Photo Stream is a nice feature of iCloud that pushes all of your pictures automatically to your other iOS devices and your Mac with iPhoto or Aperture. If you haven’t used it before, this means if you take a picture on your iPhone, it will automatically show up in the Photo Stream on your iPad, and also in iPhoto on your Mac. Oddly, there isn’t an option to choose a destination other than iPhoto or Aperture in Mac OS X though, but this cool trick allows you to specify a folder and then download all the images from iCloud to your Mac, without using iPhoto or Aperture.

In order to use the following script, you will need iOS 5 and OS X 10.7.2 or later, as well as iCloud set up and configured and the Photo Stream option enabled in Mac OS X’s iCloud System Preferences.

Save Photo Stream Images to a Folder in Mac OS X

• Open AppleScript Editor, found at /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor.app
• In a new blank AppleScript window, paste in the following code, replacing “USERNAME” with the short user name of your Mac OS X home directory:

tell application "Finder"
set this_folder to "Macintosh HD:Users:USERNAME:Library:Application Support:iLifeAssetManagement:assets" as alias
set target_folder to "Macintosh HD:Users:USERNAME:Pictures:MyStream" as alias
try
duplicate (every file of the entire contents of this_folder whose name contains "IMG") to the target_folder with replacing
end try
end tell

• This will look something like this in the AppleScript editor:

• Adjust the target_folder variables as appropriate – Change “Macintosh HD” if your hard drive is named something else, and change “MyStream” if you want the final directory to be something other than that name located in the user Pictures directory – remember with AppleScript, rather than slashes the colon is used instead to type and show file and folder paths
• Run the script to verify that it works and then save the script with an appropriate name like “PhotoStreamDownloader”, and select “Application” as the file format for easy access and launching later

Now anytime you want to download your Photo Stream to your Mac, just launch that saved script app and you will grab your latest Photo Stream images to the configure directory in Mac OS X. For best results, place the application into your /Applications directory and add it to Launchpad for easy future use.

AppleScript Editor is fairly intuitive, and if you entered a directory or path wrong when you attempt to run the script it will let you know with an “AppleScript Error” message. If you get a “iLifeAssetManagement:assets wasn’t found” message, then you haven’t enabled Photo Stream in iCloud’s System Preference panel.

Hopefully a future update to iCloud and Photo Stream will allow us to choose an image download destination directly, but until then this great trick from iDownloadblog works just fine.

Like this? Check out some more iCloud tips.

Launchpad shows a fading transition anytime it is opened or closed, making for a nice effect over whatever is in the background. It’s pleasant looking, but if you don’t like it you can disable the fading with a few defaults write commands. You can also choose to disable only half of the transition, either for showing or hiding Launchpad.

Disable Launchpad Fading

Launch the Terminal and enter the following commands separately:

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-show-duration -int 0
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-hide-duration -int 0

Now you must kill the Dock so it relaunches with the changes:

killall Dock

Launchpad is a subprocess of the Dock so killing the Dock forces Launchpad to reload, and the change will be immediately noticeable when you open Launchpad again. Gone is the smooth transition, and now it’s a sudden switch, almost like changing desktops but without the side scrolling animation. If you only want to disable half of the effect, say for when Launchpad is being hidden, only use the defaults write command with “springboard-hide-duration” in the string.

Re-enable Launchpad Fading

To reenable fading and go back to the default OS X Lion setting, use the following commands:


defaults delete com.apple.dock springboard-show-duration

defaults delete com.apple.dock springboard-hide-duration

Again kill the Dock with:

killall Dock

Launchpad will now be back to it’s usual self with the fading transitions. If you’re not certain, hold down the shift key and see if the transition is in slow motion.

With traditional clamshell mode for a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Macbook, an external display, mouse, and keyboard must be attached in order to maintain the running closed-lid clamshell state. Thanks to a third party kernel extension called NoSleep we can now remove those hardware limitations and run a Mac laptop with the lid closed and no hardware attached.

Installing NoSleep is easy and places a System Preference panel for configuration, along with a menu bar item that lets you toggle the NoSleep function similar to the Caffeine app, but only impacting lid sleep behavior.

• Download NoSleep from Google Code

Check “Do not fall asleep when lid is closed” and you can freely shut a portable Mac without the machine sleeping, even without a keyboard or display attached. This is great if you have an old MacBook laying around you want to use as a file server or wireless media center, or you just want to close a Mac while it sits quietly on a desk downloading large files or anything else – just remember to keep the Mac well ventilated when running with the lid closed.

If you’re done with NoSleep or just don’t find it useful, uninstalling NoSleep is best achieved through the bundled uninstaller bash script.

This extension was found on Twitter, although I can’t recall who from or the origin tweet. Thanks to whoever it was!

