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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Eject a Stuck Disk from your Mac DVD Super Drive

Aug 28, 2009 - 78 Comments

A friend of mine that is new to Macs couldn’t figure out how to get a CD to eject, after some frustration he then complained that his MacBook doesn’t have the paperclip hole to forcibly eject a disc from the superdrive. After some discussion I realized he’s probably not alone in his confusion of how … Read More

Mount a partition or volume on command

Aug 25, 2009 - Leave a Comment

I have an external drive partitioned in various ways, one of the partitions is formatted to FAT32 and I don’t need access to all the time. So how do I keep that from showing up needlessly when I plug the drive in? Using the command line to create an /etc/fstab entry and a bash script, … Read More

15 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for QuickTime

Aug 23, 2009 - 11 Comments

Apple’s QuickTime is the go-to Mac OS X app for video playback, but there’s more to QuickTime Player than meets the eye. You can rewind and fast-forward movies, increase the audio level beyond the slider limit, and even scrub frame by frame through the movie like you can in Final Cut Pro! Check out these … Read More

The Fastest Way to Email a Picture in Mac OS X

Aug 22, 2009 - 1 Comment
Quickly email a picture from Mac OS X

The fastest way to email a picture to someone in Mac OS X is also one of the easiest, and it should be very familiar to most Mac users in that it’s action is remarkably simple.

No Undo Button on the iPhone & iPod Touch? Instead, Use Shaking Motions

Aug 21, 2009 - 2 Comments

The iPhone doesn’t have an Undo button, which is something that many of us have wondered about and wished for for quite some time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t perform an undo or redo task on your iPhone, but what you do is perform a shaking motion with the iPhone or iPod touch in … Read More

Move Windows around in the Background by holding down Command key

Aug 17, 2009 - 6 Comments

If you’re like me you tend to have 10,000 windows open at once on your Mac while you work and multitask, thanks to Expose this is not a particular problem in Mac OS X. But, there comes a time when you don’t want to use Expose to either clear the screen or select a specific … Read More

Preview Not Saving JPG Rotation? Use Exif Data to Fix Rotated Image Display

Aug 14, 2009 - 4 Comments

I was driving myself up the wall recently trying to figure out why the Mac Preview.app would not save my image rotations when I exported a picture from Preview in OS X, so in looking for a solution I stumbled onto our friend MurphyMac‘s site and found a solution! Basically after you have rotated the … Read More

Disable Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.5

Aug 12, 2009 - 6 Comments

It seems like people either love or hate Spotlight, if you love it then ignore this tip, but if you hate Spotlight and want to turn Spotlight off in 10.5 here’s your new favorite post. You can completely disable Spotlight in OS X 10.5 by moving a few system files (or you could delete them … Read More

Hide any File or Folder by Making it Invisible to the Mac OS X Finder with setfile

Aug 11, 2009 - 18 Comments

If you ever want to hide a file or folder, you can quickly make it invisible with a command line utility called setfile. This is a really cool tip that should be particularly useful to those who share their mac with other people.

How to Rearrange the Menu Bar Icons in the Mac OS X Menu Bar

Aug 11, 2009 - 7 Comments
Finder

The Mac menu bar contains icons for things like the status indicators and toggles of various apps, including a clock, date, time, battery, wi-fi status, sound and volume levels, displays, Time Machine backup status, user account, Spotlight, a Notifications toggle, and much more. There’s a lot of data and status details in those menu bar … Read More

Setup Older OS X Mail to Use a Gmail Account

Aug 9, 2009 - 2 Comments

Got an older version of Mac OS X that you want to use Gmail with? While newer versions of Mac OS and Mac OS X allow for simple integration of using Google accounts with a Mac, older versions of Mac OS X don’t necessarily have these capabilities. But not to worry, you can still use … Read More

Make Your Own Custom iPhone Ringtone For Free

Aug 8, 2009 - 105 Comments
Convert just about any Video or Audio to an iPhone Ringtone

The iPhone, iPhone accessories, and iPhone ringtones are all the rage right now, so why not make your own iPhone ringtone? With a Mac or Windows PC it’s pretty straightforward using iTunes, follow these 10 steps and you can easily create your own iPhone Ringtone from whatever song you want. Note that songs with DRM … Read More

Virtually Scale Window Size to Increase or Decrease Desktop Screen Workspace

Aug 8, 2009 - 5 Comments

This is a particularly handy trick for when you have limited screen real estate and want to fit more of a windows display on screen. A perfect example of this are the Hackintosh owners out there that are working with small netbook screen resolutions and some windows just don’t display properly, or won’t even fit … Read More

Get All DHCP Info with ipconfig Quickly

Aug 6, 2009 - 3 Comments

If you’ve ever needed to troubleshoot a network or internet connection, you know how frustrating it can be (particularly when you’re on techsupport with various broadband providers). This quick tip can make the job a little easier on yourself by retrieving all relevant DHCP information, like DHCP server IP, client, subnet mask, router, DNS servers, … Read More

View PDF’s inside Firefox with the Firefox-Mac-PDF browser extension

Aug 6, 2009 - 1 Comment

I like Safari but find myself in Firefox nearly always because of a multitude of reasons. One thing I’ve long missed though is the ability to view PDF’s within the browser within Firefox, which Safari does wonderfully. If you’re tired of Firefox launching the Preview app (or even worse if you’re settings are different: Acrobat), … Read More

How to Create an IP Alias in Mac OS X using ifconfig

Aug 5, 2009 - 8 Comments

In some trickier network situations, your computer may be assigned an IP but need an entirely different IP address to access certain network resources. You might be wondering, how on earth do you have two IP addresses at once on the same Mac? The answer; Create an IP Alias! Using an IP alias allows your … Read More

Get Immediate Dictionary Definitions Using Spotlight

Aug 5, 2009 - 1 Comment

Using your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and you need to know the meaning of a word, and quick? That’s easy. Just bust open Spotlight with Command + Spacebar on the Mac or iPad, or pulling down from the Home Screen on iPhone, and type in the word you want to get the definition for. One … Read More

Require a Password on Waking from Sleep, but Not When Screensaver is Active

Apr 26, 2009 - 9 Comments
Screen saver with no password

Have you ever wanted to have your Mac require a password on waking from system sleep, but not ask for a password when the screensaver is on or the screen was locked? Well, me neither, but someone out there might and it’s kind of a nifty customization tip that has some valid uses in some … Read More

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