TUAW reader Chris Roberts was
right: it's been far too long since our last post in
The Little Things series, so I figured I'd pick up the slack with a really handy feature of Mac OS X: drag and drop. Sure, most OSes these days can drag and drop at least some things, but Apple has gone to great lengths to build this workflow-enhancing feature into so many facets of Mac OS X's experience, I don't really have time to cover them all (and there's no doubt that I don't even
know about them all). Take my screenshot for example: I'm dragging an image of our puppy out of iPhoto on the left into iChat's icon well on the right. A simple gesture, sure, but a tiny example of how powerful this functionality can become. Try a few of these other drag and drop operations on for size:
- Drag a file onto an app's icon in the Finder or Dock; its icon should darken, signifying that it can handle whatever you're throwing at it. Hold the Command key to force an app to open a file if it isn't initially cooperating.
- Drag images from a browser (except Firefox and Camino) into a Mail message or iChat window to easily share them; no clunky 'right-click, Save, Open' workflows here.
- Pause a QuickTime movie, click on the video and drag out to the desktop to create an instant snapshot of the frame you paused on (this might only work in QuickTime Pro - can anyone verify?).
- Drag a file onto a Terminal window to instantly create a path.
- Highlight text in most apps, then click and drag it to the desktop to create a text snippet, or into another window (Mail, iChat and Yojimbo are great examples) for a drag 'n drop take on copy/paste.
I'm sure there's a
ton more where this came from, so try it on for size or stay tuned to the comments on this post where readers can share their own tricks and tips for dragging and dropping one's way to productive bliss.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ben Drucker said 8:23AM on 4-15-2007
Command-Option to force an app in the dock to accept a file, not command.
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Wolax said 8:39AM on 4-15-2007
3. Pause in Quicktime and drag it to the desktop creates a Movie Clipping (in QT Pro)
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Dane said 8:47AM on 4-15-2007
The drag-n-drop functionality of a movie must only be in QT Pro. Selective screenshot functionality (targeted cmd+shift+4)doesn't work either on regular QT but the full screenshot (cmd+shift+3) does.
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jif said 9:04AM on 4-15-2007
another cool trick is teaming the drag & drop up with smart corners..
I've got the bottom right corner set up as "show desktop", and on the desktop there's an alias to the folder that OS X is cycling wallpapers from.
so when you browse great wallpaper sites like deviantart or pixelgirlpresents, you can just drag the image to the bottom right, triggering smart corners to show the desktop. then drop the image on to my wallpapers folder alias on the desktop, to put that new image into the rotation.
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Graham Forden said 5:41PM on 4-15-2007
you have got a very cute puppy!
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Audun said 4:17AM on 4-16-2007
I LOVE the drag and drop functionality in OS X. I got my MacBook for Christmas.
At work (using Windows XP)I now try to drag elementes between apps all the time, but it doesn't work as good as OS X.
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Adrian Bool said 9:42AM on 4-15-2007
Great suggestion Jif - hitting f11 mid drag was a pain.
As an ex Acorn RiscOS user I suffer from not being able to use drag as much as I could in the old days. Drag and drop was the way of saving files in RiscOS - it would be wonderful if that worked in OSX rather than having to use the cumbersome Save As dialog... Why aren't the file icons in the tops of document applications draggable when they are first opened!? Grrr.
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CS said 9:54AM on 4-15-2007
To save image from websites, just drag and drop it onto Desktop or your preferred folder. No 3,4 steps workflow needed.
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hessi said 10:50AM on 4-15-2007
in every (cocoa?) program, drag the icon of the file you're working with from the title bar to a folder, a mail, ... to save a copy, send it or do whatever you like.
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Mark Benson said 11:21AM on 4-15-2007
One thing that *doesn't* work well in OS X is dragging and dropping rtext between fields in web forms in Safari. I dunno what possessed Apple to screw this up, it works fine in FireFox and the lack of said functionality drives me bananas.
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Kevin Marsh said 11:58AM on 4-15-2007
Quicksilver handles dragging and dropping pretty nicely as well. If you invoke Quicksilver, start typing the name of an app so its icon appears, it becomes a drop target just like the Dock that you can drop files onto.
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Max said 12:53PM on 4-15-2007
In any open or save dialog box, drag and drop a file or folder onto it to immediately take you to that file or folder in the little file browser thing.
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Macskeeball said 1:41PM on 4-15-2007
Use drag and drop with Exposé.
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Jason said 4:00PM on 4-15-2007
You can drag pictures out of Camino....
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Jon said 5:02PM on 4-15-2007
If you're previewing an image in Preview, you can drag the icon from the centre of the title bar onto the Photoshop icon in the dock, and it will open in Photoshop for editing purposes - despite the image still being open in Preview. Discovered that one completely by accident - one of those Mac things that just makes you smile at the wonderfulness of it all...
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(01) said 10:44PM on 4-15-2007
I have to say, I've really been appreciating how drag & drop of text is handled in OS X. The intuitive copy, not cut of the text is handled is great, as opposed to windows, which I've been using at work lately. I do a lot online academic research, at this annoyance makes me have to copy and paste text back into a field that I dragged text out of. I guess it's like they say, it's the little things... :-)
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