Mac OS

Want to get hexadecimal color codes easily in Mac OS? You can set the excellent Digital Color Meter application to display color as hexadecimal with a simple settings change. There are even keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch between hexadecimal, decimal, and percentage color codes!

Install the free-of-charge Xcode developer toolkit via the App Store (Apple gives it away to all those who’ve bought OS X), then open Finder and hit Shift+Command+G. In the dialog box that appears, type the following path:

iOS popularized the pull-to-refresh gesture, where pulling down and releasing on browser and app windows causes them to refresh their contents. With the help of a browser extension, we can bring the same pull to refresh feature to Mac OS X 10.7 in either the Chrome or Safari web browsers: Extension for Chrome Extension for … Read More

You can quickly sleep the display of a Mac or immediately start a screen saver by setting up Hot Corners, which are activated just by sliding your cursor into the specified corners of the screen. This is a great way to quickly hide what’s on the display, but also as a way to initiate a … Read More

Want to quickly find and select your boot disk amidst a variety of other internal and external drives that are sitting on the desktop? Just hit Command+Shift+↑ (Command + Shift + Up Arrow) to immediately choose the startup drive on the Mac OS X desktop from anywhere in the Finder.

Finder on the Mac can show the path to the currently browsed folder (that is, something like Lion->Users->John->Music->MP3 collection). Just click View->Show Path Bar. However, there’s a slight problem—the path is listed from the root of the hard disk up to the current directory. I f all you ever do is browse your home directory, … Read More

Apple has posted the second beta of Mac OS X 10.7.3 for developers, available now from the Mac Dev Center. The focus is on Spotlight, Safari, iCloud Document Storage (does not seem like the hidden iCloud file sync feature is coming anytime soon), Address Book, iCal, and Mail, and no known issues exist with the … Read More

NOTE: New instructions are available to change the login screen background image within OS X Mavericks. Please refer to those if you are looking to customize the login wallpaper in the latest versions of OS X. Here’s how to change the wallpaper that lies behind the standard login screen on OS X Lion & Mountain … Read More

Tired of having to approve the Trash being emptied in Mac OS X? You can disable the Empty Trash warning message dialog window in two ways on the Mac, either on a per-trash emptying basis, or by completely turning off the dialog.

Command line users who wish to add an additional layer of security to their keyboarding within Terminal app can find a helpful privacy feature built into the Mac client. Whether aiming for generally increasing security, if using a public Mac, or are simply concerned about things like keyloggers or any other potentially unauthorized access to … Read More

Mission Control in Mac OS X groups together thumbnail previews of windows from the same app. By hovering the mouse cursor over a cluster of these thumbnails and scrolling up on a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse (or scrolling up the mouse wheel with other mice), you can cause the cluster to expand, showing more … Read More

Mac users may have noticed that the longstanding “Save As” function has disappeared as of OS X Lion, and’Save As’ is something that many Mac users have become accustomed to using over the years. The default choices replacing “Save As” are two different features, Duplicate and Export, neither of which work quite the same, and … Read More

This is a neat little hack that lets you activate any stack within the Mac Dock by hovering over it and making the scroll gesture on a multitouch trackpad or Magic Mouse, or by rolling the scroll wheel on a mouse. Do the same trick while hovering the mouse cursor over an app icon in … Read More

Safari 5.1.2 has been released, and if it sounds like just another minor update to put off, it’s not, it improves overall stability and resolves some of the annoying memory management issues that existed in the prior versions of the browser. Also fixed is the flashing page issue, and a problem with displaying PDF’s within … Read More

Need to adjust Mac Mail app so that it sends new email compositions as plain text? This can be a popular change for some email situations, and it’s easy to make the adjustment to plain text emails in Mail for Mac. Email defaults to wanting to send as rich text, meaning bold text, highlighting, fonts, … Read More

A wide variety of websites and online services are region restricted to the USA: Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, annual credit reports, some banks, the list is significant. Region restrictions are generally something you don’t notice until you need to access a website from outside the USA, and then they’re a huge pain. We’ll show you how … Read More

Flick down with two fingers on a trackpad or Magic Mouse in Mac OS X and you’ll experience inertial scrolling, where after your finger has stopped moving the page continues to scroll in the intended direction until it slowly stops. This fluid and natural scrolling experience comes from the iOS world, and while it works … Read More

Have an Android phone or tablet that you want to transfer files and movies to and from your Mac with? Maybe you got a new Kindle Fire that is freshly rooted, and you’re looking to move some of your own movies and pictures to it? No sweat, there are some really easy ways to do … Read More