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Get Acquainted With These Mac Keyboard Shortcuts. You Won’t Regret It

If you want to make your life easier, you should memorize these underrated Command keyboard shortcuts on MacOS.

Every time you’re on your Mac, you’re using modifier keys on your keyboard. These modifier keys, like Command and Option, are probably the most important keys you have, because they can perform shortcuts that are necessary to be more productive and efficient on your computer.

The most basic and common examples are copy (Command-C) and paste (Command-V), but these keyboard shortcuts also allow you to do more complicated things like force-close an app (Option-Command-Esc) or quickly take a screenshot (Command-Shift-4).

And the most important modifier key of them all? Command.

With it, you can copy and paste text, undo typing, select all your items at once, open a new window and so on. And in addition to all the routine shortcuts it’s known for, the Command key is much more powerful than you might think.

Even if you’re a MacOS power user, you may not be acquainted with everything the Command key has to offer, such as the ability to quickly hide windows cluttering up your desktop or search for anything stored on your computer.

Check out six not so commonly known keyboard shortcuts that use the Command key below.

And if you want to learn more about your Mac, check out the best MacOS Ventura features, as well as 10 tips to help you flex your Mac superpowers.

1. Cycle through all the open windows on your desktop

The keyboard shortcut Command-Tab allows you to quickly step through every app window open on your desktop. As long as the window is open on your desktop and not minimized in your dock, holding down the Command-Tab combination will bring up a window with all your open apps. Continue holding down Command as you tap the Tab key to cycle through the apps and let go when the app you want brought to the front is highlighted.

2. Hide the window that’s currently open on your desktop

Instead of minimizing your window with the yellow minus button up in the top left corner, you can quickly hide any window that’s open on your desktop with the Command-H shortcut. Unlike minimizing, the hide keyboard shortcut hides the window from both your desktop and dock, without closing it completely. To open the window back up, simply click the app icon in either your dock or elsewhere. And if you want to hide all app windows except for the one in front, you can use Option-Command-H.

3. Bring up Spotlight to search for files and apps on your computer

Spotlight search is one of the Mac’s most powerful features. Bring up the search bar and type whatever you want to search for, such as text messages, emails, documents, applications, notes, music, settings, movies or locations. You can use the magnifying glass in the menu bar to bring up Spotlight search, but this keyboard shortcut is at your fingertips: Command-spacebar.

4. Highlight the URL in your web browser to quickly share it

Usually, if you’re sharing a web address you double-click in the search bar and then copy the selected text to your clipboard. However, there’s a faster way to do this: use Command-L. This will immediately highlight whatever is in the address bar in Safari, Chrome or another web browser, whether it’s something you typed or the URL of the website you’re on. You can then hit Command-C to copy it so you can paste it elsewhere.

5. Reopen any closed tabs in the Safari web browser

You may be familiar with Command-T in Safari, which opens a new tab, but there’s also a shortcut that can reopen an accidentally closed tab. Simply hit Command-Shift-T and you’ll recover whatever tab you most recently closed. And if you’ve closed several tabs and want to recover all of them, you can continue pressing the Command-Shift-T shortcut to open multiple closed tabs.

6. Open something new in various native Apple applications

The Command-N keyboard shortcut is not nearly used enough. While it’s almost universally known for opening up a new window in many popular applications, on your Mac the Command-N shortcut can open a new email in Mail, a text message in iMessage, a window in Safari, a note in Notes, an event in Calendar and more. Try it out in your favorite apps and see what Command-N can open for you.

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Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

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Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

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Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

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