OS X Yosemite Tips & Tricks

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OS X Yosemite Tips & Tricks By Apple Master IT Trainer, Russell Harris

About This Guide.

The content of this guide first appeared on the Amsys blog over several months and has been collated to provide end-users with a handy guide to some useful features found in OS X Yosemite.

In the sections that are entitled “Hidden Features” it is worth noting that some of the discussed features may not be strictly "hidden", but instead may not be that well know or heavily documented.

Amsys Apple Master IT Trainer, Russell Harris, has created all the content in this guide. Russell has over 20 years experience working with Apple devices and training Apple IT Professionals on how to support, troubleshoot, fix and manage an array of Apple Devices.

Disclaimer:

While the author has taken care to provide our readers with accurate information, please use your discretion before acting upon information based on the blog post. Amsys will not compensate you in any way whatsoever if you ever happen to suffer a loss/inconvenience/damage because of/while making use of information in this blog.

Table of Contents:

10 OS X FINDER TIPS THAT STILL WORK WITH YOSEMITE 4

OS X YOSEMITE HIDDEN FEATURES IN THE FINDER & DOCK 19

OS X YOSEMITE HIDDEN FEATURES IN SAFARI 28

OS X YOSEMITE HIDDEN FEATURES IN APPLE MAIL 41

OS X YOSEMITE HIDDEN FEATURE IN CALLS & MESSAGES 66

10 OS X Finder tips that still work with Yosemite

With the recent release of OS X Yosemite, I thought I would keep the excitement going with some useful tips that have been around on the Mac for a while and still work with Yosemite!

Over the last couple of months, I have noticed that whilst delivering a collection of Amsys OS X training courses, there are a number of navigational shortcuts and hidden tricks that many Mac users are unaware of.

Although there are way too many for me to document them all here, in celebration of the recent 10th update to OS X, I have picked out the 8 most common ones that I find myself showing Mac users – new and old.

I also find that the main questions I hear from Windows to Mac switchers are, “In Windows, I do this…” or “How can I do xyz like I do on my PC?”.

So, these are often my answers to those questions too!

Please Note: Even though these are documented for Yosemite (OS X v10.10), most of these have been available for some time on the Mac platform and, therefore, function in earlier versions of OS X.

1) Keyboard Shortcuts

In general, OS X keyboard shortcuts are displayed in all apps including the Finder itself, just to the right-hand side of all of the pull-down menus at the top of the screen:

All of these keyboard shortcuts rely on what we call ‘modifier keys’. A modifier key changes the way keystrokes or mouse/track pad clicks are interpreted by OS X.

The main modifier keys in OS X are:

• cmd/Command • Shift • Option/alt • ctrl’/Control • Caps Lock • fn/Function

These keys are often represented by special symbols on the keyboard and also in menus and other parts of OS X as follows:

⇪ = Caps Lock ⇧ = Shift Key fn = Function Key ⌃ = Control/ctrl key ⌥ = Option/alt key ⌘ = Command key

To use a keyboard shortcut, simply press the modifier key specified at the same time as the character key.

For example, pressing the Command key and then the “c” key copies your currently selected data to the Clipboard.

For you Windows users out there, you will find that for most shortcut keys, which on a PC you would use the ‘ctrl/Control’ key and a character key, you would simply substitute the ‘ctrl/Control’ key for the ‘cmd/Control’ key. (‘ctrl’ + ‘c’ becomes ‘cmd’ + ‘c’, etc.).

There is a comprehensive list of OS X keyboard shortcuts on our blog and on Apple’s support site, which is well worth referring to or even keeping a copy:

2) File system and hard drive storage location shortcuts.

The Finder in OS X is designed to give the user only the information required to do a specific job. Most users have no need to rummage around the file system. All you should need is access to your Apps and documents. Thus, the Finder gives you quick access to these and not much else.

The default way to use a Mac is, therefore, to use the Dock to access the default Apps and storage locations and to use Launchpad to view all installed Apps. Then within the Apps themselves, they will offer you access to your documents and data relating to that App.

All Apps will give you a limited view of the file system to save new documents to, predominantly offering you locations such as your Documents folder, Downloads folder, Desktop folder, etc.

One of the quickest ways to access all the data stored on your hard disks is to use the Finder’s ‘Go’ menu:

From here, you can quickly select to ‘Go to your Computer’. Selecting ‘Computer’ is effectively like ‘My Computer’ in Windows. It will give you a list of all the connected drives on your Mac. Both internally and externally connected drives as well as Network drives.

There is also quick access to your entire Home folder, Documents, Desktop and Downloads as well as the Applications and Utilities folders. Not only can you quickly access your Desktop by using the Finder’s ‘Go’ menu, you can also very quickly clear your screen of Apps and Documents and access your Desktop by using the ‘fn’ + ‘F11′ keys on your keyboard. (On some Macs, you may not even need to use the ‘fn’ key and can simply just use the ‘F11′ key).

The Finder’s ‘Go’ menu also has the very useful ‘Go to Folder…’ option. This allows you to enter the file system path to any folder and quickly switch the Finder to that location.

You will often find blogs and documentation online that describes the location of software on a Mac by using file system paths, such as: /Users/russ/Desktop, which will specify my Desktop folder as the location to go to, as my user account is named ‘russ’ and is located in the startup disc’s Users folder:

Each ‘/’ denotes a double click of a folder with the initial ‘/’ being a double click on your startup disk, which is, by default titled ‘Macintosh HD’ on a Mac.

Here’s the result of the above entered ‘/Users/russ/Desktop’ request:

3) Where am I?

So, you’re now starting to get used to using a Mac but now and then you get confused about WHERE in the file system the document you are working on is stored. Or, you just need to go back quickly to the folder in which the open document is located to open a related document that is stored in the same folder.

For me, this is one of the most useful hidden shortcuts on a Mac, and it’s so simple, once you know about it!

Simply ‘cmd/command’ click the folder’s name at the top of the folder window and you will see a full file system representation of where that folder is located.

For example, if I now ‘cmd/command’ click on the word ‘Desktop’ at the top of the Desktop window I am viewing, I will see the following:

Here I can see that the Desktop folder I am viewing is located inside my Home folder, (named russ), which is located inside the Users folder of a hard drive titled ‘RussMBPro’. This hard drive is connected to a computer that is named ‘RussPresentationMac’.

I can not only use this to discover WHERE I am in the file system, but to also use this to traverse back through this file system path.

For example, if I need to go back to my home folder, once I have ‘cmd/command’ clicked on the word ‘Desktop’, I can then select the word ‘russ’ and the Finder window I am viewing will switch to my home folder:

What I love about this feature, is that it not only works with folders within the Finder, but also works within documents in OS X Apps! Again, just ‘cmd/command’ click on the name of the document at the top of the App’s document window to view the document location and to traverse through that file system path:

So, I can easily now see where this ‘RussImportantStuff document is stored, and also quickly switch to the folder it’s located in to access other related files. Genius!

4) App switcher.

I often see Mac users fighting to switch from one App to another by dragging document windows out of the way, hiding windows or clicking the Dock icon to switch in-between open Apps.

There is a much easier way!

To cycle through all of the Apps open on your Mac, hold down the ‘cmd/command’ key and then tap the ‘Tab’ key to access the ‘App Switcher’:

Make sure you keep the ‘cmd/command’ key held down at all times, then for each tap of the Tab key you will see the ‘App Switcher’ switch one at a time through the open Apps.

