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Comment by Hammershaft | Hacker News Reader

I think Mac OS has the most inaccessible hidden hotkey shortcuts out of every OS I've used. Even essential functions like showing hidden files in a directory is uniquely done through an hidden shortcut in Mac OS.

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Perhaps, but the aforementioned screenshot shortcut I learned just like OP because I wanted to take a screenshot, and it's muscle memory for me as well. I even thought to myself before I clicked on the article "I'm pretty sure they are going to have CMD + Shift + 4 or CMD + Shift + 5 as the focal point of the article". I would call it "inaccessible" in terms of natural discovery, sure. But it is definitely not "inaccessible" in terms of ease of use and memory when you do know about it. I had to google "how to screenshot on mac" once in my life and I've used the keyboard shortcuts on a near daily basis for more than half a decade.

Some of them are obscure but there's a big list of them somewhere in System Preferences and you can change them. You can also change keyboard shortcuts in your programs too. Definitely something I miss from Mac OS X.

> essential functions like showing hidden files in a directory

How is that an essential function? My mom has never needed it in 20 years of using Macs. And when I want to know about hidden files, I pop open a terminal and ls -la.

That is kind of hilarious: This GUI feature is very undiscoverable. No, no, "just" open a terminal instead and type this.

The entire point of these hidden files is that the user should never see them. Otherwise they’ll think, what’s this nonsense?, and delete them.

It should be difficult to see hidden files. And it is!

Precisely. Just as the "Go" menu in the Finder doesn't contain the Library folder, because the user generally doesn't need it. As an advanced user, you can pop open a Terminal and `open Library`, or you use a shortcut: press Option while in the Go menu.

MacOS is good because I have to open the terminal to do complex tasks. Linux is crap because I have to open the terminal to do complex tasks.

I know the devil is in the details, I'm just poking fun at the thing, but you gotta admit it's kind of funny.

As a lifetime Windows user who started using Macs for the day job about a decade ago, it was clear that Windows came from a keyboard-oriented background, and Macs come from a legacy of focusing on doing as much with a mouse as possible.

I have a lot of internal thoughts about why I like what I grew up with (particularly with respect to discoverable keyboard shortcuts), but it's just not worth the mental energy of exploring that with internet strangers. The bottom line for me is that a decade on, I still split it between a Macbook for work, Windows desktop for home/creative/gaming, and if I could reasonably work without MacOS I would, but I can't.

Just hours ago complained to a friend about how arcane some things in macOS are. Short of just pressing random key combinations, there is no way to discover that it's possible to paste/type a path into the standard file selection dialog.

(It's cmd-shift-g to get the text entry to appear, or simply forward slash to get it to appear with the slash already entered. Also, it says "Go to Folder", but if you direct it to a file, it will navigate to the folder the file is in and also select the file)

I learned I could do this for the first time reading your post.

The file selection dialog looks like a Finder window. It could be more discoverable. But trying what works in Finder isn't random key combinations.

If all features had their menu or button visible, that would make the interface more complex. Maybe they consider this as advanced features, that advanced users will find out anyway.

Your comment is somehow weird in this publication, because the article assumes (and many comments corroborate) that advanced users are not advanced enough to know all the hidden UI of the screenshot feature.

Seeing as you and I both know the shortcut, how is it inaccessible or hidden? Just because it’s not there cluttering up the visual interface doesn’t mean it’s hidden. For anyone who thinks they might want it, they can find it. For anyone else, they’ll never see it. Seems about right to me.

I do not know this shortcut. Further, I do not what shortcuts I do not know about.

If you were keen on the idea of finding some shortcuts, you would buy a book or search for docs or something though, right?

Probably the most succinct unintentional definition of poor discoverability in a UI I have seen.

Be sure how would I even know this is a thing to Google unless I see tip lists like this?

If there was a MacOS shortcut list, grouped by category so that when I want to do something I can search if it is possible without installing a utility, that would be awesome.

Have you tried to google it? It’s the first result.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

Screenshot shortcuts and functions are here.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/take-a-screenshot-o...

So that first page doesn't actually have the shortcut, it has a link to another page that contains the shortcut.

Secondly, it doesn't have the details on capturing without a shadow in an easy to read format.

Apple has only recently created the fancy screenshot utility. It used to only be 3-5 shortcuts for screenshots since I switched to Macs about 15 years ago.

Sweet irony:

"Apple's UI is not discoverable or even obvious."

"Just use Apple's biggest competitor to find them!"

I fully agree. macOS is a nightmare of usability.

For showing hidden files and file extensions, there's a Terminal command you can run to permanently set it for every file. Of course, since it's only exposed through some command line utility, I forgot what it was and would have to search again.

cmd + shift + . (that's a dot / period / full stop with cmd and shift) is the built in shortcut in Finder to toggle hidden files. Easy to remember as hidden files start with a dot.

The dot might be easy to remember, but the cmd+shift bit isn't for me. Mac shortcuts can be cmd+shift, or ctrl+shift, or ctrl+cmd, or just cmd, or sometimes there's an opt in there as well.

After using a Macbook for work for 4 years, I still have no intuitive idea which modifier keys should be used when, it seems to be random.

“Usability nightmare” is objectively a bit of a stretch.

The example given isn’t really something most users need. Even when I did need to do that the answer was discovered and executed within 20 seconds of googling. This is the same for other things most people don’t need across all the prevalent OSes

Well I disagree, so I don’t think it’s objective. Another goodie is when installing an update, macOS only shows that you can cancel the update if you hover over the progress bar or where the cancel X would be. If you just look at the window, you think there’s no way to cancel and that you need to ride it out. You just have to happen to hover over the right element. There’s no reason for this. macOS is absolutely full of little things like this that are hidden in the OS. iOS does this as well. Going to the settings screen, you gotta pull down to see that there’s a search bar. Again no reason for that. Both macOS and iOS are very inconsistent and hide all sorts of settings, behaviors, etc. Another example is that I can’t even adjust my external monitor’s volume and brightness from the OS because Apple wants you to buy their monitors. And all that’s ignoring the portion of usability from things in the OS just not working or that break.

There is a really compelling reason on iOS: saving screen real estate. And the top-hidden search bar is convention now, just like the pull-to-refresh gesture. Discoverability is an issue though, I agree. But unnecessarily hidden? Disagree.

As for the monitor, just install Monitor Control: https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl

Or Lunar if you want more automated adaptive brightness than what MonitorControl offers: https://lunar.fyi

Features the typical user can't access/discover are wasted development effort.

So sad...

Most of the time Mac shortcuts also come with a more discoverable approach. I’m not at my desktop atm, but isn’t there also the “grab” application for taking screenshots?

> Even essential functions like showing hidden files in a directory is uniquely done through an hidden shortcut in Mac OS.

I'm fairly certain, it's in the menu bar too

Or is it? I can’t even find it with the search box in the help menu. FWIW, I didn’t know that shortcut before today, and I consider myself a well-versed Mac user since the intel switch

Huh, you’re right it’s not. My FTP client does expose it, maybe that’s what I had in mind

I have to look this one up every few months. just rare enough that it won't stay in long term memory.

Yeah, that's the other problem. And I just don't want to be bothered.

There should be a compilation of every hidden tricks and shortcuts.

Perhaps this will help: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201236

Of course, this can only cover Apple's own software and 3rd party software which adheres to Apple conventions.

They're not "hidden" when you know them.

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