EasyLeopard.com - The Ultimate Mac OSX Leopard Guide

The Option Key

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The Option key is very useful in Leopard. It is often used to bypass a dialog window, most often the confirmation one. This key is also known as the Alt key.

If you hold the Option key while clicking the Apple Menu, then Restart, Shut off, or Log out, no confirmation window will pop up, and the computer will directly turn off (note that you can turn off your computer by pressing Ctrl + Eject).

In the same Apple Menu, when you hold Option, “About This Mac” changes into “System Profiler”.

It works almost everywhere, so you’ll have fun discovering all the “alternatives” to the standard menus.

One feature we like is used in the Dock. When you want to work on a single application and hide all others, Right-click your opened application (or Control+Click if you are one-buttoned), and when pressing the Option key, you will see the “Hide” change to an “Hide others”. Handy.
This can be also achieve by pressing Option + Command () + H

Another example of the Option Key use : In safari, if you want to enable “Private Browsing” without having to confirm your choice, press the Option key while choosing the function.

One last hint : In dashboard, press Option to close a widget, without having to open the widget bar !

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