Clicking an email link in a web browser defaults to launching Mail.app, which is great if you use Mail but not so great if you use webmail services like Gmail. This is fairly easy to resolve, though you’ll have to configure it separately on a per-browser basis, with different methods for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.

Set Gmail as Default Email Client in Chrome and Opera

• Launch a new browser window and open up Gmail
• Open the Javascript console by hitting Command+Option+J and then paste in the following:
  navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto",
"https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s",
"Gmail");

• Accept the confirmation at the top of the browser window and try out a mailto link

This can be undone or changed again by going to chrome://settings/handlers and adjusting the setting as appropriate.

Use Gmail as Default Email in Firefox

• Open Firefox Preferences
• Click on “Applications” tab
• Locate “mailto” under the ‘Content Type’ tab and change the action to “Use Gmail”
• Close out of Firefox Preferences

Switching back to the default behavior is just a matter of selecting Mail again as the action.

Using Gmail as Email Default in Safari

Safari users can either use a browser extension called GmailThis available from Apple’s extensions gallery, or can use apps like Gmail Notifier which we have discussed here before for it’s menu bar alerts. After Google Notifier has been installed:

• Open Mail Preferences and click on “General”
• Pull down the “Default email reader” and locate ‘Google Notifier’
• Quit out of Mail.app

Older versions of Mac OS X can use WebMailer as well, but Google Notifier is the most reliable.

Heads up to HTML5Rocks for the Chrome tip.

An alternative to checking a SHA1 hash with shasum is to use openssl. Yes, the same openssl utility used to encrypt files can be used to verify the validity of files.

The syntax is quite similar to the shasum command, but you do need to specify ‘sha1′ as the specific algorithm:

openssl sha1 /path/to/filename

To verify a file on the desktop, the command would look like this:

openssl sha1 ~/Desktop/DownloadedFile.dmg

The output isn’t quite as nice as shasum, but it remains easy to interpret:

$ openssl sha1 ~/Desktop/DownloadedFile.dmg
SHA1(/Users/OSXDaily/Desktop/DownloadedFile.dmg)= ba33b60954960b0836daac20b98abd25a21618da3

For the average user, there isn’t much advantage to use openssl over shasum when verifying checksums, so it’s mostly a matter of habit and whichever is most convenient.

Thanks to those readers who recommended this.

Spectacle is a free utility for Mac OS X that helps you quickly and easily organize and resize windows, without using the mouse. Apps like this make it much easier to view multiple documents alongside one another and can help to boost productivity, particularly after you remember the keystrokes to throw windows around the screen.

Want a browser window to align to the left while a text editor is aligned on the right? Want to tile four windows into each corner of the screen? Easy. If you use multiple monitors, Spectacle will also let you push windows to the the other displays too.

• Download Spectacle free from the Mac App Store

Spectacle is open source and works with Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7. Here’s the full list of keyboard shortcuts you can use:

Spectacle Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Center / Cmd + Alt + C
• Fullscreen / Cmd + Alt + F

• Left Half / Cmd + Alt + ←
• Right Half / Cmd + Alt + →
• Top Half / Cmd + Alt + ↑
• Bottom Half / Cmd + Alt + ↓

• Upper Left Corner / Cmd + Ctrl + ←
• Lower Left Corner / Cmd + Shift + Ctrl + ←
• Upper Right Corner / Cmd + Ctrl + →
• Lower Right Corner / Cmd + Shift + Ctrl + →

• Left Display / Cmd + Alt + Ctrl + ←
• Right Display / Cmd + Alt + Ctrl + →
• Top Display / Cmd + Alt + Ctrl + ↑
• Bottom Display / Cmd + Alt + Ctrl + ↓

The keystrokes are fully customizable, and the only other preference options are to show the Spectacle menu bar item and launch at login or not.

Even with OS X Lion’s new ways to resize windows, I find apps like Spectacle to be extremely useful, and once you get the hang of using them it’s hard to go back.

If you have tried to repair the boot volume before in Mac OS X before, you’ll undoubtedly have found the “Repair Disk” option is grey and unavailable within the Disk Utility tool. While this is still the case while booted in OS X Lion, you can repair the Mac OS X boot disk thanks to Lion’s Recovery Partition, preventing the need from using an external boot drive to repair the disk.

Once booted into Recovery mode you’ll find the limitations on Disk Utility’s repair function has been removed, here’s how to do that.

Repairing a Mac Boot Disk with Disk Utility & OS X Lion

• Reboot the Mac and hold down Command+R to boot into Recovery
• Select “Recovery HD” at the boot menu
• At the Mac OS X Utilities screen, select “Disk Utility”
• Select the boot volume or partition from the left menu and click on the “Repair” tab
• Repair Disk is now possible, click on “Repair Disk” to repair the boot volume

While you’re in Recovery mode, you may also want to verify disk permissions and repair them, repair user permissions, and verify and repair other disks as well.

