview)"

Why this is a good thing:

There are two reasons this is a good thing. The first is simple: 64-bit computing is necessary if you want one of the programs on your computer to have access to more than 4GB of RAM. Second, there are some speed boosts associated with running in 64-bit mode. The Intel processors that power Macs have built-in math routines that operate more efficiently in 64-bit mode, processing tasks in fewer steps. That means that certain math-intensive tasks will see a speed boost under Snow Leopard’s 64-bit applications (Macworld).

However, having a 64-bit kernel does have its downsides: some older 64-bit computers like the iMac (pre-Mid-2007), Macbook Pro (pre-Mid-2007), Mac Pro (pre-2008), and others are not able to run Mountain Lion. This has to do with the fact that now with Mountain Lion, Macs can only boot into 64-bit mode, but prior to that, Macs could boot into both 32 and 64-bit mode, so older Macs were able to boot into 64-bit mode, but their EFI firmware was 32-bit and therefore can only interface with a 32-bit kernel.

pasawaya
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  • Note that almost all of the benefits were/are already available with the 32-bit kernel of OSX, and Lion already booted into a 64-bit kernel by default if supported by the hardware. (The hardware that didn't support it is the same hardware that Mountain Lion now fails to boot on) – pmdj Aug 07 '12 at 08:38
4

You can quickly get rid of a notification by hovering over it and swiping with 2 fingers from left to right (swipe it off the screen)

And if you just want to peek behind it or something you can click and drag it (one finger) to the left and when you let go it will bounce back.

Jonathan.
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  • If you drag it further to the left, it will stick in that position until you drag it back. Useful if you need to access a control behind the notification, but don't want to actually dismiss it. – daGUY Nov 14 '12 at 20:23
4

Zoom and Mission Control/Launchpad play nice!

Finally, if you zoom in your screen (for example, by ⌃+scrolling), activating Mission Control or Launchpad doesn't immobilize the viewport!

jtbandes
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4

Improved Kernel Security (ASLR)

"Apple introduced randomization of some library offsets in Mac OS X v10.5 (released October 2007). Their implementation does not provide complete protection against attacks which ASLR is designed to defeat.Mac OS X Lion 10.7 has improved ASLR implementation for all applications. Apple explains that "address space layout randomization (ASLR) has been improved for all applications. It is now available for 32-bit apps (as are heap memory protections), making 64-bit and 32-bit applications more resistant to attack." Since OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 the kernel as well as kexts and zones are randomly relocated during system boot" (Address Space Layout Randomization).

This is beneficial in that it protects the user against the malware exploits that rely on fixed locations for some well-known system functions.

pasawaya
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3

Navigate forward/back while viewing a PDF in Safari

In Safari, if you are viewing a PDF, you can now use your normal 2-finger swipe to navigate forward or back! (Previously, this would only scroll the PDF or jump between pages if you used 3 fingers.)

jtbandes
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  • The shortcuts for going back and forward no longer jump to previously viewed pages either. – Lri Aug 01 '12 at 10:39
2

Software Updates Now Come Through the App Store

Whenever you get software updates, they now come through the App Store. You can check for updates like this (which opens the App Store):

enter image description here

Prior to Mountain Lion, software updates took place in a separate application that looked like this:

enter image description here

pasawaya
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2

Click-and-hold to toggle Notification Center

Click-and-hold the Notification Center icon to show your notifications; once you release the mouse button, they'll hide. This also works if you've assigned a keyboard shortcut for Notification Center (press-and-hold the key, then release).

daGUY
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2

Browse through photos in screensavers via keyboard

In any of the various photo screensavers, you can hit the left or right arrow keys to manually navigate between photos.

daGUY
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1

Take app screenshots without shadow

You can now take screenshots of apps without the shadow. Press ⇧⌘4 to enter screenshot mode, then press space to select a window, like normal. However, instead of simply clicking to take the screenshot, ⌥-click the window to take the screenshot without the shadow.

On the left is the default style of screenshot; on the right is the sans-shadow screenshot.

grg
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1

Clipboard content is persistent through reboots

The clipboard is not cleared on shutdown. All data in the clipboard remains there even after a power cycle.

duci9y
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0

Navigate through a PDF in Mail.app by scrolling the mouse while hovering over it

The need to open a PDF in Preview/Quickview just in order to see pages other than the first one, is now gone.

GJ.
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0

When Show contact photos in the message list is enabled, user image additions/edits from Contacts.app are updated immediately in Mail.app (not after relaunch, as in Lion)

enter image description here

myhd
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0

In Mission Control, holding option will immediately show the + icon for adding a new desktop and X icons on each secondary desktop. You can then click these icons immediately, instead of hovering and waiting for them to appear after a delay.

daGUY
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  • Can you definitely confirm that this is new in Mountain Lion? I'm confident that this existed already in OSX 10.7 Lion. – gentmatt Dec 28 '12 at 08:06
  • I hadn't discovered this until Mountain Lion, but it's possible it was there in Lion and I never noticed it. I don't have a Lion installation anymore to test on. Still, even if it's not new, it remains an "undocumented" feature of Mountain Lion... ;) – daGUY Dec 28 '12 at 14:33