Tricks you can do on your friend’s Mac

mac trick

Mac comes with tonnes of keyboard shortcuts, some odd/cool ones are not known by many so here are some keyboard shortcuts you can try on your friend’s Mac, or perhaps (more mischievously) do it to Macs in Apple authorized stores or any places that displays Macs. You’ll be surprised how many Mac users out there will just go blank and stare at their screens wondering what happened. Just don’t get caught or say you learn them from here :-) And remember, choose the 24″. Have fun.

Zoom In / Out

Okay, this is not the best of all but still it may trick some. Mac comes with screen zoom in/out function. The keyboard shortcut here is:

Zoom In

“Command” + ” Option” + ” +”

Zoom Out

” Command” + ” Option” + ” -”

If it does not work for you, it’s probably the zoom control is locked. Here’s how you trigger zoom control lock/unlock

Zoom On/Off

” Command” + ” Option” + ” 8”

Here’s 2 Mac screen; before and after zoomed.

Before Zoom

mac tricks

After Zoom

mac tricks

Contrast

mac tricks

I’m not sure if constrasting your screen is really useful but there is such shortcut in Mac to turn your screen into constrast mode. Here’s how you do it:

Increase contrast, keep pressing

"Control" + "Option" + "Command" + "."

Decrease contrast, keep pressing

"Control" + "Option" + "Command" + ","

Invert

mac tricks

Inverting turns the screen to opposite colors, so if will not hurt the eye when you are staring at the screen in dark. However for those who do not know Mac is capable of inverting your screen, they might think its a problem with their LCD. Invert screen stays even after reboot the Mac, so either you know where to change it back else it’s going to stay forever. Here’s how you invert a Mac screen:

Invert

"Control" + "Option" + "Command" + "8"

Have Fun

I’m not encouraging you to run down every Mac store or change the screens of every Mac you’ve come across. And of course, the ugliest of all would probably be Invert + Contrast, and it will look something like this:

mac trick

If you like this entry, consider bookmarking or help us promote it. Thanks.
Del.icio.us | Stumble | Digg | Mixx | Reddit

Comments

Wendy November 29th, 2007

This is a nice (wicked) article. By the way, if you’ve more than enough time with your friend’s Mac, you can modify some of his/her Mac System Preferences. *evil grin*
Reply
BoltClock November 29th, 2007

I discovered the zoom function by accident, but I held Control and rolled the mouse scroll ball instead.
Reply
jai November 30th, 2007

Great !!

Ok - if one plays around with the contrast with
“Control” + “Option” + “Command” + “.”
&
“Control” + “Option” + “Command” + “,”

How does one get the monitor to go back to “normal” contrast settings - It would have been better if some numbering +3 to -3, for example would have been provided by the os !!

How many clicks from max contrast to normal settings ??

Jai
Reply
hongkiat November 30th, 2007

Jai: 20 times with keyboard shortcuts, or you can scroll them under Universal Access.
Reply