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Surprising things you can do on your Mac
Work, play and everything in-between
See your music
1 In the Music app (or iTunes on older macOS versions), you can display a psychedelic light show which reacts to the music as it plays. Press ç+T to start and the ß+/ key to display the keyboard controls: M changes display mode, A and S add and subtract bits to or from the light show and I shows or hides the track info. If you want to keep it old-school, select Window > Visualiser Settings > Classic Visualiser and you can see the visualiser from the original iTunes. It’s the same menu option to go back to the modern visualiser, but this time just choose Visualiser.
Want to see it on your smart TV? If it has AirPlay you can mirror your Mac display and see the light show on the big screen.
Do more with Spotlight
2 Spotlight isn’t just there to find files and launch apps. It can also save you from opening Safari when you need to perform a quick calculation or conversion. For example, if you press ç+[spacebar] and then type ‘999 USD in GBP’, it’ll do the currency calculation for you; if you type ‘68F’, it’ll convert it to Celsius; and if you type ‘1249/36’, it’ll work out the monthly cost of buying a new 24in iMac over a three-year period.
Spotlight also enables you to search with specific criteria, such as ‘kind: PDF’, to get definitions by using the keyword ‘define’, to get the weather for a location by typing ‘weather London’ or get football scores with ‘Man United scores’.