Mac OS

Mac OS, Mac OS X, or macOS, is the operating system that resides on Apple’s desktop and portable computer lineup. Built upon a Unix core, it is easy to use yet highly advanced, extremely stable, and an excellent OS for productivity and creation. Browse through our articles or use the search feature to look for something specific that is pertinent to the Mac operating system.

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Stop Pasting Full Names When Copying an Email Address in Mac OS X Mail

May 3, 2012 - 16 Comments
Apple mail icon

Ever noticed that when you copy an email address from OS X Mail app and paste it elsewhere that you get the addressees full name as well as their email address? Try it yourself by right-clicking on someones email address like someonesname@domain.com and copy it, then paste it elsewhere and it will show up as … Read More

6 Ways to Maximize Productivity on Small Screens & Mac Laptops

May 2, 2012 - 13 Comments
Maximize productivity on small screens like the MacBook Air 11"

Many people equate productivity with screen size and assume it’s difficult to get much work done on a small screen. That simply isn’t true, I use a MacBook Air with the 11″ display and use the following tips to stay focused and maximize productivity with the small screen.

Generate and Set a Random Valid MAC Address from the Command Line in OS X

May 2, 2012 - 5 Comments
Generate and set random MAC address in OS X

We’ve shown you how to generate MAC addresses randomly and then how to go about changing a MAC address in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, but why have those be two separate actions? Using the command line, you can combine the two events into a single action to generate a valid MAC … Read More

Update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 Released

May 2, 2012 - 6 Comments
OS X Mountain Lion icon

Apple has issued an update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3. The new build comes as 12A193i and is available through Software Update, which in turn downloads through the Mac App Store, making the update available to all developers with OS X Mountain Lion DP3 currently installed. Noticeable changes in the new OS … Read More

Rearrange Full Screen App Placement in Mac OS X by Dragging & Dropping

May 1, 2012 - 14 Comments
Rearrange placement of full screen apps in Mac OS X

Full Screen apps in Mac OS X are managed by Mission Control, this means that if switch beween or gesture swipe from one full screen app to a desktop or another app, it follows the order of desktops and apps shown at the top of Mission Control. This also means that you can rearrange the … Read More

Join Songs in iTunes to Play Together as a Group When Shuffled

Apr 30, 2012 - 35 Comments
Play Songs together in iTunes by joining them

Do you want to join a group of songs together in iTunes to play together as a compilation even when iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC (or an iPhone, iPad, or iPod) is set to shuffle through a music collection? For example, let’s say you have a large album you want to shuffle between, … Read More

Open Terminal Faster by Specifying a Shell

Apr 30, 2012 - 2 Comments
Specify a shell within Terminal to speed up opening new Terminal windows

Whenever a new Terminal window is launched, a variety of system logs are read to provide information on the last login. One way to speed up launching a new terminal window is to delete those .asl log files, but you can achieve a substantial speed boost by simply setting Terminal to open a shell rather … Read More

Enable Smooth Scrolling in Firefox to Dramatically Improve Web Browsing

Apr 29, 2012 - 22 Comments
Enable Smooth Scrolling in Firefox for OS X

Firefox is a great web browser but it has a few quirks that make it a less than ideal browser for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users. A major issue is scrolling performance, which can stutter or appear slow and clunky, it’s noticeable enough that certainly anyone who has used Firefox in Mac OS … Read More

Get Extended CPU Information from the Command Line

Apr 28, 2012 - 5 Comments
Get extended CPU information from the command line

Using sysctl we can get extended information on a Macs processor, covering everything from CPU brand and identifier, clock speed, number of cores, thread count, thermal sensor data, cache size, and some significantly more technical information. This is a handy way to get detailed processor specs and info without turning to the system profiler in … Read More

Temporarily Disable Login Items in Mac OS X

Apr 27, 2012 - 1 Comment
Temporarily Disable Login Items in Mac OS X

Login Items are applications and helpers that launch immediately when a user logs in to Mac OS X. These apps and utilities are easily adjusted and managed in system preferences on a user level, but you can also temporarily disable them on a per-boot and per-login basis if need be. To stop the automatic login … Read More

Change the Automatic File Locking Duration in Mac OS X

Apr 26, 2012 - 2 Comments
Change File Lock Duration in Mac OS X

Mac OS X Lion introduced the file locking feature, which causes any files to automatically lock themselves after a period of time to prevent accidental edits from occurring. You’ve probably seen the resulting message lock before, informing you a file has been locked because recent changes haven’t been made. The time it takes for that … Read More

Use Apple ID to Share Files in Mac OS X Without Creating New User Accounts for Networking

Apr 25, 2012 - 6 Comments
Share Files on a Mac without creating a new user account with Apple ID

Modern versions of OS X allow you to share files securely with another individual without creating a new user account for them. Instead, authentication gets handled by the individuals Apple ID, and a separate password is set to allow that Apple ID to share files and folders on your Mac. This can be preferable to … Read More

4 Tips to Speed Up Reboot & Start Up Time in Mac OS X

Apr 25, 2012 - 16 Comments
Disable App and Window Resume to boot faster

Does your Mac feel like it takes forever to boot up when you turn it on? Does your Mac seemingly take forever to reboot? If your Mac is feeling sluggish when booting or starting up Mac OS X it’s probably a result of a few things. This walkthrough will address how to speed up reboot … Read More

Free Up Inactive Memory in Mac OS X with Purge Command

Apr 24, 2012 - 69 Comments
Free Up Memory in Mac OS X

Mac OS X has fairly good memory management but it’s not perfect, and sometimes RAM can be held unnecessarily in the “inactive” state despite the contents no longer being needed. If you’ve been participating in memory heavy activities or you just need to free up some available RAM you can actually force Mac OS X … Read More

Uninstall Diablo 3 Open Beta and Reclaim 5GB+ Disk Space

Apr 23, 2012 - 11 Comments
Uninstall Diablo 3 Beta

The Diablo 3 Open Beta was a lot of fun and certainly got everyone excited for the May 15 public release, but now that the Diablo III Beta client can’t be used any more it’s time to uninstall the app from your Mac. This will free up at least 5GB of disk space. Follow the … Read More

How to Format a Drive for Mac & PC Compatibility

Apr 22, 2012 - 43 Comments
Disk Utility in Mac OS X

You can format a hard drive or USB flash disk specifically so that it will be compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows PC computers. Though this excellent cross-platform compatible ability is unknown to many users, it’s not a complex process, and if you frequently use both a Mac and Windows PC you will … Read More

How to Disable Pinch to Zoom Gesture in Safari & Mac OS X

Apr 22, 2012 - 3 Comments
Disable Pinch to Zoom in Mac OS X

The pinch to zoom gesture is one of those features borrowed from iOS that has since come to the Mac OS X platform. It’s a natural fit for iOS and even in some places within Mac OS X, but it’s also much easier to accidentally activate on the Mac when doing something simple like browsing … Read More

How to Remove OS X Mountain Lion (or Any Other Mac OS X Boot Partition)

Apr 21, 2012 - 6 Comments
uninstall OS X Mountain Lion

For those dual booting between OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion, or any other two versions of OS X for that matter, there comes a time when you inevitably want to remove one of the operating systems. For this walkthrough we’ll assume the boot partition you want to delete is one of the … Read More

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