Bring Back Save As To Mountain Lion, Weep With Joy [OS X Tips]

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Welcome back! We've missed you!
Welcome back! We've missed you!

When OS X Lion debuted, our old-friend Save As… had been sent packing for a new imposter, Duplicate. We tried to like this new one, but wow was it not the same. Luckily, Mountain Lion has brought Save As… back, only in a sneaky, less than obvious way.

We want to share how to see the Save As… command, of course, with a simple key press, but we’ll go even one step further, clueing you in on how to return good-old-Save As… to its former glory, in the exalted spot it used to reside in. Here’s how.

If you’ve upgraded to Mountain Lion, you’ll be able to do this right away. Launch something simple, like Text Edit, from the Applications folder. Open a file or just make changes to the one that’s been restored to your view. Then, click on the File menu. Notice, Duplicate, the meanie, is still there. Now press the Option key. Huzzah! There’s Save As… hiding out and waiting for you. It’s even got a shortcut, though it requires the Option key: Shift-Command-Option-S will bring you back to the nirvana state of Save As… functionality.

But what if you really want to go back to the way it should be the way it was? There’s a simple way to do this, devoid of any hacking or terminal-fu.

Simply launch System Preferences from the dock, and click through to Keyboard, then Keyboard Shortcuts. Click on Application shortcuts in the left hand column, and then All Applications on the right. Then, click on the plus sign underneath the right hand column. Type in Save As… in the Menu Title field, and then click into the Keyboard Shortcut field. Now, press the keys you want for your shortcut, like Command-Shift-S. Mac OS X Mountain Lion will add that into the field, and clicking Add will commit it to memory.

Do the same for Duplicate, only adding a shortcut like Command-Option-Shift-D. You should now have two new shortcuts that will work across applications with the Duplicate/Save As… functionality. Test it out – in Text Edit, if you click on the File Menu, you’ll see both Save As… and Duplicate, and their associated keyboard shortcuts. Now that’s worth the price of admission, right there.

Super secret pro tip? If you actually remap Duplicate to Command=Shift-Option-S, you’ll hide it, much in the same way Save As… was hidden when you started this whole rigamarole. Pretty fancy, eh?

Now if only Apple would realize that Save As… is the way to go and restore it by default, we’d all breathe a bit easier.

Are you using OS X Mountain Lion? Got a tip you want to share with us? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Via: TUAW

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