Have you used the caps lock key as hyper key on your mac? Hyper key is an additional key that you can create on the mac which is a combination of Ctrl +Alt+ Option+ Shift in one key. I had my Caps lock key working as a Hyper key ever since I read about it on a blog post in 2014. Ever since then, the caps lock key has always been a hyperkey on my mac until Apple decided to revamp the keyboard configuration files for touchbar support in Sierra. I dearly missed the feature for about two weeks after I upgraded to sierra and that is when I realized how interwoven the hyper key was with my workflows and mac usage. Nearly every workflow that I had broke. I was on the constant lookout for getting the hyperkey back and used the custom build of the karabiner elements here until I found this easier and streamlined workflow.
The reason why you should use this latest work around instead of the custom build is that you can update karabiner elements. Using the custom build restricts the updates. The config file (json) is pretty simple and has just the options for the hyper key, which makes life so much simpler. If you are like me, just using the caps lock key as the hyper key, the json file here will save your life.
If you haven’t tried the hyper key, you should defintely try it.
Every new Mac convert who came from a windows environment at office wishes for a lock screen. It’s mostly second nature to press the Windows+L keys and leave for a coffee break at office. Macs these days don’t explicity offer an option to lock the screen to users. The sleep option is quite handy but is not the same as a Lock Screen. I seriously wish that my mac streams music to my Denon while the mac is locked which is not possible when you put the mac to a sleep.
The lack of lock screen functionality has been bothering me for a while now. I finally decided enough is enough and sat down to figure out how to Lock the Screen on a mac. Google shows up quite a variety of ways on how one can go locking their mac. So here is a comprehensive list of how the Lock Screen can be evoked.
1) The simplest and easiest way to lock the screen is press Control + Shift + Eject/Power key to Lock the screen. Please do make sure that the security settings of your mac requires you to enter a password after Sleep or Screensaver.
2) Using Alfred app or the Launch Bar app just type lock screen into these app and Bam screen gets locked with a nice animation. You can even create a keyboard shortcut to trigger the lock screen once you have either of these apps.
3) Open the Keychain Acess app and under preferences select the “Show the keychain status in menubar” option. This will show a nice lock icon in the Menubar on which you can click and lock the screen.
If you do have know of other options to trigger the lock screen on a mac, please do let me know, I would love to add them to the list.
If you have been wondering on how to clear the chat history on iMessage like me, Here is a quick command that you can execute in the Terminal to clear the history.
rm -r ~/Library/Messages/chat.*
What the command does is basically delete all the files that are named chat in your messages folder in your library. The command should work in OS X Maverics. If it worked for you in anyother OS X version do let me know in the comments.