In the example image above the currently highlighted App is TextEdit and therefore if I let go of both the ‘cmd/command’ and ‘Tab’ keys, my Mac will switch to TextEdit.

You can use the Tab key to shift one App at a time through the list, or you can use the arrows keys or even the mouse/trackpad pointer.

5) Quick Spotlight searching

Certainly one of the most useful keyboard shortcuts is the ability to very quickly bring up the Spotlight search window. This allows you to search your

10 entire file system for a specific document or app, and now in Yosemite, the internet and network content too!

Simply use the ‘cmd/Command’ + ‘Spacebar’ keys together to instantaneously call the Spotlight window:

I typically use this to quickly open an App by typing in the first couple of letters of the App:

6) Windows ‘Delete’ key

When I am training a PC user or a Windows to Mac switcher, many students ask me about how to perform the function of the delete key like in Windows. This seems strange at first, since the Mac keyboard has a Delete key too.

However, the Mac Delete key doesn’t work in the same way; the Mac default Delete key is a ‘Backspace’ key. There is a Delete key, if you have a full size external Mac keyboard. Otherwise, you are stuck with just this Backspace key on Apple portables and the standard USB and Wireless keyboards.

So, how do you perform a ‘Delete’ key function? Well, simply use the ‘Control’ + ‘D’ keys together to delete the next character after the flashing text cursor.

7) ‘Right click’

Another classic from the ‘How to make my Mac act like my PC’ collection is the Right Click. Apple doesn’t give you a right click by default.

In fact, they don’t even give you a right mouse button on their mice or 2 track pad buttons. There is a good reason for this and it all boils down to Apple’s main goal of having a simple to use “Point and click” interface without the user needing to have to worry about accessing too much information.

However, in reality, most of us want a right click don’t we?

Well, there are options for this. One option is to just add the ‘secondary button’ feature in either the Mouse or Track pad system preferences.

In the image below, you can see that on my MacBook Pro I can add a ‘secondary click’ to my track pad in Track pad system preferences and that there are 3 options. I can either tap with 2 fingers together, click the bottom right corner of the track pad or bizarrely, I can have a right click by left clicking!

The image below also shows the options within the Keyboard & Mouse system preferences for a Mighty Mouse and Mouse preferences for a Magic Mouse. Both have the option to configure a Secondary Button or Secondary Click (for the Mighty Mouse, just select the pull down menu on the right-hand side and change the option from ‘Primary Button’ to ‘Secondary Button’:

The built-in way on ALL Macs to have a right click is to perform a left click but with the ctrl/control key held down. (Commonly known within Apple as a ‘Control Click’. So, if you are using someone else’s Mac, you never need to configure the right click on a mouse or track pad, just use the control key with the left click!

8) Bring back the Finder window status bar

Since OS X Lion (10.7), the status bar along the bottom of each window has been disabled by default.

Even though, I can understand the reason for this, which is that it took up some screen space providing information that is irrelevant or too technical to most users. However, as a technician, this is something I always want to have available to me. It is a great way to check quickly how much hard disk space is available or even how many files and folders are in the current viewed folder.

There are a few ways to bring this feature back. You can just select ‘Show Status Bar’ from the Finder’s View menu, and you’re done:

Notice below that we now have on all Finder windows the bottom footer displaying the Status Bar:

There is an even a quicker way to do this with a keyboard shortcut. Just click ‘CMD/Command’ + ‘/’ keys together to quickly toggle the status bar on and off.

(Refer to the Apple’s support article and information back in Tip 1 for more info on keyboard shortcuts).

9) Show the Finder window path bar

Similar to tip 7, the Finder Path Bar has also been removed in default installations of OS X and the solution is, therefore, also similar. Being able to quickly view the file system path is really useful for navigation and file storage. It also saves having to perform tip 3!

You can just select ‘Show Path Bar’ from the Finder’s View menu, and you’re done:

Notice below that we now have on all Finder windows the bottom footer displaying the Path Bar:

There is again an even a quicker way to do this with a keyboard shortcut. Just use the ‘Option/alt’, + ‘cmd/Command’ + ‘P’ keys together to quickly toggle the path bar on and off.

10) Show the Finder locations of Recent Items

Most people access the same Apps and Documents regularly, and therefore the Apple Menu’s ‘Recent Items’ feature is really useful:

What most people are not aware of, however, is that if you view these Recent Items whilst holding down the ‘cmd/Command’ key, the Finder will now allow you to navigate to the folder that these Recent Items are located in:

So there you have it.

The main OS X navigation tips that I find myself showing people that improve their Mac experience and saves them time! I hope you have found this blog useful.

There are many more tips and tricks in the OS X Finder. If you would like to learn more about these or just the Mac in general, then take a look at our collection of introductory training courses. We also have a large collection of Mac and iOS support courses which you may also find useful.

This feature has been tested using OS X Yosemite v10.10.0 which was the latest Mac OS release at the time of writing.

OS X Yosemite hidden features in the Finder & Dock

New Feature 1: Finder Dark mode

Yosemite has a new look, and it’s brighter and crisper than ever. For some people though, this may be too bright and crisp! So, Apple provided a ‘Dark Mode’.

Simply navigate to the General pane of System Preferences and tick the box next to ‘Use dark menu bar and Dock’:

Here is a ‘before’ snapshot showing the default menu bar and dock, notice how bright and white the menu bar and Dock are:

And now below is an ‘after’ snapshot showing the Dark Mode menu bar and Dock, notice the menu bar and Dock are now darker (black):

This ‘Dark Mode’ is ideal for anyone working in perhaps a professional photo or video environment.

New Feature 2: Batch rename files or folders in Finder

Have you ever had a bunch of files or folders and needed to rename them quickly and all in sequence? Yosemite makes this a breeze.

All you need to do is highlight all your files/folders, then control-click/right-click them and select ‘Rename items’ from the contextual menu that appears. Then just choose your choice from the drop down menu, select your criteria, click Rename and you’re all done!

Below is an example where I wish to rename 4 files in sequence:

Step 1: Select all the files in the Finder:

Step 2: Control-click/right-click the items and select ‘Rename items’ from the contextual menu that appears:

There is now a choice of 3 renaming options:

You can simply Replace Text in all items:

Add Text in all items:

Or use Format to reformat Text in all items:

Step 3: I have chosen to Format the text as follows:

This will rename each file in turn as ‘RussDoc’ and then add a sequential number starting from ’1′.

Below is the result:

New Feature 3: Handoff

If you own more than one Mac device, let’s say an iPhone and an iMac, Yosemite and iOS 8 combined have a really nifty feature known as Handoff. It is technically 1 part of a feature known as Continuity.

So what is ‘Handoff’?

To quote Apple’s website:

“Say you start writing a report on your iMac, but you want to continue on your iPad as you head to your meeting. Or maybe you start writing an email on your iPhone, but you want to finish it on your Mac. Handoff makes it possible. When your Mac and iOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass what you’re doing from one device to another.

An icon representing the last app you were using will appear on your second device — in the Dock on your Mac or on the Lock screen on your iOS device. Just click or swipe to pick up exactly where you left off without having to search for the file. Handoff works with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar and Contacts. And app developers can easily build Handoff into their apps.”

Make sense?

So, let’s see it in action. I’ll be using an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.1.2 and an iMac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.1.