Need to re-enable or disable Javascript in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox? Most modern web browsers make it very easy to toggle on or off, and while it’s almost always recommended to keep javascript enabled, there are cases where developers and other users need to turn it off.

Safari:

• Open Safari Preferences
• Click on “Advanced” and check the box next to “Show Develop menu in menu bar”
• Pull down the “Develop” menu and select “Disable Javascript”, a check signifies it’s disabled

Google Chrome:

• Open Google Chrome’s Preferences
• Click on “Under the Hood” and then “Content Settings”
• Find Javascript then click “Do not allow any site to run JavaScript” to disable, or “Allow all sites” to enable

Firefox:

• Open Preferences and click on “Content”
• Check or uncheck the box next to “Enable Javascript”

Mobile Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch:

• Tap on Settings, then tap on “Safari”
• Switch Javascript to “ON” or “OFF” depending on your needs

Remember to reenable Javascript to have a full web experience if you have disabled it temporarily.

Apple has released firmware updates for 2010 model year MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro. The EFI update brings OS X Lion Internet Recovery, which is accessible by booting into Recovery mode and allows a user to reinstall OS X Lion, to each Mac from 2010.

The EFI Firmware updates are available to download from Software Update, or directly from Apple:

• MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.3
• iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.8
• MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.6

Updating the firmware requires a reboot as usual and the Mac should be connected to a power source before proceeding. The MacBook Air update also includes a minor bug fix to resolve an issue where the machine could inadvertently restart if the power button is pressed when waking from sleep.

Apple describes Internet Recovery as follows:

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online

For Macs that can’t use Internet Recovery, the Lion Recovery Disk tool helps to make a bootable USB device that can offer the same features, although if you want to have the most versatile troubleshooting toolkit, having a fully bootable OS X Lion install drive is ideal.

Mac OS X 10.7.3 added several new high-dpi interface elements, giving another hint that Apple may be working towards releasing Macs with ‘retina’ displays.

DaringFireball points out that it’s possible these elements were updated to make Universal Access and cursor artwork more attractive, but also mentions that some Mac Mini users inadvertently booted into high-dpi display modes when connected to a TV via HDMI:

The simplest explanation is that Apple only just now got around to increasing the resolution of these elements for the benefit of users who use the cursor-zooming Universal Access feature. But, combined with the fact that some people with Mac Minis connected to TVs via HDMI are reporting that after upgrading to 10.7.3, their system rebooted in HiDPI mode, I can’t help but wonder whether we may be on the cusp of Apple releasing HiDPI Mac displays and/or HiDPI MacBooks. I.e.: retina display Macs.

The most noticeable element changes are visible when increasing cursor size, where before a pixelated cursor would appear and now the cursors are smoothed and significantly higher resolution. These higher res images could be appropriate for use on a Mac with a High-DPI display.

Other UI artwork was also updated, as MacRumors pointed out with this comparison image of showing the subtle difference between Mac OS X 10.7.2 and 10.7.3:

Mac OS X Lion has provided a variety of clues that retina Macs may be coming sometime in the near future. From the unusually high res wallpapers, HiDPI display modes, HiDPI options, to the giant icon artwork, there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that Apple is in some stage of developing Macs with ultra high display resolutions.

There have also been rumors to support this idea. Late last year, Digitimes reported that Apple would release a MacBook Pro equipped with a high resolution retina display in the second quarter of 2012. There is also the expectation that iPad 3 will feature a ‘retina’ display, leading many to assume that a Mac would launch around the same time frame to support development of high resolution apps and artwork for the device.

By combining the Hide All shortcut with the minimize keyboard shortcut in Mac OS X Lion, you can use a third ‘Minimize and Hide All’ shortcut by hitting the Command+Option+H+M keys.

As the title suggests, this keyboard shortcut will hide all other applications and windows, in addition to minimizing the currently active application or window, effectively clearing the entire screen and giving you a blank view of the desktop. If you have Dock icon translucency enabled as shown in the screenshot, the hidden apps will appear as translucent while the minimized windows from the foremost app will be in the Dock separately.

Heads up to @sambrowne for the tip.

We recently showed you how to delete Safari, Mail, and other default apps installed with Mac OS X, and procedurally iTunes is not much different. Unlike uninstalling applications from third parties, if you attempt to drag the iTunes app into the Trash can, you’ll see a dialog box warning that ‘“iTunes.app” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by Mac OS X.’

Nonetheless iTunes can be deleted from the Mac, but without a very good reason it should not be done. iTunes is integral to supporting other Apple features and hardware, ranging from the App Store to the iTunes Store, and without iTunes installed you won’t be able to sync apps, music, books, movies, and anything else with an iPad, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Assuming you understand that and you still want to remove iTunes from your Mac, we will show you how to do it.

