Tips & Tricks

When you point your iPhone or iPad at a web address (like osxdaily.com), iOS will perform a DNS lookup to send you to the proper location. DNS servers handle part of that lookup service, translating numerical IP addresses into the readable domain names we’re all more familiar with and associate with web sites and other … Read More

Adjusting the Preferences and Settings of Mac apps is common and often a necessity to get things just right for you, particularly if you’re using an app for the first time, or setting up a new Mac. Rather than fish around in the menu items to find the Preferences or Settings menu option, you can … Read More

Ever needed to reboot an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that doesn’t have a functioning power button or a Home button? It’s tricky if not impossible, right? Even with the Assistive Touch on-screen buttons and variety of workarounds for a failed power button, rebooting an iOS device without working hardware buttons is a challenge, but … Read More

The Microsoft Word document format is widely used in many corporate and educational environments, particularly where the Windows platform is dominant. For Mac users who work with the Pages app for word processing, a simple option to improve cross-platform document readability and compatibility is to save (or export) a Pages file as a Word .doc … Read More

Tab Navigation is a feature of OS X that allows Mac users to navigate around active windows and dialog boxes with the Tab key, rather than the cursor. It functions very similarly to how using the tab key in most web browsers and Windows will skip between onscreen elements, and it’s a handy feature for … Read More

Though many Mac users don’t use iCloud for their primary document storage, those users who do know that the iCloud document browser found within an Open or Save dialog box window can become cluttered with files rather quickly. A simple solution is to make folders for the iCloud documents, which is easy to do but … Read More

If you’ve ever wanted to watch a high resolution movie like an MKV, MPEG, or AVI file that’s currently on a computer, but on an iPhone or iPad, you know that the default iOS Video app isn’t always going to cut it. Sure Videos.app stores iTunes movie downloads and can play a fair amount of … Read More

An Apple ID is central to just about every Apple service you use on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. From sending and receiving iMessages and FaceTime calls, to shopping with the App Store and iTunes Store, and making backups to iCloud, this is all tied to an Apple ID. For the best experience with … Read More

Most apps in Mac OS X can be uninstalled easily by dragging them into the Trash from the /Applications/ folder, and many others come with accompanying uninstall applications that will clean house and completely remove the apps too. Additionally, there are third party utilities for Mac OS that can make total removal of apps as … Read More

Have you ever been somewhere with something written in a foreign language and wondered what the heck it said in your own language? Or, have you ever looked at a sign, book, or printed text somewhere, and wished you could instantly translate that something into the language of your choice? With your iPhone and the … Read More

Adding a new screen saver to Mac OS X that you’ve obtained from a third party source isn’t as easy as it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly complicated. Though Gatekeeper has made things slightly more challenging to improve security, you’ll find that installing any screensaver to the Mac is still pretty … Read More

Mac users who are dealing with particularly complex or troublesome issues with Mac OS can turn to an advanced diagnostics tool available from the command line in Mac OS X. The tool, called sysdiagnose, offers detailed technical analysis and reports of a huge variety of components of OS X and the Mac hardware, making it … Read More

The system icons of Mac OS X decorate nearly everything found within the Finder and desktop, ranging from default folder icons, to the default icons of hard disks, network machines, even the Finder sidebar items, and some toggles found throughout Mac OS X. If you’ve ever wanted to access the full size original resources for … Read More

Now that the OS X Yosemite Beta is available to the public (you can still sign up and download it if you’re interested in running the beta release on your Mac), you might be wanting to make a bootable installer drive out of an external USB flash disk to make installation easier. Sure, you can … Read More

Touch ID and the iPhone fingerprint reader has been around for a while now, but a great feature that seems to not get much use is the ability to unlock an iPhone with a touch and a fingerprint – that means not having to enter the passcode when you want to unlock the iPhone. Instead, … Read More

Have you ever seen the Temperature Warning on the iPhone before, saying “iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it”, appearing seemingly out of nowhere? If you’ve ever left your iPhone outdoors on a hot sunny day for too long, you probably have. And if you haven’t seen that warning, let’s try to … Read More

iCloud Activation Lock is a feature that allows users to lock down an iPhone (or iPad) and require the entry of an Apple ID before the device becomes usable again. It’s part of the excellent Find My iPhone service and is extremely useful for many reasons, but it can also be a real pain if … Read More

QuickTime Player, the video player and editing tool bundled with the Mac for ages, received a fairly major overhaul when it turned into QuickTime Player X. While it became free and lost the need to upgrade to a Pro version, it also lost out on a lot of really nice professional features that QuickTime Player … Read More