First of all, the requirements to use Handoff:

• Sign into the same iCloud account on all your devices. • Turn on Bluetooth on all the devices you want to use. Make sure your devices are near each other. • Connect all your devices to the same Wi-Fi network.

Step 1: Go to the Settings App in iOS 8, choose ‘General’ and then ‘Handoff & Suggested Apps’ and ensure that ‘Handoff’ is enabled:

Step 2: On your Yosemite Mac, ensure that Handoff is enabled in General Preferences:

Step 3: Ensure both devices are logged into the same iCloud account, (iOS 8 = Settings App>iCloud, OS X Yosemite = System Preferences>iCloud), the same Wi-Fi network and have Bluetooth enabled.

Step 4: Start to compose a new email using the Mail app on your iPhone:

Step 5: Your phone should ‘notify’ your Mac in the far left of the Dock that there is an email that you can continue from your iPhone:

(You could also use OS X’s App switcher by using the Command-Tab keys to switch to an app with a Handoff icon).

Step 6: Select the Email icon at the far left of the Dock to open the email and continue:

Nice!

Let’s look at it the other way round, ‘Handing off’ from OS X to iOS.

Step 1: Using the rules from above, but this time start the email on your Mac, then the Lock screen of your iOS device will show the icon of the Handoff supported app in the lower left hand corner, (and yes, that is me in the racecar!):

Step 2: Swipe the Handoff app icon ‘UP’, (in this case the Mail icon), and unlock the device if it has a passcode. The email or whatever Handoff content there is, will load on the screen.

You can also go to the multitasking display in iOS, (double-clicking the Home button on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch,) swipe all the way from left to right to see that the Handoff app is the first icon in this list before the home screen, then tap the app:

New Feature 4: Quickly disconnect from a Wi-Fi network

I have often wanted to disconnect from a Wi-Fi network without having to turn Wi-Fi completely off. Before Yosemite, this couldn’t easily be done. Well, now you can!

In OS X Yosemite, once connected to a Wi-Fi network, simply option/alt click the Wi-Fi icon in the top right menu bar. You will now have an option to disconnect from the network listed underneath the name of the currently in- use Wi-Fi:

(If you are connecting to an iPhone/iPad using the Personal Hotspot feature of iOS, this feature is immediately available from the Wi-Fi menu without having to option/alt click).

OS X Yosemite hidden features in Safari

New Feature 1: Recent Safari Browser History Removal

Previously, Safari would only allow you to remove your browsing history as an all or nothing feature. The only option to clear out recent browser history was to show all your browser history and manually select and delete required websites. A bit of a laborious task.

Well, Yosemite has stepped into change all that. Now you can choose to delete just your last hour of browser history, or perhaps just everything from today, or even the last 48 hours. You can, therefore, preserve your long-term web history while just removing more recent history. I won’t start speculating on the reasons why people may wish to clear out just their last hour or so of web browser history! ;)

So, how do we do this?

Pretty simply actually. In Safari, select the main ‘Safari’ menu or the ‘History’ menu and you will see the option for ‘Clear History and Website Data…’

Once selected, you can choose options from the pull down menu for how much browser history to clear:

Don’t forget that you can always clear custom-selected browser history by selecting ‘Show History’ from the ‘History’ menu and selecting and deleting just the specific browser links you wish.

New Feature 2: New Private Window

Safari has had a Private Browsing feature for a while. However, it was again an all or nothing option.

If you wanted to browse the web on a computer without Safari tracking what web pages you’ve visited, adding cookies or saving the passwords you’re entering. You had to enable Private Browsing for ALL web tabs and windows and then remember to disable it afterwards.

Yosemite’s Safari has made Private Browsing more convenient.

You can now just enable it in a new browser window, allowing you to perform your unmonitored browsing in one window while leaving all your usual websites open in other windows.

Again this is easy to do once you know how. Just select the ‘File’ menu and choose ‘New Private Window’ (or use the keyboard shortcut of SHIFT + COMMAND + N):

This will open a new Safari browser window that will have private browsing enabled:

Any browsing you perform within this window, including any tabs you create and use, will have its history, cookies and other info deleted once you have closed the window. Plus any tabs you open, will not appear on your other devices if you are using the same iCloud account on multiple Apple devices. (Refer to ‘New Feature 3: Handoff’ from Part 1 in this blog series for more info on this feature).

Any Browser windows you had open prior to opening this new private window, along with any new windows you open with the usual ‘New Window’ or ‘COMMAND + N’ keys, will still work as normal, by auto-filling in your usernames and passwords, creating browser history etc.

As you can see below, this new private window has a dark coloured search field instead of Safari’s default clear white colour. This allows you to remember easily which Safari window is the private browsing window:

New Feature 3: Viewing all Safari Tabs

I’m a big lover of Web tabs instead of having multiple browser windows open. Safari now has a nice feature to show you a clear view of all currently opened tabs in the current window. To do this, you could select ‘Show All Tabs’ from Safari’s ‘View’ menu or use the shortcut keys of ‘SHIFT + COMMAND + \’. But the easiest way, is to select the ‘Show all Tabs’ icon as highlighted in red below:

Now I have 4 tabs open, 2 of which are from the same website. This new view has a handy feature where it will group Tabs from the same website. (See in the image below that the 2 tabs from www.amsys.co.uk are stacked together.)

Even better, if like me you have a Mac but also an iPhone or an iPad signed into the same iCloud account, this Show All Tabs feature will also show you any open tabs on any of your other iOS devices or even another Mac. (Notice that in the image below it shows the iCloud icon and the name of my iPhone along with the Safari tabs I’m using on my iPhone.)

If I now hover my mouse over these tabs from other devices, an ‘X’ will appear on the right allowing me to close those tabs on that device:

New Feature 4: Recent Share History

Nice little titbit this one.

If you use the ‘Share’ icon in the Safari menu bar to send web information to someone either as a message, email, etc., Safari now has a ‘recents’ list. Handy for when you regularly share webpage links with the same person. It will also remember for you HOW you share with that person.

In the below example, I have shared a web link as an iMessage to myself, which has been sent to my iPhone:

New Feature 5: Favourites View

Most of us regularly visit the same core collection of websites every time we go online. Safari can now learn these for you, allowing you to choose quickly from a ‘favourites’ list.

You can select the ‘favourites view’ icon (see right) in the Safari toolbar, but if you also click on the Smart Search field (where you enter a URL or perform a web search), a grid of icons will then appear displaying your favourite websites and frequently visited websites:

You can drag out any favourites that you want to delete from the list with the usual ‘puff of smoke’ effect as well as re-order them should you wish.

Should you wish to remove this feature, select the Safari main menu and open the Preferences. Go to the ‘Search’ tab and un-tick the ‘Show Favorites’ option:

New Feature 6: Importing bookmarks into Safari

Importing your bookmarks from other web browsers was sometimes not that easy. Even requiring exporting an HTML file first. Safari in Yosemite has improved importing.

You can easily now import Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox’s configuration files. All you need to do is go to the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Import From’:

The sub-menu will offer you dedicated options for importing from Chrome and Firefox, as well as the HTML import option:

Safari supports importing bookmarks, history and passwords from Firefox and bookmarks and history from Chrome:

New Feature 7: RSS Returns!

In years gone by before social networking kicked off, I used to love using Safari to subscribe to news feeds known as RSS. With the introduction of OS X Mountain Lion, this feature was removed. After the initial moaning, I got over it and found other ways to keep up to date such as following news feeds on Twitter.