Delete iTunes

Deleting iTunes is not recommended unless you know what you’re doing.

• Launch Terminal from the Utilities folder within Applications
• Type the following commands:

cd /Applications/
This brings you into the Applications directory, the next command deletes iTunes itself:
sudo rm -rf iTunes.app/

• Enter the Administrator password to confirm

There is no warning or confirmation other than entering the admin password, iTunes will immediately be deleted, effectively uninstalling it from the Mac.

Deleting the iTunes application will not delete the iTunes library or music, and any purchases bought through iTunes will still remain tied to the Apple ID used to originally buy them.

I Accidentally Deleted iTunes, Help!
If you find yourself somehow accidentally deleting iTunes, don’t fret too much because it’s always easy to reinstall. You can download the newest version directly from Apple, and running their installer will bring iTunes back to life on your computer.

It’s easy to be distracted by other open applications and windows while using a computer, and sometimes even the best of us need a bit of help to focus. Lion’s full screen mode can be helpful, but when that’s not enough or when you need access to other windows and apps, then Isolator is your friend.

Isolator is a free application that provides an easy way to focus on a single application at a time by applying various filters to everything in the background, these are fully customizable and even if you aren’t interested in the focus and productivity side of things, can make for a nice way to customize the appearance of Mac OS X.

• Download Isolator for free from willmore.eu

You can choose to tint the background, blur it, use a bloom effect, turn it into crystals, or make the background black and white while everything else is colorful. Both the tint opacity and filter strength are adjustable by a slider, leading to plenty of customization options. Screenshots and a video of some of these effects and filters are shown below.

As you can see in the video, some of the effects develop a slight lag:

Tinted with no blur:

Opacity with black & white desaturate:

100% opacity and black background:

Tinted with blur:

Crystalize effect and tinted background:

There are tons of other potential effects, and the tint color can be adjusted to anything as well. The more complicated the filter, the more demanding it will be on CPU and system resources when switching between apps, so keep that in mind if you have a slower Mac. Sticking to no effect but with a tint is very fast however and didn’t seem to have any negative effect on performance.

If you’d rather not download another app, another option would be to enable Single Application Mode in Mac OS X, which automatically hides any app other than the one currently in use.

The OS X 10.7.3 update brought with it a variety of subtle changes, including a minor adjustment to how the Launchpad background image style is switched. In previous Mac OS X versions, Command+B would switch between the background effect styles, but this is now achieved with Control+Option+Command+B.

Try it yourself by opening Launchpad and then hitting the Control+Option+Command+B keys to alternate between backgrounds with blur, unblurred, black and white, and blurred black and white. You can see samples of these background style effects below.

Without a blurred background:

Black and white with blur background:

Black and white without blur:

Using the unblurred color background makes Launchpad on the Mac closely resemble Springboard on an iOS device.

SHA hashing is frequently used with distribution control systems to determine revisions and to check data integrity by detecting file corruption or tampering. For common usage, a SHA checksum provides a string that can be used to verify a file been transferred as intended. If SHA checksums match, the files integrity has been maintained.

Checking SHA1 Hash in Mac OS X

Launch the Terminal, found within the Applications and Utilities folder, and use the following syntax:

shasum /path/to/file

To verify a file named “DownloadedFile.dmg” on the desktop, it would be:

shasum ~/Desktop/DownloadedFile.dmg

This will output something like this:

$ shasum ~/Desktop/CheckMe.zip
ddfdb3a7fc6fc7ca714c9e2930fa685136e90448 CheckMe.zip

That long hexadecimal string is the SHA1 hash.

An easy way to check SHA1 files buried deep in the file system without typing out the full path, is to type the first part of the command then drag and drop the file into the Terminal window. This automatically types the path for you:

shasum (drag and drop file here)

Remember to put a space after “shasum” for this to work properly.

The default for the shasum command is to use SHA1, the most common hash type, but this can be changed with the -a flag if necessary to 224, 256, 384, or 512. Also, though SHA1 is becoming more common than MD5, you can still easily check md5 hash in Mac OS X as well with the md5 command.

Examples of Using SHA1 to Verify Files

A practical use that Mac users may encounter is when downloading software updates directly from Apple, who lists the SHA1 hash of each file offered through their servers at the end of each downloads page. You can see such a string highlighted in the screenshot below. This string allows users to easily verify the integrity of their downloads either from Apple or when the file has been hosted on a third party mirror site.

This is also how it was discovered that OS X 10.7.3 had been quietly updated, and several questions about this spawned this post.

Using SHA1 hash strings are also an easy way to verify file transfers from peer to peer networks and to make sure a download has finished, or that a file was not tampered with somewhere along the line. By knowing the origin SHA1 checksum, you can verify your version of the file(s) in question matches, and determine if the file is indeed valid and has arrived as intended.