Mac OS

Virtually everyone knows you can click the yellow pill button in the upper left corner of a window to minimize a window in Mac OS X, but there are actually a few other ways minimize windows faster than that. The first is my preferred method which is a quick keystroke, and the other lets you … Read More

Troubleshooting computer problems is never particularly fun, and with so many potential third party add-ons, plugins, extensions, scripts, and whatever else is buried into OS X, how are you supposed to find everything to help determine what’s causing an issue? You need Consultant’s Canary, because whether you’re troubleshooting your own Mac or someone else’s, it’s … Read More

Ever wish you had a system wide equalizer to adjust all audio output in Mac OS X and not just in iTunes? Maybe you want to adjust the way all audio output sounds or maybe you just want to boost the output volume of the built-in Mac speakers. We’ll show you how to do both … Read More

Photo Stream is an excellent iCloud feature that automatically syncs all pictures taken on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to one anothers Photo libraries, and it will even sync with Mac OS X through the iPhoto app. Not everyone uses iPhoto to manage pictures though, and if you just want quick access to those … Read More

There are tons of interesting pictures posted to Instagram all the time, but unless you’re using the iPhone apps, the website, or Android app you can’t really see what’s going on there. That’s where Screenstagram comes in, it creates an attractive screen saver using an array of images pulled from either public photos or your … Read More

A recent tip covered how to announce when a command line task finished by using OS X’s text-to-speech abilities. The obvious downside to that method is the sound makes it less useful to those who are using Macs in quiet environments like offices, schools, or libraries. An alternate solution is to use growlnotify to create … Read More

Apple has pushed out another update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3, as the anticipated summer public release of OS X 10.8 nears. The new build is 12A206j and can be downloaded through the Mac App Store by any registered Mac developer running 12A193i or later of Mountain Lion. The latest build includes … Read More

Automatic termination is a feature of macOS since OS X Lion that comes from the realm of iOS, the idea is that after an app is unused for a period of time and becomes inactive, it will automatically terminate to free up resources for other tasks. With the help of the new auto-save feature, the … Read More

By using a custom URL inside of an anchor tag, you can place a link on any website that will initiate a new iMessage conversation. Anyone clicking the link will then launch the Messages app in iOS or iMessages in Mac OS X to begin a new conversation with the specified Apple ID. Even if … Read More

While you can immediately access a dictionary definition by three-finger tapping on a single word in Mac OS X or double-tapping in iOS, the Mac also provides another instant dictionary option: Spotlight.

Many Mac users have an external hard disk for Time Machine backups or other media storage purposes, and if you leave it connected to the Mac all the time you’ve probably noticed an annoying side effect: the drive will spin down when it’s not in use, only to be spun up again unnecessarily at random … Read More

If you find yourself adjusting things in System Preferences often enough, it’s helpful to create a universal keyboard shortcut to quickly launch into the control panels on the Mac. Here is how to do that in Mac OS X:

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is fast approaching and that can often mean extreme heat which pushes the temperature limits beyond what any computer is intended to operate in. In fact, Apple specifies ambient operating temperatures for most Macs as between 50° and 95° fahrenheit, this means that anything above 95° … Read More

If you have a group of pictures which are orientated incorrectly that you need rotated either clockwise or counterclockwise, you can do that in Mac OS X without any third party apps. Bulk rotation of images can be accomplished quickly with the help of the bundled Preview app, we’ll show you how to use the … Read More

Along the lines of vocally announcing task completion within the command line, you can also have Mac OS X speak the output of any executed command.

Ever since Mac OS X 10.7, the Mac has included the same elastic over-scrolling that exists in the iOS world. Frequently called “rubberband scrolling”, it kicks in as an overscrolling effect that runs out of the scrollable region revealing the linen background before snapping back into the scrollable region. Scroll up quickly with or without … Read More

Mac OS X 10.7.4 Update has been released by Apple, the update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all OS X Lion users to install. Two of the most significant changes are a fix to a restoring windows bug and a patch for a potential security issue with FileVault passwords, though … Read More

Mac OS X Snow Leopard can be upgraded directly to OS X Mountain Lion, assuming the final release maintains the same capacity as the currently available developer previews. To perform the direct upgrade as it stands today, users will need to have created an OS X Mountain Lion USB installer from which to boot off … Read More