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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Set Terminal Focus to Follow the Mouse Cursor in Mac OS X

Apr 18, 2011 - 12 Comments
Terminal in macOS

If you’re coming to Mac OS X from elsewhere in the unix & x11 world, you might be used to the focus of Terminal windows following your mouse cursor. With a little command line magic, we can enable this hidden feature in the Mac OS X Terminal.app too.

Keep Magsafe Cords Out of the Way on MacBooks with a Neat Trick

Apr 17, 2011 - 6 Comments
Magsafe clipped to side of MacBook Air

Is that Magsafe cable cord getting in your way when using your Mac laptop? Try attaching the cord to the side of your Mac’s display by using the cables clip as shown in the pictures. This works with newer MacBook Pro’s, unibody MacBooks, and new MacBook Air too, it clips directly onto the side of … Read More

900+ Secret iPhone Ringtones on your Mac

Apr 15, 2011 - 17 Comments

Are you bored with your iPhone ringtones? You probably know by now that you can make iPhone ringtones yourself with iTunes, but instead of chopping up a song, why not get some ringtones that actually sound like they belong to a phone? You’re in luck because there are 932 free iPhone ringtones on your Mac … Read More

How to Add a Recent Items Menu Stack to the Dock of Mac OS X

Apr 15, 2011 - 18 Comments

You can add a Recent Items menu Stack to the Mac OS X Dock by using a defaults write command. The default is set to “Recent Applications” but once the Dock item exists you can adjust it to feature other recent items too, like Recent Files, Recent Items, Recent Servers. This is a neat feature … Read More

Enable Mac OS X 10.7 Lion & iOS style reverse scrolling in Mac OS X 10.6

Apr 14, 2011 - 9 Comments

Reverse scrolling is one of those features that came along in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion that surprised a lot of people, on a computer it doesn’t feel quite as normal as it does on a touchscreen iPad or iPhone, but once you get used to it, it’s good. If you dual boot between 10.7 … Read More

Find your iPhone IMEI Number

Apr 13, 2011 - 44 Comments

IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity, you can think of IMEI like a serial number in that every iPhone, or other mobile phone for that matter, has a unique IMEI number used to identify it with carriers, manufacturers, and providers. There are several reasons you’d want to know your IMEI, and we’ll get into … Read More

Show or Hide the Mac Finder Window Sidebar

Apr 13, 2011 - 6 Comments
hide Mac finder window sidebar

The Finder window sidebar makes navigation in Mac OS X easier, with quick access points to various aspects of a users home directory, as well as throughout the file system. Users can choose to show the Finder sidebar, or to hide the Finder sidebar, depending on their individual preferences.

Quickly launch a new styled Terminal window

Apr 10, 2011 - 3 Comments

You can quickly launch a new styled Terminal window through the apps Mac OS X Dock icon. Just right-click (two-finger click for trackpad users) on the Terminal app, navigate to “New Window” select a preconfigured style.

Access the iTunes Equalizer Settings

Apr 9, 2011 - 8 Comments

If you want to change the universal equalizer in iTunes for your entire music library and all songs in it, the incredibly adjustable iTunes Equalizer Settings can be accessed quickly in one of two ways:

Hack Mac OS X Lion to work on unsupported Core Duo & Core Solo Macs

Apr 8, 2011 - 34 Comments

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Previews 1 and 2 currently do not install on older Macs with unsupported Core Duo and Core Solo hardware, but by performing a simple hack you can get these machines to boot Lion. Apparently the only thing preventing Lion from working on these 32-bit Macs is a single file … Read More

Transfer Photos from a USB Flash Drive to an iPad

Apr 8, 2011 - 17 Comments

With the help of the iPad Camera Connection Kit, you can fool your iPad into thinking a connected USB flash drive is a camera or SD card, this lets you pull pictures from the device and onto your iPad. Cool huh? Here’s how to do this: Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac Create … Read More

Extract and Explore an iOS App in Mac OS X

Apr 7, 2011 - 14 Comments

You can find some interesting things in iOS apps that you’ve downloaded from the App Store, all you need to do is extract the file from its container and then you’re free to browse around like any other application package. This works with any iPhone or iPad app, and you’ll obviously need a Mac with … Read More

Quickly Check or Uncheck All Songs in an iTunes Playlist

Apr 7, 2011 - 2 Comments

You can immediately check or uncheck all songs in an iTunes playlist by holding down the Command key and then clicking on the checkbox next to any song. There is no undo, and it’s universal for everything in the selected playlist, so if you have a carefully curated playlist be careful when you’re using this … Read More

Start a FaceTime Call from the Web

Apr 6, 2011 - 17 Comments

You can start a FaceTime call from any web browser in Mac OS X or iOS with a custom URL structure. Then, if a user or yourself clicks that defined URL, a new FaceTime chat will attempt to initiate automatically to the set Apple ID, email, or phone number. This is a fun little trick … Read More

Enable Video Mirroring on iPad 1 and iPhone 4 with a Simple Hack

Apr 5, 2011 - 26 Comments

You can enable video mirroring on the first gen iPad and iPhone 4 by using a pretty simple hack. You’ll need a few things and some patience before you get started, but it’s really not that hard to get this setup and working. Here are the requirements: Apple VGA Adapter or Apple Digital AV Adapter … Read More

Show Folder Sizes in Mac OS X List View

Apr 5, 2011 - 7 Comments

If you would like to see the folder sizes on the Mac, you can do so easily by enabling a folder size calculation when looking at directories in the List View of Finder in Mac OS X. What this trick does is show folder sizes on the Mac, calculated in megabytes, kilobytes, or gigabytes, depending … Read More

Fix the “Cannot Connect to App Store” Error Message in Mac App Store

Apr 4, 2011 - 48 Comments

If you’re trying to access the Mac App Store and you are getting the “Cannot Connect to App Store” error, you can typically resolve the issue with a few simple troubleshooting steps. This article will walk through some simple solutions to reconnect to the Mac App Store.

Quickly Backup a Site Through FTP with wget

Apr 4, 2011 - 4 Comments

If you want to quickly backup an entire website through FTP, the absolute easiest way to do this is through the command line using the wget command. In fact, you can backup an entire site (or whatever else is on the entire FTP server) with a single command string.

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