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 a Local Domain to Ease Local Development

Oct 28, 2009 - 8 Comments
Terminal in macOS

If you’re a web developer you probably do a fair amount of development on your local machine using either the built-in Mac OS X Apache server or, in my case, something like MAMP. Because a local web server like this is really handy for testing this, you can make your local development life a bit … Read More

Play MP3’s, M4A, AAC, and Other Music Files from the Command Line

Oct 27, 2009 - 3 Comments
Terminal in macOS

Ever wanted to play music while you’re working in the command line? Maybe you want to play a podcast from the command line on Mac? With the command line tool ‘afplay’ you can do just that, you can play practically any audio file format, whether it’s M4A, AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, or whatever else is … Read More

Quickly find the largest files in a directory

Oct 26, 2009 - 4 Comments

From the Terminal, if you want to quickly find out what the largest files are in a directory, try this variation of the ls command: ls -lShr the l flag will display the items in a list, the S flag sorts by size, and h makes it readable in MB/GB (human readable), with r reversing … Read More

Change File Associations in Mac OS X

Oct 25, 2009 - 31 Comments

It really drives me nuts when files can be of the same kind but different type open different apps, I want to open all my images in Preview and all my video files in VLC. You can make Mac OS X open every file of a certain format type with a certain application by changing … Read More

Get Detailed Wireless Information from the Airport Menu by Holding Down the Option Key

Oct 24, 2009 - 2 Comments

Users can get detailed wireless information from the Airport menu by holding down the “Option” key when clicking the menu icon. The ability to pull the Security type and Channel directly out of the menu is a big plus for me, but the other information should certainly be useful when troubleshooting a WiFi problem too. … Read More

Quickly tell if a file has been modified by looking at the red Close window button

Oct 23, 2009 - Leave a Comment

Here’s a nifty Mac trick: Do you see the little black dot inside the red ‘close’ window button in that screenshot? That means the file has been modified!

Quickly turn off your Mac’s displays with Shift-Control-Eject

Oct 22, 2009 - 9 Comments

Want to quickly turn off all of your Mac’s displays? Hit Shift+Ctrl+Eject and all screens will go black instantly. Nice huh?

Remove DRM from iTunes

Oct 22, 2009 - 11 Comments

Some iTunes music comes with DRM, but you can use an iTunes trick to remove DRM. Note this should only be used if you own the actual rights to the music, or if you are allowed to remove DRM by the rights-owner. DRM iTunes songs usually have an .m4p file extension. But this trick basically … Read More

Convert WMA to MP3 on a Mac for Free

Oct 21, 2009 - 27 Comments

On a Windows PC recently I ripped a CD only to find out that it was converted as WMA rather than MP3. In Windows this isn’t a big deal, you just open the files in iTunes as usual, but I wanted them on my Mac, easy right? Well for some reason Apple doesn’t allow Mac … Read More

Force Safari to Open Target Links in New Tab Rather Than Window in Mac OS X

Oct 21, 2009 - 5 Comments

Mac users can issue a defaults command string to force Safari to open targeted new window links into new tabs instead of those new windows. This is handy if you open a lot of links that would usually launch a new window but would rather send them into easily managed tabs instead.

MMS on the iPhone 2G First Gen

Oct 20, 2009 - 1 Comment

You can enable MMS on the first gen iPhone 2G (you know, that metal one), but it requires a little bit of hacking. This is pretty great news if you have one of the first iPhones but you feel left out by the MMS intro passing you by. Here are the instructions reposted from Lifehacker.com … Read More

Get the iTunes Mini Player back in iTunes 9

Oct 20, 2009 - 4 Comments

I always put iTunes into mini-player mode to conserve screen real estate, so I was pretty annoyed when iTunes 9 took away this feature when clicking the green resize button in the iTunes window. Thankfully getting it back is very easy but it’s an extra step, option-click the green maximize button to enter into the … Read More

Share your Mouse & Keyboard across Multiple Mac’s with Teleport

Oct 20, 2009 - 4 Comments

Teleport is undoubtedly one of the single most useful utilities available to anyone that owns more than one Mac. Using Teleport, you can share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple Mac’s, seamlessly! Setup is an absolute breeze, you need to install Teleport on all Mac’s that you want to use, and once it’s all … Read More

Bypass Mac Firmware Password

Oct 19, 2009 - 150 Comments

Need to get around the boot level Mac firmware password? You can bypass a firmware password by doing a little bit of a hardware hack. There’s many reasons you’d want to get around firmware protection, but here’s why we got the instructions from an anonymous submitter:

Get a Battery Discharge Reminder for Maximum Mac Laptop Battery Performance

Oct 19, 2009 - Leave a Comment

I use my MacBook almost exclusively at home and so I frequently forget to discharge and recharge the battery, which is a recommended procedure to have your notebook battery last as long as possible. For people like me who often run with the powercharger attached to their Mac laptop, Apple.com offers a nice simple reminder … Read More

Get extensive information about your Mac from it’s serial number

Oct 18, 2009 - Leave a Comment

I came across the aptly named AppleSerialNumberInfo.com today and found it very useful for getting information about a Mac. Type in a Mac’s serial number and a whole slew of information will be reported back to you, including the build queue number, production week, extensive hardware information, unit specific repair and support programs, and so … Read More

Migrating MacPorts apps through major OS upgrades

Oct 16, 2009 - Leave a Comment

I have become dependent on many command line applications I have installed through the open source MacPorts effort, and if you have too you’ll really appreciate this guide. When upgrading Mac OS X to a new major OS (say, upgrading Tiger to Snow Leopard) you may notice that some MacPorts installations get screwy and no … Read More

What is MD5?

Oct 15, 2009 - 1 Comment
Terminal in macOS

Ever heard of MD5 and not sure what it was or what that meant? You’re likely not alone, but MD5 is important, and, with a little explaining, easy to understand. Let’s explain a bit about MD5, MD5 checksums, what it is, and why you should know about it.

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