The Finder’s tile menu has a Quit item that will make the Finder quit without shutting down your Mac. This is useful when you’re tight on system memory, but remember you’ll have to restart the Finder to safely shut down your Mac later.

You may want to avoid showing a tile for some applications, such as screen savers. To hide a tile, choose ‘Hide Tile’ from the tile’s menu. The tile will vanish, and won’t reappear until you select ‘Show Tile for…’ from the Show menu in the menu bar.

Some of the menu items in tile menus have command-key shortcuts, like cmd-I for “Get Info.” These shortcuts will work on the selected tile, but won’t do anything if no tile is selected.

Choose ‘Find Original’ from any tile menu to see the tile’s item in the Finder. This is an easy way to open the parent folder that contains the tile’s item. Try it now!

If you are using ‘Always Hide Others’ so that background applications are hidden, you can temporarily turn that feature off by holding down the Shift key when you click a tile.

If you sometimes type cmd-Q and The Tilery quits by accident because you didn’t realize it was frontmost, choose ‘Ignore cmd-Q to Quit’ from the Preferences menu.

Did you know you can use your keyboard with The Tilery even without using hot keys? See ‘Selecting Tiles’ in the Help menu for details.

You can move any tile to any location on your screen, just by dragging it with the mouse. Remembered tiles will always stay where you put them. Automatic tiles will stay until their application quits, or The Tilery quits.

You can’t attach a hot key to an unremembered tile. But you can attach one to a remembered tile and then hide the tile. That way you can have a hot key without cluttering your screen with unwanted tiles.

Having trouble telling some of your tiles apart? Try using ‘Tile Color’ in the tile menu, or give the original items custom icons or labels in the Finder, or open the Tile Styles window and put a checkmark in the ‘Show Label Under Mouse’ box.

Holding down the option key while clicking a tile will hide the previously frontmost application as the new application comes to the front. This is actually a system-wide Mac OS feature, but it works well with The Tilery!

The menu for the Finder’s tile lists all mounted volumes at the bottom. Select a volume item to open that volume. Hold the mouse over a volume item, and a submenu will appear listing the top-level contents of the volume.

Like folder tiles, volume tiles list the contents of the volume in their tile menus. Selecting any item from the list is the same as double-clicking the item. Sub-menus show the contents of sub-folders.

The Finder tile’s menu has a ‘Desktop Folder’ item that lists everything that’s on your desktop. It’s a useful way to open desktop items that are hidden behind windows.

Did you know that you can create hot keys to switch between the two frontmost apps, or to cycle through all your open apps? Choose ‘Hot Keys…’ from the Tiles menu in the menu bar.

To show a tile’s full label whenever the mouse is over the tile, open the Tile Styles window (it’s in the Tiles menu) and put a checkmark in the box labeled ‘Show Label Under Mouse.’

If your keyboard has a Control key, it’s a good one to use for Hot Keys. For example, you could set Control-F for the Finder and Control-W for your favorite word processor. The function keys F5 through F15 are good choices, too.

It’s best NOT to remember The Tilery’s tile. That way when you make a remembered tile by dragging to The Tilery, it will appear right under the mouse and The Tilery’s tile will move away temporarily to make room for it.

Put The Tilery (or an alias to The Tilery) into your Startup Items folder to have it launch automatically when you start your Mac. Select ‘Finder to Front on Startup’ from the Preferences menu if you don’t want The Tilery in front at startup time.

The best tip we can give you is: Use the Help Menu! It’s a complete on-line manual, with pictures and hypertext links like a Web browser.

Welcome to The Tilery! This window will show a new tip each time you start The Tilery. You can turn off the tips by unchecking the ‘Show Tip at Startup’ box, but you should read them for a while—they’re helpful!