For those of you that would like to return to using RSS, Safari in Yosemite has integrated RSS feeds into the Shared Links feature and can also grab links from your Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.

Just click on the RSS link within any website and Safari will bring up a window asking if you would like to add this feed to your Shared Links:

Once you have added the feed to access your Shared Links, select the Sidebar icon in the Safari toolbar, which is usually next to the back/forward icons (see right), then select the @ icon. Or you can select ‘Show Shared Links Sidebar’ from Safari’s ‘View’ menu. (CONTROL + COMMAND + 3 will also do the trick).

If you have logged into social media accounts such as Twitter and LinkedIn, these will also have their feeds displayed here:

Shared links are displayed by the date that they were posted. So you may find RSS feeds and social media feed posts merged.

If you want to remove a site from the Shared Links, follow the steps above to return to the @ tab of the Safari sidebar, and then click on the ‘Subscriptions’ button at the bottom:

To remove a social media feed, un-tick the box. To remove a RSS feed, select the ‘X’ icon to the left of the feed.

New Feature 8: Clever Searching

Safari has gained the ability to ‘learn’ when you use a search field in any website. You can then use a website’s search feature directly from the main Safari URL/search bar without having to re-visit the specific site first.

Sometimes, Safari is so clever that you may not even need to visit a website and use its search field for Safari to offer you a website’s search field directly in the menu bar.

How can I explain this clearly? Well, a demo usually works.

Imagine that I have Googled the Apple Watch. I have then clicked a link to the Apple website where I have used the search field inside Apple’s webpage (The Magnifying Glass icon) to find all articles hosted directly on Apple’s website regarding the watch:

Safari will now have learned that I have searched within www.apple.com for the term ‘watch’.

I can now perform this same search quicker next time by simply typing in ‘apple watch’ into Safari’s main smart search field as shown below:

Notice that Safari has suggested www.apple.com/uk/watch/ and as well as searching discussions.apple.com for ‘watch’ which is exactly what I did manually.

Want to remove this feature?

Select the Safari main menu and open the Preferences. Go to the ‘Search’ tab and un-tick the relevant option(s):

Quick Website Search has a ‘Manage Websites’ button that allows you to view and remove the website that it has remembered you used in their internal search systems:

New Feature 9: Where’s the full URL gone?

Finally, I wanted to mention a cheeky trick Safari now does with URL names. It now only shows you the main URL of a site or its domain name.

The idea here is to protect users from phishing scams by showing you just the base URL a web link has come from.

For example, if I visit https://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch-edition/ and look at the Safari address bar, all I will see is ‘Apple Inc’:

Now the good news is that I now know that the link I am going to is officially from Apple. But I can’t see the full URL. Now you can just click on the base URL info, and it will expand to give you the full URL address. But if you wish to see the full URL by default, you just need to know where to enable it.

Select the Safari main menu and open the Preferences. Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab and Tick ‘Show full website address’:

I hope you are finding this blog series useful, the features i am discussing are just a collection of the ones that I have discovered and found useful and is not a complete feature list.

Remember, Apple has a decent overview of the main new features of OS X Yosemite on their website.

These features were tested using OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 and iOS v8.1.2 which were the latest Mac OS and iOS releases at the time of writing.

Continuing on with our series looking at features of OS X Yosemite that aren’t as well known or documented, Part 3 will focus on features in Apple’s Mail client.

Despite the graphical overhaul of OS X Yosemite, Mail as an app seems to function in similar way to how it was in OS X Mavericks and hasn’t experienced the relocating of settings and options as much as some other apps. So there is no real learning required to get to grips with it for existing Mac users.

There are, however, some rather nifty new features thrown in. As I have mentioned previously, these may not necessarily be ‘hidden’ in the sense that you cannot ‘see’ them, instead the following features may not:

• Be obvious as to where they are. • Be easy to understand on what they do. • Be as well documented by Apple.

OS X Yosemite Hidden Features in Apple Mail

New Feature 1: Mail Markup

What is it?

• Have you ever needed to fill in a form or sign a document that you have received as an email attachment? • Received a photo or map as an attachment and want to highlight or comment on it?

Normally, this would entail having to save the attachment, open it in an editing app, whether that be Preview, Photoshop etc, make your changes and save the edited file, then add the newly modified file back as an attachment in an email. Rather long-winded!

Enter ‘Markup’. This handy new feature allows you to annotate an image or PDF attachment easily while staying within the Mail app. How cool!

If you have ever used the ‘Annotate’ feature within the ‘Tools’ menu of Apple’s Preview app, then you will already know everything about this feature as ‘Markup’ is essentially offering you that ‘Annotate’ tool directly within Mail.

Below is a reminder of the Annotate features in Preview:

You can now sketch, add shapes, text, signatures, lines or arrows directly onto an enclosed image or PDF. Change the font and colours of these too!

Looking at it another way, instead of modifying an attachment that someone else has sent to you before re-sending it back to them. You can now even add an image into a new email, directly apply your annotation to it and then send it, all within Mail without having to modify the item before attaching it!

How does it work?

It is all rather simple. If you have received an email containing the attachment in question, just select to ‘Reply’ or ‘Forward’ the email containing the attachment as normal. If you wish to send someone else an email with an attachment but directly modify it, then again, just add the attachment to the email as normal.

Next, hover your mouse over the attachment and select the ‘down-facing chevron/arrow’ from the far right of the attachment as highlighted below by a

43 red circle (using preview’s annotate features!):

Once you have selected the ‘down-facing chevron/arrow’, select ‘Markup’ from the pull-down menu:

The image or PDF then ‘zooms out’, offering an annotation toolbar at the top so you can now add your notations to the attachment with mouse, trackpad or keyboard!

Let’s now see it in action!

So now we know how to access Markup, what can you do with it? I will work my way along the options of the annotation toolbar from left to right.

Sketch

The first option is the Sketch tool. With this option, you can use a pen tool so you can perform freehand drawing. Your mouse pointer will change to an ‘ink pen’ icon while you are hovering around the attachment, allowing you to click to select where you wish to start freehand drawing. Use the Shape Style, Border Color and Fill Color options to customise the size and color of your freehand drawing.

In the example below, I used the sketch tool to circle around the location of our Surrey office, the Sketch tool has then offered me some customisation options:

I can either keep to my ‘rough’ freehand circle, or select below to have it ‘tidied up’:

I think the tidied up version is better than my freehand circle!

Shapes

The second option is the Shapes tool. As it implies, this tool can create shapes, but also insert speech bubbles or arrows onto your attachment, and even has a handy ‘highlight’ and ‘zoom’ option too:

I won’t demo all these shape options since most of them are similar and straight forward, but here’s how to create a custom arrow on an attachment:

Step 1: Select the ‘arrow’ option under the Shapes feature to add an arrow with the current Shape Style, Border Color and Fill Color settings.

Step 2: You can drag the arrow around with your mouse pointer, (a ‘hand’ icon replaces your mouse arrow). You can also use the ‘blue’ end point handles to change the length of the arrow or change the angle:

Step 3: Drag the ‘green’ middle point handle to change the arrow from a straight arrow to a curved arrow:

Step 4: Use the ‘Shape Style’ option to change the ‘thickness’ of the arrow, make it a dotted arrow or to add and remove the end points of the arrow:

Step 5: You can then use the ‘Border Color’ option and ‘Fill Color’ option to change the colour of the border or to fill in the arrow with a different colour:

(Choosing the first color will allow you to have NO border or fill colour) Let’s now look at how to add a custom highlight on to the attachment:

Step 1: Select the ‘highlight’ option at the bottom left of the Shapes feature .

