Things I didn't know... Mojave edition

[Xairbusdriver]

There is not room at TS for all the things I don't know, so I'm limiting this topic to Mojave macOS 10.14. I've casually read about the OS for the last few months, but it's not until I actually use some tools that I learn of the details.

Please add anything about Mojave that new you've learned of or tried. Let us know if you find the new bauble useful or not. It might just be something that could benefit others.

Thanks!

[Xairbusdriver]

Screen Capture

Yeah, I know, it's been around for years, many of us have installed little shareware apps that add features that we find useful. Sometimes we even pay some relatively big bucks (Euros?) for these apps. As Apple often does, when it sees what users need/want, the newest version of Screen Capture has some nice features and is even more integrated into the OS. Below are some raw screen shots of the major changes. Here are some words of description. The basic shortcut is the same: shift-command-5, But notice the new icons in a small 'toolbar' that opens centered near the bottom of your screen! Then you select what you want to capture from those icons.

• The entire screen
• A particular window
• A particular region of the screen or window
• How about a movie? Again, pick the entire screen or just a part of it.
• My favorite 'button' is on the extreme left-hand side of the group: The "x" that cancels the whole process without dumping stuff to your drive!
• Lastly, there are the two text labels:
  • "Capture" That tells the OS that you have described exactly what you want to capture and have authorized it to do it!
  • "Options" item gives you a dropdown list of places to save the image, a timer to allow adding things like menu selections, and three more options for other details

But these functions are only half the new Screen Capture process. I'm forever adding some text or arrows or underlines to the capture to explain or point out the important stuff. Sometimes your third-party app will allow doing these things in differing capabilities and usually with some limitations. No more!

When your image will now magically appear in the lower, right-hand corner of your monitor. Why?! I thought I told the OS to save it somewhere!

Relax! You've simply come to the other big change! You can now add text, shapes, drawings directly on that screen capture!

Look at the second image below and notice the tool bar. If you've ever used Preview and 'marked up' the PDF with highlighted text, a note or some explanatory text, that tool bar will look familiar. It's basically the same one as in Preview. That brings in all the text formatting already built into the OS! Straight or curved arrows or lines. Boxes around important areas. Etc., etc.

I think this is a very nice improvement/addition to the OS, one I'll use nearly every day.

[Paddy]

Cool - especially the bit about being able to cancel it without saving! Looking forward to installing Mojave if I ever get out from under my mountain of work and also get both Macs tidied up a bit.

[Xairbusdriver]

New Useful Capabilities
The ability to add text and other things to a Screen Capture is actually available in several other areas of Mojave including Photo Editing and Finder. Open System Prefs->Extensions and select "Actions", "Photos Editing" and "Finder". Actions should have "Markup" enabled by default. Photos Editing will let you enable Markup for any image editing app that can do that. Finder has four Extensions in Mojave that are enabled by default, one of which is Markup.

Even macOS 10.13 High Sierra had extensions for Markup in Actions and Finder. I don't think I ever even visited that Pref!

Opinions
I gave up on Dark Mode. Just too much variance between apps. I also don't care for the highlight colors. They are all quite pale, perhaps to work better in Dark Mode?

Problem/bug
An additional function that I use more than most because of my poor speling schilz is "Spelling Check". Double-click a word, hover the cursor over it and control-click. You now usually get some suggested (correctly spelled) words. Select the one you want and it should replace the previously double-clicked word. The problem: If your cursor is in the middle of the selected word, the replacement is inserted exactly where the cursor is. You now will have pieces of the mismisspelledpeled word on either side of the correctly spelled word!

I now take a bit of time to move the cursor nearer to either end of the word before the control-click for the correction. Unfortunately, my correction requests usually occur on fairly long words... and I often double-click them near their center characters! Even worse, this behavior is not consistent! My fix is to use short words.