In The Studio: 30-Plus OS X Power User Shortcuts

Color Labels
Code files can be colored with the Labels function either through rt-click menu or adding the labels button to the toolbar. I use red for current projects, green for recently finished projects that have been paid for, purple for personal, gray (or none) for misc.

Arrange & Sort
Since the arrival of OS X Lion, the Arrange function can be found in Finder. It’s great if you work in Icon view a lot, but not great if you work in list or column view. In fact, there is a bug with color labels in column view—it doesn’t refresh correctly. If you set Arrange to “None,” you can sort files by name, date, label, etc., by clicking the column headers.

Navigating Files With The keyboard
I use Finder in List View almost exclusively because it’s very easy to navigate through files and folders within the same window using just the keyboard arrows. Instead of double-clicking to open, use CMD+O or CMD+DownArrow.

With List and Column views, use the left and right arrows to expand folders. If you push any letter key, it will select the closest file starting with that letter. Pushing the same letter does NOT go to the next one though. Try typing the first 2-3 letters of the file name. Use space bar to preview files.

OS X Lion Mission Control
Navigate dashboard and workspaces. The Control key plus Arrow keys allows you to jump to the Dashboard, Mission Control, and Spaces/Desktops. The Dashboard is where helpful widgets live. Primarily I use this for a basic calculator, a couple of timers, and a unit converter. Get to the Dashboard with Control+Left Arrow.

You can have multiple desktops/spaces to work in. It’s a bit like having multiple monitors. You can assign apps to any desktop from the dock icon or just click and drag them around. Control+Right Arrow moves over to the next desktop.

Mission control zooms out and shows you all open windows, the dashboard and desktops at once. Great for finding that dialog box hidden under other other windows or for moving stuff to other desktops. Control+Up Arrow shows Mission Control.

Jon Tidey is a Producer/Engineer who runs his own studio, EPIC Sounds, and enjoys writing about audio on his blog AudioGeekZine.com.