Step 2: This should add a highlighted square on your attachment, allowing you to drag the blue resizing handles to select which part of the image you wish to highlight. The image below shows a red arrow pointing to the stations nearest the Amsys Surrey Training Centre and that area of the map is now highlighted too:

Highlighting a block is quite nice, but the ‘magnifying glass/zoom’ feature is even nicer. I have re-selected the highlighted area and used the ‘backspace’ key to delete this element and will now add a ‘zoom’ element instead.

Step 1: Select the ‘magnifying glass/zoom’ option at the bottom right of the Shapes feature.

Step 2: Again, you can drag the zoom element around with your mouse pointer, (a ‘hand’ icon replaces your mouse arrow). You can also use the ‘blue’ handle to change the length of the zoom range:

Step 3: Drag the ‘green’ handle to change the amount of zoom required, I have used the green handle to zoom in further on the stations I wanted to highlight:

Step 4: You can again use the ‘Shape Style’ option to change the ‘thickness’ of the zoom border, make it dotted or have a shadow.

The ‘Border Color’ option can also be used to change the colour of the border:

Text The third option is the Text tool. As this implies, this can add a free text box onto your attachment. Simply click on the Text option to add a free text box and again you can drag the Text box around with your mouse pointer, (a ‘hand’ icon replaces your mouse arrow) and also use the ‘blue’ handles to change the length of the Text box:

Just like any free text box on a Mac, double-clicking inside the text box allows you to modify the text to be displayed. With the text box highlighted, you can again use the Shape Style, Border Color and Fill Color options to customise the border thickness, color and background fill color and perhaps create something like this:

With Text boxes, you can also use the Text Style option to also modify the text’s font, color, font size, bold, italic and underlined options as well as alignment within the text box:

The end result can therefore look like this with change of font, text color with bold and italic added:

Let’s combine those 3 elements together. The arrow shape, the zoomed shape and the text box:

Sign

The fourth option, is the Sign tool. Just click the Sign dropdown arrow and select ‘Create Signature’, you can then select to create a signature with your

finger if using a Trackpad, or with the use of your Mac’s camera which can take a photo of your signature on a piece of paper:

When using the camera, it will ask you to sign your name on a piece of white paper and hold it up to the camera:

It will then capture the signature and reverse the image so that it is the right way round as shown below:

With both options, simply select Clear to try again or Done to add the signature to your annotations:

You can now select the captured signature to add it to your attachment:

Again, you can drag the signature around with your mouse pointer, (a ‘hand’ icon replaces your mouse arrow). You can also use the ‘blue’ handle to change the size of the text box. The ‘Border Color’ option can also be used to change the color of the signature text should you wish.

Shape Style

The fifth option, is the Shape Style tool. As mentioned during the above steps when looking at adding shapes and text, this is used to change the ‘thickness’ of elements, make them dotted, blurred or shadowed and to add and remove end points to arrows:

Border Color The sixth option, is the Border Color tool. This was also mentioned during the above steps when looking at adding shapes and text and can be used to change the colour of any border of elements:

(Remember that choosing the first colour will allow you to have NO border color)

Fill Color The seventh option, is the Fill Color tool. I mentioned this during the above steps too when looking at adding shapes and text, this is used to change the ‘Fill’ color of any element, such as the filled in color of a shape or the background color behind text:

Text Style Lastly, the final option, is the Text Style tool. Also mentioned during the above steps when looking at adding shapes and text, this is used to modify the text’s

57 font, color, font size, bold, italic and underlined options as well as alignment within the text box:

Right, I think we’ve finally sorted out the Markup feature in Mail! So let’s see my end result PDF after using Markup:

This was created using the steps above, but also included using the ‘duplicate’ command (or ‘CMD’ + ‘D’ keys) to duplicate some existing annotate elements I had already created to save recreating them from scratch.

As you can see, by adding a generic London travel map PDF into Mail, I have managed to use the Markup feature to clearly highlight the best stations to

58 travel to when visiting our Soho and Surrey offices. All without having to modify the PDF first before adding to Mail!

Useful Info about Markup

Finally, here’s some useful pieces of info about this Markup feature:

• Markup Clean Up - As noted whilst i was creating a freehand circle, Mail can automatically ‘clean up’ or smooth out your drawings to make them look nice and tidy. • Markup File Formats - As great as this Markup feature is, it currently only works with images/photos and PDF files. So you cannot use Markup to annotate other types of files, for example a spreadsheet created in Numbers or Excel.

The Markup Extension - Markup is in fact not just for Mail. It is part of the new ‘Extensions’ feature Apple built-in to OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. Extensions allows code from one application to be available inside another application. We have just experienced Apple’s Markup extension allowing me to use the annotation features offered within the Preview application directly within Mail.

So where is this Markup feature actually configured if not in Mail itself?

Well, OS X Yosemite offers a brand new System preference pane called ‘Extensions’ which offers the ability to provide ‘Extensions’ to apps and the Finder. Below you can see that the ‘Markup’ extension is enabled under the ‘Actions’ section to allow editing and viewing content across apps. (Preview to Mail in this example):

Extensions, therefore, have the potential to completely change how Mac apps function. Hopefully Apple will incorporate more extensions into the file system

59 and also allow developers to make their own or add to existing ones like Markup. Currently the Markup extension has limited availability, I’m hoping more apps will utilise it soon as it is such a useful tool.

For now, though, Markup has a perfect link between the Preview and Mail apps. So much so that if you have already created signatures using Preview, (Tools menu > Annotate > Signature, or visit this guide for earlier versions of OS X’s Preview app), these will automatically appear in a Markup enclosure in Mail when you select the Sign option! Cool!

New Feature 2: Mail Drop

What is it?

Put simply, Mail Drop is a new OS X Yosemite feature integrated into the Mail app that lets you send large attachments in Mail without having to worry whether it is too big to send and then having to think about how you can get around email attachment limits if your email server rejects your email.

There are quite a few email systems that put a maximum size limit on email file attachments, meaning you are restricted on what you can attach to your emails. This leads you into having to think of a way round this like trying to compress the files, crop/reduce the size of images, or even getting as desperate as having to upload your files a cloud-based storage solution and pasting in a link to this in your email.

Enter Mail Drop! With Mail Drop, you can now just drag a large file into a message as normal and click Send. Mail will execute Mail Drop to magically send the large attachment, (whether it be a presentation, video or just a folder of holiday photos) without any worry about size limits!

How does it work?

So, how does Mail Drop get around these email size limits?

As long as you have an iCloud account and are logged into this on your Mac, Mail can send the attachment by uploading the file to a temporary holding area on Apple’s servers where it is encrypted and held ready for download. Just drag your attachments into an email message, Mail Drop can then take it from there. If the receiver of your email is also using Mail in OS X Yosemite, Mail can download the large file automatically so that they will receive the email with the download attachment as normal, as if it had been attached to the message.

However, If they use an earlier version of Mail, any another email app or even webmail, they will receive your email without the attachment, but the email will contain a link to download any attachments. A link that will remain available

60 for 30 days before being deleted. The recipient will be notified in the email along with the link, the expiration date of the downloadable attachment.

