Dayn W Creative

Here’s a brief tutorial on how to quickly swap between applications on your Mac.

If you’re like me, the Command + Tab keys are worn on your keyboard from swapping apps. Pressing that key combo calls up the icons for all of the running apps across your screen.  Holding down Command and repeatedly pressing the Tab key will rotate through and highlight your open apps.  Releasing the keys will switch to the highlighted app.

Holding the Command key and pressing Esc will take you out of the switcher and return you to the app you were in originally.

Want more?  Okay.  Command + Tab and hold the Command key.  Now you can use your mouse to hover directly over the app you want to switch to and release.  Alternatively, the left and right arrow keys will cycle though the apps as well.  One annoyance I’ve noticed is that the arrow keys no longer wrap from the last app to the first and vice versa.  Eh.

Still here?  Want to quickly quit an app without switching to it?  Command + Tab, hold down Command. Highlight the app you want to quit.  Still holding Command, press “Q”.  Goodnight little app.  If you’re still holding Command, you can quit a bunch of apps in succession with “Q” without switching to any of them.  Slick.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Personally, I find it’s really not too complicated of a process.  When writing an email or blog post, I try to think of a subject line or heading that would instantly make me click a story, or open an email.  I can look through emails and stories that I have clicked, and re-engineer a headline based on the same principals.  For me, those principals are usually relevance to projects I’m working on, and time investment to process the article or email.  Off the top of my head, I’d be hooked by “Top 5 Wordpress plugins for designers” or “How to build an events engine in PHP”, or “Quick, professional masking techniques for After Effects”,  etc.

For more info on the science of subject lines and headlines, check out these articles:

15 Tips for Improved Subject Lines

The Subject Line Dead Zone

Email Marketing Subject Line Comparison (ironically a non-compelling headine IMHO)

Popularity: 32% [?]