Quick Mac

Quick Mac prank for April Fools' Day

If someone you know uses his or her Mac regularly, then you can tackle the system with a quick change that might give you a chuckle or two this April Fools' day. Simply take a screenshot of the display, and then set it to be a full-screen image in Apple's Preview program.

Granted this trick is nothing new, but can easily be done in OS X, in the event you need to jump in, perform the prank, and jump out without being detected:

1. Take a full-screen screenshot
   First, press Shift-Control-Command-3 to save a screenshot of the display to the clipboard.
2. Make a new image in Preview
   Open the Preview application (Press Command-Space and search for it in Spotlight), and then press Command-N to make a new image.
3.  Set the image to be full-screen
   Press Control-Command-F to toggle full-screen mode on the current image (the screenshot).

With this setup, the display will look the way they left it, but nothing on screen can be clicked or moved. Instead, the mouse cursor will turn into a crosshair and click-dragging will create a selection box. Of course, the person will find out the issue when they try to access menus and the real menu bar drops down from the top of the display, but until then it may be fun to see the confusion ensue.