Apple has built OS X to be quite intuitive, and while you can get many things done by pointing and clicking, and using the keyboard in standard ways, there are some services and features in OS X that can be quite useful for taking a closer look at things, looking up definitions, or getting around your files and folders. While there many such hidden features in OS X, here are a few that you could possibly use on a more frequent basis.

Screen Zooming

If you ever find yourself squinting at your screen or leaning in to take a closer look at what you are seeing, you can do the same by enabling Screen Zooming. Go to the Accessibility system preferences, where you will see an option for “Zoom.” In here you can check the option to either use keyboard shortcuts or scroll modifier keys to zoom your display in. My recommendation here is to use scroll gestures with the default “Control” modifier key, and then click the “More Options” button to set the screen image to move continuously with the mouse pointer.

Dictation

While there is no Siri service for OS X, a somewhat similar experience can be found in the Dictation service. When enabled in the Dictation & Speech system preferences (especially with Enhanced dictation), you can press the Fn key twice with a cursor in a text field and be able to have OS X transcribe whatever you speak. This is useful, but in addition, if you go to the Accessibility system preferences, you can enable Speakable Items, where you set a hotkey that will trigger the system to listen for specific commands that you can speak to have the system open or quit applications, or get information such as the time.

Spotlight Calculator

With the large storage capacities of modern Macs, Apple’s Spotlight search tool is exceptionally useful for quickly finding what you need; however, in addition to being a searching feature, you can use Spotlight to quickly run a simply mathematic calculation. Just open Spotlight, and then type a calculation such as “2*(3+sin(2*pi))^4” and you will see the result displayed. You can then press Command-C with the result highlighted to copy it, so you can quickly paste it into another application.

Word Definitions and Suggestions

In many applications, when typing words you can look up possible words based on the characters you have just typed, by simply pressing the Escape key. Try typing “as” in a program like TextEdit, followed by tapping Escape, and you will see a drop-down menu of possible word completions. In addition, if you ever need to look up a word, you can right-click it and choose “look up WORD” from the contextual menu, or hover your mouse cursor over it and tap with three fingers on an Apple multi-touch trackpad.