by John Pieza
The space bar on the Mac does more than allow you to type spaces between words. Here are three surprising things the space bar allows you to do on the Mac.
1. It’s a Pause button. When you are playing music or watching video on the Mac you can hit the space bar to pause whatever you are enjoying. Hit the space bar again to resume. It works in iTunes, Quicktime, iMovie, GarageBand, and DVD Player. It even works when you are watching Netflix or Hulu as long as you are in full-screen mode.
2. It’s a Quick Look button. When you are looking through files on your Mac using the Finder (that little blue smiling face in your Dock), you can see a preview of a file by hitting the space bar which activates Quick Look (you’ll have to be using Mac OS 10.5 or 10.6). You can make the preview full screen by hitting the two arrow buttons at the bottom of the Quick Look screen. You can preview all kinds of documents including Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc. You can also use Quick Look to preview music, movies, and pictures.
3. It’s a way to Spotlight. By holding down the Command key and then tapping the space bar, you will open the Spotlight search field in the upper-right corner of your screen. Spotlight lets you search your Mac for documents, emails, folders, contacts, etc. by name, content, author, etc. Spotlight is also great for doing math (see our Tip o’ the Day from last week).
There is another “trick” the space bar can perform. Can anyone tell me what it is?