Mac OS

There are a few ways to retrieve a file or folders full path from Mac OS X, and we’ll cover the two easiest methods here, and also a third option that utilizes a Service to instantly copy any path to the clipboard. First, we’ll use the Get Info panel to pull any items complete path, … Read More

Wondering what is in that zip file or archive you downloaded, but you don’t want to extract it to find out? Maybe you are hunting around in a see of archives for a specific file you zipped up a while ago, but you’re not quite sure which archive contains it? You can easily peer into … Read More

Setting up a dual-boot environment for OS X Mavericks and OS X 10.8 (or even 10.7 and 10.6 if you’re still running an older version of Mac OS X) is easy and allows for a fresh installation of Mavericks to test and develop with. Because the original OS X installation remains untouched, it’s also the … Read More

For those of us who use several different types of network connections to get online, you may want to take a moment to set the networking service priority in OS X. This insures that a Mac isn’t connecting through the wrong networking interface when multiple network services are available. For example, if you have a … Read More

Disk Utility usually works trouble-free, but a frustrating “Couldn’t Unmount Disk” error can halt whatever the attempted task is right in its tracks. This can happen during partitioning, disk verification and repair, and even during formatting, and there’s usually little to no additional information provided as to how to resolve the problem or even what … Read More

Just like other recent major Mac updates, OS X Mavericks arrives as an app that wants to update the current OS X installation, and with a little work you can make a bootable USB installation drive. This allows you to easily perform partitioning for dual boot situations, clean installs, upgrades on multiple Macs, and more, … Read More

Apple has yet to provide an official list of OS X 10.9 compatible Macs, but as we mentioned before regarding the first Mavericks Developer Preview, most Mac hardware that supports OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) should be able run OS X Mavericks (10.9) without any issue. This has been confirmed apparently by AppleInsider, who notes … Read More

OS X 10.9 Mavericks Developer Preview 1 is now available to download directly from Apple. Registered developers can access the installation from Apple’s Developer Center. Much like prior OS X betas, installation of OS X Mavericks is done through the Mac App Store, and it is highly recommended to back up OS X with Time … Read More

OS X Mavericks (10.9) will be out later this year, but you don’t have to wait that long to get the sweet new wave wallpaper that will be the default desktop background on future Macs and OS X releases.

The next version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.9, is officially labeled as OS X Mavericks. Mavericks, named after an epic surfing spot in northern California, has a lot of new features, but also represents a change in naming conventions away from the familiar cat themes. In future versions of OS X will … Read More

Need to securely delete a file, group of files, or an entire directory, insuring that it’s quite literally never recoverable by any known possible means? You can do this easily from the command line with the help of an incredibly powerful tool called srm. srm, as you may have guessed, stands for ‘secure removal’, and … Read More

Mac OS X includes an excellent command line network utility called “nettop” that allows users to monitor all network activity, traffic, and routes from a Mac to the outside world, both through local (LAN) and wide area (WAN) connections. If you’re unfamiliar with networking tools like this, you can think of nettop as a network … Read More

The Finder window sidebar can hold apps and function as an application launcher, making it an excellent place to keep apps that are almost exclusively used alongside the file system, or for apps that are reliant on general filesystem access, but that aren’t necessarily used enough to warrant a place in the Mac Dock when … Read More

Mac users can now update to OS X 10.8.4. The software update includes a new version of Safari versioned as 6.0.5, but otherwise focuses primarily on bug fixes. The most notable bug resolution resolves the problem for when iMessages displayed some messages out of order of when they were sent and received, which has been … Read More

You can change the icon of just about any file, folder, volume, or application in Mac OS X. This is an easy way to customize the appearance of items in the file system, and it can be a fun way to add a customized look to the desktop and home folder on a Mac. It … Read More

Use Mail app in Mac OS X to handle your email? Then this collection of some of the best tips you’ll find for Mail app in OS X is for you. We’ll cover some of the greatest tricks out there, including how to get new mail faster, see more messages at once, send attachments faster, … Read More

If you’ve ever needed to quickly quit out of all open applications in Mac OS X, you’ve probably just resorted to flipping through every open application in the Dock, then hitting Command+Q, then repeating until everything is closed. But there’s a better way, and with an extraordinarily simple Automator app you can create a function … Read More

Need to quickly free up some processing power? You can do that easily by temporarily pausing and then later resuming any active process or application in Mac OS X. Technically, this is actually ‘stopping’ and ‘continuing’ a process, but a stop is not to be confused with the more aggressive killing or force quitting applications … Read More