The beauty of Mail Drop is that it costs NOTHING to use and the attachments stored in iCloud do NOT count towards your free 5GB of iCloud Drive storage either! It doesn’t matter which email service you use either, whether it be iCloud itself or something like Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo etc.

If you do have OS X Yosemite and are using Mail but don’t have an iCloud account, or you try to send an email without being logged into your iCloud account, Mail will just ask you whether you want to use Mail Drop or not.

Let’s now see it in action!

So now we know what Mail Drop is, let’s see how we can use it!

Sending the email:

Step 1: First of all, check you are logged into iCloud. Open System Preferences from the Apple menu and select ‘iCloud’. Sign in with your iCloud name and password if not already signed in. Check that iCloud Drive is enabled, then click on the iCloud Drive Options button and check that Mail is selected in the list of apps that store data in iCloud in order to activate Mail Drop:

Step 2: Next, we need to check that Mail Drop is enabled for your email account. Open the Mail app and choose Mail > Preferences, click Accounts, then select your email account, click the Advanced tab, make sure ‘Send large attachments with Mail Drop’ is ticked:

You can enable and disable Mail Drop here for each email account. So you can choose which accounts to use Mail Drop with. If you are using Mail in OS X Yosemite and are logged into an iCloud account, Mail Drop should automatically kick in.

Step 3: Compose a new email message in Mail and drag in a large attachment:

Step 4: Mail may display the total message size just below the “From” address. This text should dynamically change to red if attachments go over the approximate limit for third-party email providers. (My above example screenshot used a gmail account). Click to Send the message and you’re done! (Remember that the attachment needs to be sent to Apple for hosting and, therefore, there maybe a waiting period before the email is actually sent).

Remember that the message size limit warning will trigger Mail Drop to create a link to the attachment instead of including the attachment in the email.

So what if you haven’t got an iCloud account or you are not logged in to it? Or perhaps you have disabled Mail Drop for your email account in Mail Preferences? Not to worry, you can still use Mail Drop but you will need to authorise this on sending the email.

Step 1: Compose a new email message in Mail and drag in a large attachment as mentioned above.

Step 2: On clicking Send, you will receive a notification from Mail asking you whether you want to use Mail Drop or not:

Receiving the email: Remember, if the recipient is using Mail in OS X Yosemite, they will receive the attachment within the email as normal. However, other mail client apps will receive the email with links to download any attachment from Apple’s iCloud servers and a notification of the expiry date of the download:

Useful Info about Mail Drop

Tip! Remember to check that the email was sent before putting your Mac to sleep or shutting it down. If your attachments are large, they may still be uploading to Apple in the background. So check the Activity before closing Mail or putting your Mac to sleep or shutdown. (You can check your Mail Activity by selecting the Window menu in Mail and then selecting Activity). The next time you open Mail, you may find this error caused by you closing down Mail too soon:

This error can also occur if you have tried to send too many attachments using Mail Drop in a short period of time.

Mail Drop Limitations

Just as I mentioned for Markup, Mail Drop doesn’t suit all situations. Mail Drop may not activate properly even if both sender and receiver have an iCloud account. The reason for this is that Mail Drop is designed to work by using the sender’s file size limits for its trigger, NOT the receiver’s file size limits.

What does this mean?

Well, let’s say that you plan to send a friend a 15MB email, and your file size limit is 40MB. The email size is well within your attachment limit, but your friend’s maximum file size limit is only 10MB. Technically, the email cannot be sent at the current size, as even though it is smaller than your limit, it is larger than your recipient’s limit.

Since Mail Drop will only consider the senders’ file size limit, in this example, Mail Drop will not trigger an issue and, therefore, the email will send with the file received by your friend as a clickable link they can download from iCloud. As the sender, you will receive a reply notification that the recipient is unable to accept a message of this size.

Apple report that Mail Drop can only be used to send files if the email ‘exceeds the maximum size allowed by the provider of the sender’s email account’. In other words, as a sender, you cannot specify a custom file size

65 threshold with which Mail Drop will trigger. So you cannot prevent situations like my example above.

Since Mail Drop is a new feature, we can but hope that in the future Apple releases a custom size control for Mail Drop to allow senders to ensure that their recipients receive attachments without having to receive a download link.

Mail Drop does support sending multiple attachments in the same message though, however the combined total size must be below the 5GB threshold.

In case you try and use Mail Drop but it fails to send, remember to open System Preferences and look at the settings in the iCloud preference pane. Ensure you are logged in correctly to your iCloud account. Check that iCloud Drive is enabled, then click on the iCloud Drive Options button and check that Mail is selected in the list of apps that store data in iCloud in order to activate Mail Drop.

New Feature 3: Mail HandOff

Mail in OS X Yosemite also works with HandOff, so you can start to write an email on your iPhone or iPad, then switch over to your Mac to finish the email off. Perhaps you want to add a photo or another file to the email that’s stored on your Mac.

Refer to ‘New Feature 3: Handoff’ from earlier on in the guide we discussed the Finder for more info on this feature.

As well as these new features, searching for/within emails, previewing and Gmail & Microsoft Exchange integration seems to be more stable and efficient compared to OS X Mavericks.

Though not new features, it’s worth mentioning these as a benefit of using Mail in OS X Yosemite.

These features were tested using OS X Yosemite v10.10.2 and iOS v8.1.3 which were the latest Mac OS and iOS releases at the time of writing.

OS X Yosemite hidden feature in calls & messages

New Feature 1: FaceTime iPhone Calls

What is it?

OS X Yosemite, along with iOS 8, supports Mac users making and receiving phone calls using an iPhone’s cellular connection.

No longer do you have to scramble around to find your phone when someone is calling you, you can answer the call via the FaceTime app on your Mac. You can even initiate calls from your Mac using your iPhone’s cellular connection.

How does it work?

As with most features, there is a hardware and software requirement.

Mac requirements:

• Your Mac must be running OS X Yosemite 10.10 or later • Signed into iCloud using the same Apple ID as the iPhone (Check iCloud System Preferences) • Signed in to FaceTime using the same Apple ID as the iPhone (Check FaceTime application Preferences) • Connected to the same Wi-Fi network and router as iPhone to make and receive calls iPhone requirements:

• Your iPhone must be running iOS 8 or later. • Signed into iCloud using the same Apple ID as the Mac (Check Settings > iCloud) • Signed in to FaceTime using the same Apple ID as the Mac (Check Settings > FaceTime) • Connected to the same Wi-Fi network and router as the Mac

Once you have the requirements sorted, there’s just a single setting on both the Mac and iPhone to enable and you’re all set!

• On your iPhone, go to Settings > FaceTime > turn on iPhone Mobile/Cellular Calls. • On a Mac, open the FaceTime app and go to Preferences > Settings and tick the iPhone Cellular Calls option. You’ll be required to verify the device with a four digit code sent to your iPhone.

As long as you have done everything listed above, you can now start calls from your Mac simply by clicking the phone icon next to a phone number in

Contacts, click on the phone number in Calendar, or in Safari you can highlight the number, click the drop down arrow that appears and then select ‘Call using iPhone’.

• To receive a call, simply select Accept when the call notification appears on your Mac. You can also choose to decline the call or respond with a quick message. • Incoming calls will show the caller’s name, number and profile picture if stored in your Contacts.

