Mac OS

We’re big fans of Spotlight here at OS X Daily, but we realize it’s not everyones cup of tea. If you’re someone who dislikes Spotlight enough to want it disabled completely then this is the guide for you. What you’ll need is some basic knowledge of the command line and a command line text editor … Read More

If you’re tired of waking up every morning to your old fashioned alarm clock, Awaken may be the app for you. Awaken turns your Mac into a multifunction alarm clock, capable of waking up your Mac (assuming its sleeping) and initiating a user selected alarm of either a sound effect or song selected from your … Read More

Getting disk usage information on a Mac is often gathered by selecting a file, directory, or hard drive and hitting Command-I for Get Info, then appears a nice GUI interface with extended information about the selected object including disk usage. Command-I isn’t the only way to get disk info however, with the command line there … Read More

Need to quickly see where you are in the Finder by showing the current windows path on a Mac? There are a few ways to do this in Mac OS X, for example you can use a defaults command to show the full path in Finder window title, and we’ll show you another couple of … Read More

We’ve received several questions asking how to block specific sites from being accessed directly on the Mac. The frustration seems to lie in how easy it is to circumvent the typical measures, such as setting Parental Controls and blocking sites in Safari, only to have them accessed in Camino or Firefox. Well, a quick and … Read More

Gmail is arguably the best web based mail client, featuring a clean no nonsense interface and a monstrously large mailbox size hovering right under 3gb currently, you really never have to delete emails ever again. Google Notifier brings Gmail to your Mac’s desktop by putting a convenient icon in the menu bar that alerts you … Read More

It’s long been known that Mac OS X 10.5 is due out sometime this year, but when exactly nobody knows and speculation on the release date has been all over the board. SwitchtoaMac.com uses empirical evidence to suggest that Leopard will be released in May, but they go a step further and predict the exact … Read More

Everyone enjoys a cool desktop background and OSXPlanet just might take the cake for its automatically updating planet wallpaper. You can choose any of the nine planets (eight if you’re anti-Pluto) and have them displayed as your background. Perhaps the most impressive is with our very own planet Earth, which you can set to display … Read More

You’ve probably noticed by now that we frequently rave about Spotlight, an invaluable tool and one of the greatest features of Mac OS X. Although it’s main intention is to be an instant search utility for documents, pictures, music, emails, whatever, it also works wonders as a super quick application launcher (often I will use … Read More

Dashboard is the kind of thing you either love or hate, using the widgets constantly or not at all. How much use you get out of Dashboard will probably determine if you want the feature to stick around in Mac OS X or not. As regular readers may recall, we have discussed how unused Dashboard … Read More

Have you ever watched an online video tutorial, or record a screencast of what you’re doing on your Mac screen? Ever wondered how to create one of these yourself? Of course getting the right software is part of the mix, but many users don’t even know where to begin. Fortunately, there are many options available … Read More

Looks like we’ve gotten one step closer to Leopard with the release of Mac OS X 10.4.9 today. Plenty of updates, fixes, some new features, and performance tweaks are included. While it’s unlikely there will be any problems with the update, some prudent users often wait a day after a release to insure a trouble … Read More

We all want our Mac’s to run their very best, but sometimes it’ll require a bit of tweaking to get there. We have shown many simple tips to speed up older Macs, but for the really ancient Macs out there the site LowEndMac has posted a good read that includes eleven great tips to improve … Read More

Ever wondered how you can get image thumbnails to show up in the Finder of the Mac? You’re not alone, and a good question from one of our readers came in on this very topic. A recent switcher to the Mac, Carol Kavanaugh writes: “I got a Mac a few months ago and love it … Read More

Lingon is one of the more useful apps for advanced Mac users, sysadmins, and network administrators out there. Essentially lingon functions as an easy tool to manage launchd without tinkering with launchd manually from the Terminal, providing a much appreciated GUI to configure the launchd system daemon, which allows you to set schedules for applications … Read More

Generally speaking Mac OS X is secure by default, certainly more so than your average Windows counterpart at least. Of course things can always be more secure, that’s just the nature of computing. I personally don’t sit around and worry about the security of my Mac, but if you’re a bit worried about the potential … Read More

I like Dashboard a lot, I really do, but it can be an awful memory hog even when it’s not being used. Once you hit F12, the widgets are loaded and don’t quit automatically which makes accessing them later faster, but it also wastes system resources. It’s not uncommon for each widget to take up … Read More

To all the US Mac users out there, this is just a reminder that Daylight Savings time is coming early this year, so be sure to install the update from Apple to have your clocks working properly. While some news networks are predicting a mini-Y2K and all sorts of chaos, the worst that could really … Read More