Dave Metzener's Weblog

macosxhints.com – See folder content previews in Quick Look in 10.5 and 10.6: “Quick Look has a hidden feature that is not enabled by default, and can only be enabled through Terminal. Essentially, when ‘X-Ray mode’ is turned on, Quick Looking a folder will show, in a way, the contents of the folder.

Instead of just seeing the regular folder icon in Quick Look, the folder icon will be semi-transparent, with previews of the folder’s contents visible in the Quick Look window, as seen in the image at right. What’s more, the preview images will rotate automatically, moving through each item in the folder (click the image to see a movie of the animation).

To turn this on, quit the Finder (using Activity Monitor, Terminal, etc.), then open Terminal and enter this command: $ defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 Relaunch the Finder, and enjoy the new folder X-Ray mode in Quick Look. If you ever want to disable it again, quit the Finder, then repeat the above Terminal command, but change the 1 to a 0. “

This is one of the best tips/tricks I have run across is a long time. Not only do you get to see thumbs of whats in the folder, but they cycle through all the files. New image start at the top and slide under as new images arrive. Its a great effect and something I am going to keep on my machnes.

I just discovered that if you hold down the Option key when clicking on the fast forward/rewind controls in QuickTime Player X, you will increase the speed of playback by 0.1x per click.

This is a great trick if you have limited time and want to watch a video at faster than normal speed. 1.3x to 1.5x is still pretty understandalbe and will save a decent amount of time.

This tip was originally mentioned on Max OS X Hints, but the post claimed that the Control key was the key modifier to use when, in fact, its the Option key. I’m not trying to claim this tip as my own, just wanting it writing in such a way as to not cause any confusion over how to use it.

I came across this little tip on a development twitter post. Turns out you can see hidden files and even open one up for editing if you enter Cmd-Shift-. in an Open File dialog.

As with pretty much all of Apple’s shortcuts, it’s a toggle, so typing it once displays hidden files and typing it again hides hidden files.

Here is a standard Open File dialog window:

Here is the same Open File dialog after typing ‘Cmd-Shift-.’:

I really wish Apple had a page somewhere on its website that described all these hidden gems. There are literally hundreds of these things hidden through out OS X and other Macintosh applications.