macOS Monterey For Dummies. Bob LeVitus

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Use your index finger to push the mouse button (or the left mouse button if your mouse has more than one) all the way down and then let go so that the button (usually) produces a satisfying clicking sound. (If you have one of the optical Apple mice, you push the whole thing down to click.) Use a single click to highlight an icon, press a button, or activate a check box or window.In other words, first you point and then you click — point and click, in computer lingo.If you’re using a trackpad, press down on it to click.

       Double-click: Click twice in rapid succession. With a little practice, you can perfect this technique in no time. Use a double-click to open a folder or to launch a file or application.Trackpad users: Press down on the pad two times in rapid succession.

       Secondary-click: Hold down the Control key while single-clicking. (Also called Control-click or right-click.)Trackpad users can either hold down the Control key while pressing down on the trackpad with one finger, or tap the trackpad with two fingers without holding down the Control key.If tapping your trackpad with two fingers didn’t bring up a little menu, check your Trackpad System Preferences pane (see Chapter 6).Control-clicking displays a contextual menu (also known as a shortcut menu). In fact, if you’re blessed with a two-or-more-button mouse (such as the Apple Magic Mouse), you can right-click and avoid having to hold down the Control key. If it doesn’t work, you can enable this feature in the Mouse System Preferences pane.)

       Drag: Dragging something usually means you have to click it first and hold down the mouse or trackpad button. Then you move the mouse on your desk or mouse pad (or your finger on the trackpad) so that the cursor and whatever you select moves across the screen. The combination of holding down the button and dragging the mouse is usually referred to as clicking and dragging.

       Wiggle (or jiggle): This welcome improvement is awesome when you lose track of the pointer on your screen. Just wiggle your mouse back and forth (or jiggle your finger back and forth on the trackpad) for a few seconds and the pointer will magically get much bigger, making it easier to see on the screen. And, of course, when you stop wiggling or jiggling, the pointer returns to its normal size.

       Choosing an item from a menu: To get to macOS menu commands, you must first open a menu and then choose the option you want. Point at the name of the menu you want with your cursor, press the mouse button, and then drag downward until you select the command you want. When the command is highlighted, finish selecting by letting go of the mouse button.

      

If you’re a longtime Mac user, you probably hold down the mouse button the whole time between clicking the name of the menu and selecting the command you want. You can still do it that way, but you can also click the menu name to open it, release the mouse button, point at the item you want to select, and then click again. In other words, macOS menus stay open after you click their names, even if you’re not holding down the mouse button. After you click a menu’s name to open it, you can even type the first letter (or letters) of the item to select it and then execute that item by pressing the spacebar or the Return key. Furthermore, menus remain open until you click something else.

      Go ahead and give it a try … I’ll wait.

      

The terms given in the preceding list apply to all Mac laptop, desktop, and pro systems. If you use a trackpad with your Mac, you'll want to add a few more terms — such as tap, swipe, rotate, pinch, and spread — to your lexicon. You can read all about them in Chapters 2 and 13.

Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu

      One of the best features of all Macs is the excellent built-in help, and macOS Monterey doesn’t cheat you on that legacy: This system has online help in abundance. When you have a question about how to do something, Help Center is the first place you should visit (after this book, of course).

Clicking the Help menu reveals the Search field at the top of the menu and the macOS Help item. Choosing macOS Help opens the window shown in Figure 1-5.

      FIGURE 1-5: Mac Help is nothing if not helpful.

Although the keyboard shortcut for Help no longer appears on the Help menu, the same shortcut as always, Shift+⌘ +?, still opens Help.

      You can browse Help by clicking a topic in the table of contents and then clicking a subtopic. If you don’t see the table of contents, click the Table of contents icon, labeled in Figure 1-5.

      To search Mac Help, simply type a word or phrase in either Search field — the one in the Help menu itself or the one near the top of the Help window on the right side — and then press Return. In a few seconds, your Mac provides one or more articles to read, which (theoretically) are related to your question. As long as your Mac is connected to the internet, search results include articles from the Apple online support database.

Although you don’t have to be connected to the internet to use Mac Help, you do need an internet connection to get the most out of it. (Chapter 15 can help you set up an internet connection, if you don’t have one.) That’s because macOS installs only certain help articles on your hard drive. If you ask a question that those articles don’t answer, Mac Help connects to the Apple website and downloads the answer (assuming that you have an active internet connection). These answers appear when you click Show All near the bottom of some article lists. Click one of these entries, and Help Viewer retrieves the text over the internet. This is sometimes inconvenient but also quite smart, because Apple can update the Help system at any time without requiring any action from you.

      Furthermore, after you ask a question and Mac Help has grabbed the answer from the Apple website, the answer remains on your hard drive forever. If you ask for it again — even at a later date — your computer won’t have to download it from the Apple website again.

      If you see a See More Results on the Web link, you can click it to launch Safari and perform a web search for the phrase you typed.

      

macOS also has a cool feature I like to call automatic visual help cues. Here’s how they work:

      1 In the Help menu’s Search field, type a word or phrase.

      2 Select any item that has a menu icon to its left (such as the items with Trash in their names in Figure 1-6).The automatic visual cue — an arrow — appears, pointing at that command in the appropriate menu.

Finally, don’t forget that most apps have their own Help systems, so if you want general help with your Mac, you need to first click the Finder icon in the dock, click the desktop, or use the app-switching shortcut ⌘ +Tab to activate Finder. Only then can you choose Mac Help from Finder’s Help menu.

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