If you start a call on your Mac, but wish to continue the call on your iPhone, you can do that too! Just tap the green bar at the top of your iPhone to transfer the call to your iPhone.

If you wish to disable this feature, just turn off iPhone cellular calls as follows:

• On your iPhone, go to Settings > FaceTime > turn off iPhone Mobile/Cellular Calls. • On a Mac, open the FaceTime app and go to Preferences > Settings and un-tick the iPhone Cellular Calls option.

Let’s now see it in action!

So now we know how it works, let’s see how to do it! The following was performed using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) running 10.10.2 and an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.2.

Setting up FaceTime iPhone Calls:

Step 1: Enable iPhone Cellular Calls on the iPhone (Settings > FaceTime > turn on iPhone Mobile/Cellular Calls):

Step 2: Enable iPhone Cellular Calls on the Mac (FaceTime app Preferences > Settings and tick the iPhone Cellular Calls option):

You’ll be required to verify the device with a four digit code sent to your iPhone.

Answering FaceTime iPhone Calls:

Step 1: Once a phone call has been sent to your iPhone, a notification window should appear at the top right of your screen as shown below:

Step 2: Simply click on “Accept” when the notification appears to answer the call on your Mac or “Decline” to cancel the call.

You can also click the drop down arrow to reply with a message or receive a notification reminder later so you can call the person back:

Making FaceTime iPhone Calls:

Step 1: To start calls from your Mac, simply click the phone icon next to a phone number in the Contacts application, or you can click on the phone number itself in Calendar. In Safari, you can highlight the number, then click the drop down arrow that appears and then select ‘Call using iPhone’:

Step 2: Click ‘call’ to confirm and dial the number:

Step 3: Select ‘Mute’ during the call so the other person can not hear you, selecting ‘End’ once the call is complete:

Note: You can also start making a call directly in the FaceTime app by simply typing the number into the FaceTime search field:

I love this feature, it’s so useful when my iPhone is on charge in another room from where I’m sitting with my Mac!

Useful Info about FaceTime iPhone Calls

Having issues getting it to work?

Check the requirements listed above to ensure that everything is configured correctly. Also check the FaceTime settings in Notifications System Preferences to ensure you receive the notifications for incoming calls.

Want to change the FaceTime’s ringtone when receiving calls?

There are quite a few ringtone choices as you can choose any found in iOS 7 or iOS 8, there’s also a “classic” tones option from earlier versions of iOS too!

To change the Ringtone, open the FaceTime application and then open its Preferences. In the Settings tab you can choose a different tone by opening the Ringtone drop down list at the bottom:

Need to enter numbers using a telephone keypad?

If you’re using your Mac to make or receive a call and need to enter information “using your telephone keypad”, for example when calling a bank, you can simply use your Mac keyboard whilst in the FaceTime app and it will send the keyboard response to your iPhone cellular call!

You should hear the standard Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones. (Just make sure you click on the call window at the top right corner of your Mac to make sure the call window is the chosen element before typing).

Do you dislike ‘floating windows’?

You’ll be pleased to hear that you can turn the floating call window into a regular window just by dragging the window away from the corner. (It will also now have the traffic light close and minimize options too!)

Apple support documentation on this feature can be found here.

New Feature 2: SMS via Messages

What is it?

The Messages app in OS X Yosemite has been updated with a few nice features.

The first to mention is the ability to work with standards text messages (SMS). Now you are not just limited to sending and receiving iMessages on your Mac, you can now text those people who chose the dark side and are using Android! :)

You can also start a message conversation from your Mac by clicking a phone number in apps like Safari, Contacts or Calendar.

How does it work?

Again, there is a hardware and software requirement.

Mac requirements:

• Your Mac must be running OS X Yosemite 10.10 or later • Signed into iCloud using the same Apple ID as the iPhone uses for iMessage. • Connected to the same Wi-Fi network and router as iPhone to make and receive calls iPhone requirements:

• Your iPhone must be running iOS 8 or later. • Signed into iCloud using the same Apple ID as the Mac • Connected to the same Wi-Fi network and router as the Mac

Once you have the relevant requirements confirmed, there’s just a single setting on your iPhone to enable and you’re all good to go!

• On your iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > select Text Message Forwarding, then turn on the switch alongside the name of your computer.

Let’s now see it in action!

So now we know what it does, let’s show you how it’s done! Again, this demo was performed using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) running 10.10.2 and an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.2.

Step 1: Enable Text Message Forwarding on your iPhone, (Settings > Messages > select Text Message Forwarding, then turn on the switch alongside the computer name of your Mac):

Step 2: As long as your Mac and iPhone are using the same iCloud account and are on the same Wi-Fi network, you should be able to open the Messages application and start sending messages to any mobile number regardless of whether the recipient has an iPhone or not.

Either select a person in the previous history to continue an existing text chat or click the ‘Compose’ icon to start a new conversation, selecting a person in your Contacts or entering their mobile number manually.

As with the iPhone Messages app, iMessages you send will appear in Blue, standard texts in Green.

Useful Info about SMS via Messages

The only issue I have found with this feature is that texts sometimes fail as my Mac and iPhone may auto join different Wi-Fi networks that are in range if I’ve connected to more than one in the same building. Thus the texts will not send! So just make sure before you start a text that your 2 devices are on the same network.

If you wish to disable this feature, simply turn off Text Message Forwarding on your iPhone:

Open the Settings app, go to Messages, select Text Message Forwarding, then turn OFF the switch alongside the computer name of your Mac.

New Feature 3: Voice Messaging via Messages

What is it?

Another new feature in the Messages app in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 is the ability to send short Voice clips to other iMessage users.

How does it work?

This feature is linked to iMessage, therefore an Apple ID must be signed into the Messages application. Simply go to Messages and sign in to iMessage with your Apple ID credentials. If you do not receive the setup assistant, go to Messages Preferences > Accounts and select the iMessage account and sign in.

As long as your Microphone is enabled in Sound System Preferences, (select Internal Microphone from the Input tab), you can simply click on the Microphone icon to the right of the iMessage text window to capture sounds and make them part of iMessage conversations.

Let’s now see it in action!

Let’s see a quick demo of how it’s done! The following was again performed using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) running 10.10.2 and an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.2.

Step 1: Verify correct configuration of your internal Microphone in Sound System Preferences, (select Internal Microphone from the Input tab). Also verify iMessage setup within the Messages application by going to the Messages Preferences > Accounts and select the iMessage account.

Sign in if you are not already with your Apple ID and ensure correct details are entered into the ‘You can be reached for messages at’ and ‘Start new conversations from’ options. Full details of configuration can be found at here.

Step 2: Once you are setup, simply click on the Microphone icon to the right of the iMessage text window to capture your Microphone sound:

If the icon is missing, you have either not configured your Microphone or iMessage correctly, or more likely you are trying to message someone who does not have iMessage (for example, someone who has an Android phone and not an iPhone). Notice the lack of the Microphone icon below when I try and text my Mum as she has a Samsung phone!

Step 3: Speak into your microphone and click the red button to finish recording:

Step 4: Your voice message is then compressed to make sending and receiving quicker. Once it’s ready to send the ‘Send’ button will appear, click ‘Send’ and you’re done:

Useful Info about Voice Messaging via Messages

As handy as this little feature is, it only records a short piece of audio and then allows you to send it or cancel it. There is no option in between to listen to the recording before sending. So you have to assume what you said was picked up OK and was what you wanted to say!

