The best productive MacBook tips & tricks

10 min readApr 20, 2022

Let’s see you got yourself a new MacBook Pro and are ready to get productive. But there are some settings within it that you should consider tweaking to smooth out your macOS experience. These Macbook Pro tips and tricks are not just for beginners users. If you’re a seasoned user it will save time and boost productivity.

You’re going to find the top 10 productive mac tips and tricks below in this article. Not only that, but you also get to know about — How MacBook touchpad works? and How to use Automator? So without further ado, we start our article with…

Best productive MacBook tips & tricks to improve your overall user experience:

We have created a list of 10 effective settings and tips for all Mac users. It doesn’t matter you’re just getting started with macOS, by following these tips you can able to make your MacBook faster.

01. Not to sleep on the trackpad gesture controls-

Our first tip for anyone using a MacBook is not to sleep on the Trackpad Gesture Controls. These can be powerful if you get used to them and it will speed up your workflow massively.

How does MacBook Trackpad work?

First up is one which reveals the desktop. This is great if you have a face full of apps and just need to get everything out of the way. To do this hold four fingers on your trackpad and expand outwards. This will push everything away so you can access your desktop nicely and easily. To bring it back just do the reverse and pinch Inwards with four fingers. It will all come flooding back.
Secondly, a three-finger swipe to the left or right. This will allow you to move between multiple desktops. If you have that setup.
Thirdly a three-finger swipe upwards. This will launch mission control. So you can have an overview of all of your app windows.

To enable Trackpad –

Open system preferences to access the trackpad options.
From there go to the more gestures tab and check the box next to app expose.

02. Disable rearranging spaces-

Next, we’re going to stop macOS from rearranging your spaces. Virtual desktops or spaces are useful when you have multiple desktops or tasks you’re trying to complete. Having all those windows on one desktop gets confusing. So virtual desktops let you declutter your workspace by allowing you to rearrange your windows into project-specific desktops.

However, macOS adds a layer of confusion into the mix by automatically rearranging your desktops and reassigning your desktop numbers based on recently used desktops. Coupled by the fact that you can’t rename desktops yourself like you can on windows. Things get confusing fast when you have a lot of windows that are constantly being rearranged.

To disable rearranging spaces –

Open system preferences.
Go into mission control settings and uncheck automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use.

03. Choose the default folder to open the new finder window-

Choosing a default folder when opening a new finder window. By default, a new finder window will open your recently opened documents. But that’s not necessarily what you’re looking for. There might be other files you need to access more regularly like a work folder. You can change this so it opens a specific folder every time.

To Choose the default folder to open the new finder window –

Go to the menu bar and click on finder.
Then click on preferences.
Under the general tab access the default folder drop-down menu and select the folder you’d like

A new finder window will now open your designated folder.

04. Set finder to only search current folder-

While we’re here we can also adjust another setting to have the finder search bar only search your current folder. Have you ever turned to the finder search bar to find a specific file within a folder? or only to have a finder search through your entire system? But turn out completely unrelated results. If you have then this one is for you. You can change this so that the search bar only shows results from the current folder.

To set finder to only search current folder –

Simply click over from the General tab.
Under general, click on the advanced tab.
From there use the when performing a search drop-down menu to select search the current folder.

05. Enable path and status bar-

While we’re in finder let’s also enable the path and status bar. Coming from a Windows background I’ve always wondered why macOS hides the folder location by default. How do I know what folder I’m in? How do I copy the folder path?

Well, the pathway lets you see exactly where your folder is located. To enable this — Go to the view tab in the menu bar and select the show path bar.

To copy a path –

Simply right-click on the folder you want to copy and select Copy as a pathname.
Under the same view tab, you can also enable the status bar by selecting the show status bar. The status bar gives you useful information like the number of files in the folder and the remaining space on your Mac.

06. Add shortcuts to the finder toolbar-

Two quick bonus finder tips to add shortcuts to the finder toolbar.

You can add any app file or folder by holding the command key and dragging an item into the finder toolbar. This is useful if you need to access anything often from finder.
You can use the finder to enter a full-screen slideshow. To do this –
Select some files press the option along with space and you’ll start at a slideshow with your selected files.
You can also use the index icon to preview all your selected files.

07. Set up Automator to rename files with dates created-

We’re going to set up a workflow in Automator which is going to allow us to quickly add a timestamp to the start of a file name. You can use this to automatically rename footage or photos you take. But its use extends to organizing business documents like invoices as well. This is a real-time saver but it does take a little more to set up.

How to use Automator?

As we mentioned before we’re going to use Automata. Automata is a powerful tool that comes included with macOS. It lets you set automated workflows in this case we’ll be setting a workflow to automatically rename files for us.

