Tips & Tricks

Tips and tricks for all things Apple! Whether you want to learn tips for a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or much more, you will find many tricks, tips, tutorials, and excellent walkthroughs for Apple devices and software here.

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Access Recent Photos by Swiping Left from iPhone Camera App

Jan 24, 2012 - 11 Comments
Swipe left to show Photos

Do you want to view the recent picture(s) you just took with your iPhone camera? Rather than closing out of the Camera app and then launching into the Photos app and then Camera Roll, you can go another route directly from the Camera app!

Organize iOS Apps by Actions Instead of Categories

Jan 23, 2012 - 15 Comments
Arrange icons by action rather than categories

Can’t remember what folder you stuffed that iOS app into? If you have a ton of apps on your iPhone or iPad, try rearranging them all by their actions (or by verbs), rather than by the apps category. Although you’ll have to do this manually by moving apps around and renaming or creating folders yourself, … Read More

Use a Zoom Window in Mac OS X

Jan 23, 2012 - Leave a Comment
Enable Picture in Picture zoom window in Mac OS X

Another option when enabling zoom in OS X Lion and other newer Mac OS X versions is to use a smaller floating zoom window, rather than zooming into the entire screen. This allows you to zoom into screen elements using a small zoom window that hovers over screen elements, kind of like a virtual magnifying … Read More

Compare Time Machine Backups and List All Changes Between Backups

Jan 21, 2012 - 4 Comments
tmutil compare output

Modern versions of Mac OS X include a great tool called tmutil that lets you interact with with Time Machine from the command line. It’s a powerful utility that has a ton of options, and we’ve used it before to disable local snapshots, but for the purposes here we are going to use tmutil to … Read More

Install iBooks Author on Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard

Jan 20, 2012 - 58 Comments
Show Package Contents

Apple’s free interactive book creation app iBooks Author was just released, allowing for anyone to make multi-touch iBooks for iPad. Unfortunately it’s officially for Mac OS X 10.7 only, and if you try to install it on Snow Leopard, you’ll get an error message. With a little work we can get around that error message … Read More

How to Jailbreak iPhone 4S & iPad 2 on iOS 5.0.1 with Absinthe

Jan 20, 2012 - 128 Comments
Absinthe Jailbreak for iPhone 4S

The newly released and highly anticipated Absinthe A5 jailbreak is the first public jailbreak for iPhone 4S users and the first jailbreak for iPad 2 with iOS 5. If you’ve been waiting for an untethered jailbreak for either device with iOS 5, this is it, and it’s very easy to use. Absinthe is compatible with … Read More

Monitor Disk Activity in Mac OS X

Jan 20, 2012 - 3 Comments
Monitor Disk Activity in Mac OS X

You can monitor disk activity in Mac OS X by using the Activity Monitor app or several command line tools. Activity Monitor is the easiest and most user friendly, but the Terminal options allow further information to be retrieved.

How to Change Dock Stacks Icon Size in Grid View of OS X

Jan 19, 2012 - 7 Comments
Increase stack icon size

Stacks are a Dock feature in Mac OS X which allows for an easy way to see the contents of Applications, Documents, Downloads, and whatever other folder placed into the Dock. There are a few different ways to view the Stacks, which appear on the right side of the Mac Dock, like grid, automatic, list, … Read More

Install iOS 5 on iPhone 3G & 2G or iPod Touch 1G/2G with Whited00r 5

Jan 19, 2012 - 70 Comments
Whited00r 5.1 brings iOS 5 to iPhone 3G

Have an older generation iPhone 3G or 2G? If so, you’re stuck on older legacy iOS versions with limited features and sluggish speeds. But not anymore with Whited00r, which installs a custom iOS build on the device to help bring it into the modern age. Whited00r 5.1 is basically an unofficial custom made iOS build … Read More

Set a User Agreement Policy to Appear Before Login in Mac OS X

Jan 18, 2012 - 28 Comments
User Agreement on Login in Mac OS X Lion

All versions of Mac OS X from Lion onward (meaning Mountain Lion, Mavericks, etc) can display messages that require acknowledgement prior to the standard login screen appearing on a Mac. For administrators, this allows a user agreement or acceptable use policy to be displayed before users can login, and for personal use it lets users … Read More

How to Access Wikipedia During the SOPA Blackout

Jan 18, 2012 - 18 Comments
Use Wikipedia during SOPA blackout

SOPA and PIPA are two terrible internet censorship bills that are dangerously close to passage in the USA, and Wikipedia has blacked out their web site in protest. …but what if you really need to use Wikipedia today? What if you’re a student and your paper was due yesterday and you need to do research? … Read More

Rebuild the Spotlight Index

Jan 17, 2012 - 38 Comments
Rebuild the Spotlight Index

Do you need to rebuild the entire Spotlight index on a Mac? It’s easy to do, but can take a while. This tutorial will show you how to start the reindexing process of an entire drive in Mac OS X, we’ll do this using the Spotlight control panel, and we’ll cover an alternative method as … Read More

How to Take Screenshots of Screen Savers in Mac OS X

Jan 17, 2012 - 4 Comments
Take a screenshot of a screen saver

If you’ve tried to take a screenshot of a screen saver before, you’ve noticed that the keyboard shortcuts disturb the screensaver and wake the Mac up. The secret to taking screen shots of a running screen saver is to use the “Test” button while holding down half of the key sequence, here’s how: Open System … Read More

Get DropBox Public Links Easier with Bloodrop for Mac OS X

Jan 17, 2012 - 5 Comments
Dropbox public links made easy

Retrieving public URL’s from Dropbox takes several steps, but Bloodrop makes it easy. Just drag a file onto the app and it will automatically upload to Dropbox and then copy the public link to your clipboard. It’s that simple. Before grabbing Bloodrop, you’ll want to have Growl (or the free Growl Fork) installed so you … Read More

Reset iPhone to Factory Settings

Jan 17, 2012 - 73 Comments

If you want an iPhone to appear as brand new from a software standpoint, you need to reset the device to it’s factory settings. This is ideal if you plan on selling an iPhone or are going to transfer ownership of the device to another individual, and it can also be a very helpful troubleshooting … Read More

Use FaceTime Over 3G Without a Jailbreak via Personal Hotspot

Jan 16, 2012 - 10 Comments
iPhone Personal Hotspot

FaceTime has long been expected to support video calls over 3G networks, but thus far it hasn’t happened without a jailbreak. Blame it on the carriers, Apple, the rain, maybe 3G is too slow, or maybe it will be a feature for upcoming 4G LTE iPad and iPhone hardware… who knows, but regardless you can … Read More

How to Enable the Video & Audio Encoder Tools in Mac OS X

Jan 16, 2012 - 19 Comments
QuickTime

An excellent feature in Mac OS X are the several built-in media encoding abilities, allowing anyone to encode and convert video and audio files to other formats right on the desktop or from any Finder window. Having covered a tip on how to convert video to audio using these media encoders, we discovered the feature … Read More

Convert Video to an Audio Track Directly in Mac OS X

Jan 16, 2012 - 19 Comments
Convert Video to Audio

Converting a video file to an audio track is made extremely easy with the help of the media encoding abilities of Mac OS X that are built directly into the Finder. With this, you can convert many popular movie formats into audio tracks, including video files of .mov, .m4v, .mpg, and mp4 format. The resulting … Read More

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