New Feature 4: Messages Details

What is it?

OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 added another nice new feature to the Messages app. You can now view much more information about a chat participant and directly respond back to participants. For example, you can now view all images sent within a conversation between a chat participant and yourself.

How does it work?

It’s very simple. Once you have selected a chat participant in the Messages sidebar, you can click the ‘Details’ button at the top right of the chat window and a pop-out window appears providing options to interact with the recipient such as screen share, FaceTime and making a phone call.

You can also toggle ‘Do Not Disturb’ from here so that notifications from this conversation are muted, and even better, this Details window will show you all the attachments sent and received within this conversation.

Let’s now see it in action!

As before, to demonstrate this I will be using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) running 10.10.2 and an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.2.

Step 1: Open the Messages app on your Mac and wait a few seconds for your accounts to log in and update any messages made with another Apple device (such as your iPhone or iPad).

Step 2: Select a chat participant’s name from the left hand sidebar to load up all conversations made between yourself and that person based on any contact details in your Contacts app. (If this person has multiple messaging accounts and phone numbers stored in your Contacts app, these are usually merged into one conversation window).

Step 3: Click on the ‘Details’ button at the top right of the chat window to open a pop-out window:

Step 4: You should now have a list of info and options. Depending on whether the chat participant is using an Apple device and is an iMessage user or not will determine which options are available. Some may be greyed out if not available (such as FaceTime and Screen Sharing):

Step 5: If supported, you can click on the 2 overlapping squares to initiate screen sharing either by inviting the chat participant to share your screen, or asking them to share their screen:

Step 6: You can also click on the FaceTime icon to open FaceTime and start a video chat, or click on the Phone icon to choose which phone number from the chat participant’s Contacts card to call.

As mentioned above, you can tick the box next to ‘Do Not Disturb’ so that notifications from this conversation will be muted.

Step 7: You can also view all the attachments sent and received within this conversation. Control-clicking/Right-clicking on any of these attachments brings up some options such as ‘Open’ to open an image in Preview or perhaps a movie or

78 audio file in QuickTime, and ‘Delete’ to remove the item from the conversation:

Useful Info about Messages Details

Nice little feature this, but I have found that if you have received an audio or video file, the preview image shown in this Details window is the generic iTunes musical note icon. You therefore have to Control-click/Right-click the attachment and open it in QuickTime before you can find out what it was.

New Feature 5: Group iMessaging Details via Messages

What is it?

Similar to Feature 4, OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 has also incorporated the Details feature into Group chats.

Group iMessage conversations also now have the Details button with a collection of nice features. All the features from a single chat conversation are there for each person in the chat: Screen Sharing, FaceTime and Phone calling, plus the ‘Do Not Disturb’ and attachment previews.

An addition for group chats is that you can share your locations with others in the group chat by leveraging the ‘Find My Friends’ service. You can therefore see a map displaying where all the participants of the chat are located!

There’s also a nice feature whereby you can give the group chat a group chat name to make it easier to remember what the chat was all about!

However, notably the best addition here for group chats is the ability to control your interaction during group conversations. As well as the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature if you no longer wish to receive notifications from an ongoing group conversation, you can also now click ‘Leave this Conversation’ to be removed entirely from the group chat.

How does it work?

This works pretty much the same as Feature 4 apart from the fact that you are viewing a group chat instead of an individual chat.

Once you have selected a group chat in the Messages sidebar, you can click the ‘Details’ button at the top right of the chat window and a pop-out window appears providing options to interact with the group recipients such as screen share, FaceTime and making a phone call.

There’s also the toggle for ‘Do Not Disturb’ so that notifications from this conversation are muted, the list of all the attachments sent and received within this conversation.

As mentioned above, group chats also have the following features : Participant location sharing, ‘Group Chat’ name and option to completely leave the group conversation.

Let’s now see it in action!

To see how this feature works, most of the steps will be the same as for Feature 4. Once again, I was using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) running 10.10.2 and an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.2 to complete this demo.

Step 1: Open the Messages app on your Mac and wait a few seconds for your accounts to log in and update any messages made with another Apple device (such as your iPhone or iPad).

Step 2: Select a ‘Group Chat’ from the left hand sidebar to load up all conversations made between yourself and all persons invited into the group chat.

Step 3: Click on the ‘Details’ button at the top right of the chat window to open a pop-out window:

Step 4: You should now have a list of info and options. Depending on whether each chat participant is using an Apple device and is an iMessage user or not will determine which options are available. Some may be greyed out if not available (such as FaceTime and Screen Sharing):

Step 5: Notice right at the top of this ‘Details’ window there is an option for you to give the group chat a group chat name so you can remember what the conversation was supposed to be about!

Underneath the Group Name option, there is a map section which will attempt to locate where all the group participants are.

Remember, this will need ‘Find My Friends’ enabled on iOS and ‘Location Services’ must be also enabled for the Messages app, either in Settings > Privacy on iOS or in the Privacy tab of Security & Privacy System Preferences on OS X.

I have ensured in my demo that this feature was disabled so I would not advertise where all my colleagues were! :)

Step 6: You can then choose to interact directly with just one of the group participants. If supported, you can click on the 2 overlapping squares to initiate screen sharing either by inviting the chat participant to share your screen, or ask them to share their screen.

You can also click on the FaceTime icon to open FaceTime and start a video chat, or click on the Phone icon to choose which phone number from the chat participant’s Contacts card to call.

Select ‘Add Contact’ to invite a new person into the group chat.

To remove someone from the chat, you can Control-click/Right-click on their name in the list and select ‘Remove from Conversation’:

Notice you can also send them a Private text message or email if their Contact card in your Contacts app has the relevant mobile number or email address field configured. You can also directly switch to their Contact card in the Contacts app by selecting ‘Show Contact Card’.

Step 7: Ticking the box next to ‘Do Not Disturb’ will ensure that notifications from this conversation will be muted. This is very useful if you are involved in a group chat but need to focus on something else for a while and don’t want to keep getting the notifications every time someone replies.

As well as the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature, you can now click ‘Leave this Conversation’ to be removed entirely from the group chat:

Step 8: All attachments sent and received within this conversation will be displayed at the bottom of the Details window.

Control-clicking/Right-clicking on any of these attachments brings up some options such as ‘Open’ to open an image in Preview or perhaps a movie or audio file in QuickTime, and ‘Delete’ to remove the item from the conversation.

Useful Info about Group iMessaging Details via Messages

These changes to Messages in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 have certainly made conference messaging much more flexible and easier.

I do like the ability to use the group details to start a new individual phone call, chat, or FaceTime session. The ability to add or remove participants and then carry on the chat without having to create a new chat is great, plus the location feature is a nice way to see where people are if you then want to come together and meet up in person.

If I had to give any negative feedback about this feature, it would be that as great as it is that you can leave a conversation, you can not re-join it later. You have to create a new conversation and add in the same participants.

Don’t forget, Apple has a good overview of the main new features of OS X Yosemite on their website should you wish to see what else is out there.

These features were tested using OS X Yosemite v10.10.2 and iOS v8.2 which were the latest Mac OS and iOS releases at the time of writing.

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I hope you have found this guide useful. Even though most of these features are not technically ‘hidden’, they are not always easy to understand or discover and I felt they therefore needed some attention.

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