The Option key on your Mac keyboard is a clever little thing. Represented in menus by ⌥, it often provides access to functions and commands that are not readily accessible. Read on to learn some of these secrets.

Copy When Dragging

Normally, when you drag an item in the Finder between two folders, the item gets moved from source to destination. However, one of the oldest tricks in the book is that holding the Option key while dragging forces a copy.

macOS makes this clear by adding a ⊕ to the cursor while the Option key is down. As long as Option is down at the point of dropping, the item will be copied, leaving the original where it started.

This trick works in lots of applications; anywhere that you can drag an object to move it somewhere, you can hold Option to copy it instead. That includes:

  • Copy email messages to mailboxes in Mail
  • Copy bookmarks into folders in Safari
  • Copy notes into folders in Notes
  • Duplicate an event in Calendar while dragging it to another time

Close All Windows

Do you make a lot of documents and regularly have several open at the same time? You might know that the keyboard shortcut for Close Window is Command+W. However, if you have a habit of closing your several documents when you’re done working, you might benefit from adding the Option key.

Command+Option+W changes this command to Close All, as you can see by clicking the File menu and holding Option or not. In one fell swoop, you can close all your windows and the application will still ask if you want to keep unsaved changes.

Get Info vs. Inspector

I often help clients identify why their storage is so full. One of my favorite uses of Option is to reveal the Inspector in the Finder. The File menu’s Get Info command generates a window with information about a selected file or folder.

However, unless I’m comparing the sizes of two items that might be duplicates of each other, it’s incredibly tedious show info on multiple items in sequence if each Info window is static for each item.

Instead, hold Option and the command becomes Show Inspector (or press Command+Option+I), creating a “utility window” that changes dynamically depending on what is selected. Now, I can select one or more items and add to or remove from the selection as I drill into the hierarchy and see what’s taking up too much space.

Get More Info

Many of the status menus on the right side of the menu bar have more functionality or information to share than they natively provide. Hold the Option key before clicking on a menu to see what else you can learn. For example:

  • The Wi-Fi menu lists a whole bunch of details and statistics about the currently connected Wi-Fi network.
  • The Sound menu allows you to change the input device in addition to the output device, such as if you have an external microphone connected.
  • And when you click Notification Center with Option down, you can toggle Do Not Disturb.

What other secrets can you find by holding the Option key? What hidden benefits do they provide in how you use your Mac?