OS X Photos Beta: Scrubbing Through Thumbnails

In the iOS Photos app, I often use the ability to tap and hold on the thumbnails in “Years” and “Collections” views to get a larger preview of images. 

If I keep holding my finger down, I can scrub across those pictures until I find the one I’m looking for, and when I pick my finger up, whatever item I had stopped on will open. Neat! Well, Apple has replicated this feature in the Photos beta for 10.10.3, so here’s how you’ll use it there. First, click on the “Photos” tab at the top of the program’s window to view your entire library, and then use the back button at the upper-left until you can’t go back any more.

Within this top-level view of your library (and also one step down from there), you can click and hold on any thumbnail to see a larger preview of what you’ve selected.

Also, if you continue holding down on your mouse or trackpad, you can drag across those images to keep viewing larger previews. When you find the one you’re looking for, release your mouse or trackpad button, and Photos’ll take you right to that picture; however, if you want to cancel without selecting anything, drag your cursor onto a white part of Photos’ window (so no previews are showing) and release.

At the risk of sounding redundant after my last Photos tip, I’m really pretty jazzed about the improvements I’m seeing over iPhoto. I always thought iPhoto was kind of…well, clunky, and though I’ve had a few hiccups with using the iCloud Photo Library part of the application, I’m very impressed with how Photos actually looks and works. How about you, dearest readers? Do you like the changes so far?