To do this –

Open Automator. You can find It in the folder named other.
In the launchpad go to the menu bar. Click file then click on new.
From there click quick action. Change workflow receives to files and folders in finder. You can also change the icon and color for your quick action.
Next search rename in Actions on the left and drag rename finder items into your workflow. You’ll get a prompt that asks if you want to duplicate the file you’re renaming to preserve the original file. Click don’t add.

To rename your files to include the time created –

leave the date slash time setting as created.
From there we’re going to change the format to Hour or Minute before the name. The first separator field dictates the separators within the thing you’re adding.
Select none and you’ll notice the example shows that the hours and minutes are now grouped.
The second separator field is asking how we’d like what we’re adding to be separated from the original name. For this, select space, and again you’re going to see in the example that there’s a space between the time we’ve added including our original name.
Make sure to check the leading zeros box. This simply adds a zero in front of single-digit numbers within the time which will keep the names uniform and easier to visually sort through. For example, if the time is 12:05 we want it to show 1205 and not 125.

Okay, now that we’ve added the time now we need to add the data at the start of the file as well. We’re going to look up rename finder items and add them to the workflow again. You’ll get the same prompt as before.

Click don’t add if you don’t want to duplicate your file.
This time we’re going to change the format to year month day before the name. Make sure you have used leading 0 selected again.
Click the file in the menu bar and select save. Rename your quick action to a name you’d like and save your quick action.
To use your new quick action, select some files in the finder and right-click on the files.
Go down to quick actions and select your new quick action and just like that your mac is going to rename all your files for you.

08. Set up keyboard shortcuts for safari and chrome-

Call me lazy but I don’t Like navigating the cursor up to the top of the screen to change tabs. So I’ve set up some keyboard shortcuts to make navigating tabs a bit easier. Safari’s default keyboard shortcuts control + tab and ctrl + shift + tab to navigate back and forth through browser tabs. I haven’t found that particularly ergonomic though, especially the ctrl + shift + tab.

You can use Command +1 to 9 to navigate to corresponding tabs on your safari window. But that means you’re out of luck if you’re using more than 9 tabs. It’s not easy to identify the number that corresponds to each tab.

When using my MacBook I always tend to find my hands hovering over the left side of the keyboard. Due to macOS’s inbuilt shortcuts like command + w and command + q when exiting tabs and applications. So I figured why not set up shortcuts to take advantage of this. I’ve set show next tab as command + r and shown the previous tab as command + e.

To set up keyboard shortcuts for safari and chrome –

Open system preferences and go to the keyboard settings.
From there go to the shortcuts tab and click on app shortcuts.
Click the plus sign and find safari in the application drop-down menu.
Next to the menu title enter show next tab. Click on the box next to keyboard shortcuts and hit command + r.
Now repeat this step but instead enter show the previous tab in the menu title field. Hit command + e once the keyboard shortcut field has been selected.
Note that using command + r does override safari’s default keyboard shortcut for refreshing a web page.

You can also use this method to customize the same keyboard shortcuts for google chrome. Just make sure you select google chrome in the application drop-down menu. Enter select next tab and select the previous tab in the menu title fields.

09. Setup Double Click option to minimize rather than zoom in-

Another thing you should do immediately on my Mac when you get it set up. That is to set a double click on the top of an application window to minimize rather than zoom in. some of you might already know about this one. But double-clicking the top of an application window will cause it to zoom in by default.

I find that kind of useless. However, in system preferences, you can change that to a minimize which is way more useful in my opinion. Following on from that is something that I find annoying that’s set by default on max2. I always end up changing it.

10. Create Tab groups-

Bonus tip for safari users. This is a quick way to save web pages in safari and a great way to transition from macOS to ios or vice versa. I’m talking about Tab Groups. I found it useful for organizing tabs on macOS while also increasing the usability of Safari on IOS devices.

To create a tab group –

Right-click on a tab and hover your cursor to move to the tab group.
From there you can add the tab to a new tab group or add it to an existing tab group. You can also add all your current browser tabs to a new tab group by opening the sidebar and clicking on the new tab group with tabs. Tab groups can be accessed in the sidebar or through the drop-down menu in the top left corner of your browser.

All right so the coolest thing about tab groups is that they sync across all your Apple devices. If you’re signed in to the same iCloud account, you can access all your tab groups on an ios device by long pressing on the tabs icon in safari and selecting the tab group.

With this, we are completing our article about the top 10 best MacBook Pro tips and tricks. If any of the above tips helped you improve your setting to better experience about MacBook, please share this article among others. If you have any questions about MacBook, feel free to ask by commenting below. For more from Anto’s Info Hub, sign up for our newsletter form to get all the latest tech updates. Thanks from Anto’s Web.