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If you’ve spent any time at all creating and editing documents on your Mac, you’ve probably run across the Color Picker.
This neat little window pops up in a lot of applications when you try to change the color of an object or text. In this tip, my screenshots are from Pages, but you can do the same things (and invoke the Color Picker using the same shortcut) in Mail, Numbers, TextEdit, Keynote…lots of places. It’s handy.
For the purposes of this demo, I’m gonna be creating a gift tag to print out and slap on a present.
Let’s come to an understanding here. First, you’ve gotta pretend that this is something I would actually do; then you’re gonna have to imagine that my creation here looks good. Maybe you’ll pretend that you’re even a tiny bit impressed with my graphics “skills.” There’s frankly quite a lot of pretending that will have to take place.
In any case, now I’ve decided that I don’t like that pinkish-reddish color on my gift tag. Instead, I want to use the light blue of the Finder icon. Well, how on earth could a person go about that? Believe it or not, you’ve got the power to use any color on your screen on an object, and I mean any color (including the ones on icons in your Dock, your Desktop background—anything!). You can do this through the magic of the aforementioned Color Picker. Just select the object you’d like to color and summon the Color Picker (Shift-Command-C). Then click on the small magnifying glass near the upper-left corner.
When you do that, your cursor will change into a magnifying glass, and then all you’ve gotta do is find any color on your screen you want to use and click it to apply that color to the object you’ve selected.
Whoo-hoo! If you like the color you just found, you can even save it for future use. Do that by dragging the color from the top (next to the magnifying glass) down to one of the white spaces at the bottom.
If you need more white spaces to store your custom colors, drag the little handle at the bottom of the Picker to get more.
I think that’s just downright groovy! I probably shouldn’t be so impressed by a feature that’s been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but I can’t help being who I am, folks. And who I am is a person who’s easily impressed.
Edit a video without using a mouse or trackpad. Build a presentation without seeing the screen. Or track down important files for your next project with just your voice. Because Mac is designed for everybody to create amazing things.
Voice ControlUse your voice to make things happen.
Now you can fully control your Mac using only your voice.1 Quickly open and interact with apps, search the web, and write and edit more efficiently with rich text editing commands. So you can simply say, “Move up two lines. Select previous word. Capitalize that.” And your Mac does it.
VoiceOverYou don’t need to see your Mac to use your Mac.
VoiceOver is a revolutionary built-in screen reader that’s more than a text-to-speech tool. It tells you exactly what’s on your screen and talks you through actions like editing a video, building a presentation, or quickly navigating from one app to another.
Hover TextGet a quick size boost of what you’re reading.
Move your cursor over any text — a paragraph, a caption, a headline — then press Command for a bigger, high-resolution version of what you selected. Hover Text also lets you choose the fonts and colors that work best for you.
SiriMake requests by talking or typing.
Siri on Mac lets you quickly find and open files, set reminders, send text messages, and more, making it easy to handle the things you do every day.2 With “Type to Siri” mode, you can make requests using a physical or onscreen keyboard. And Siri can also predict your next word based on what you’ve said before, so you can minimize typing over time.
Text to SpeechGo from written word to spoken word.
If you learn better when you can hear what you’re reading or writing, Text to Speech lets you highlight any text and have your Mac read it aloud. And you can choose from more than 70 male or female voices across 42 languages.