Tips & Tricks

The MagSafe power adapter is brilliant, using magnets to secure a connection between a MacBook and the AC power charger, it not only breaks away quickly to help prevent mishaps, but it also quickly snaps on to provide power to the Mac. It usually works flawlessly, but on some rare occasions, the MagSafe adapter is … Read More

Ever installed a new app or two on a Mac and then went to find them, only to be lost in a sea of other applications that are already installed? For those of us with a ton of apps installed this happens often, but OS X offers several ways to sort through the clutter and … Read More

Many websites are using push notifications to send updates and alerts to Mac users. These alerts are signed up for through Safari, and then arrive as banners appearing briefly on the desktop, then fade away to sit in the Notification Center of Mac OS X until they’ve either been cleared out or addressed manually. If … Read More

If you have music actively playing, or a song or iTunes Radio station is paused within the Music app, you can quickly jump to the Music app by going through the Control Center of iOS. In many cases, this lets you adjust songs or radio stations quicker than using the multitasked to switch apps. This … Read More

Touch-based clicking is an alternate input form that uses trackpad (or Magic Mouse) taps as a click. For most Mac users, turning on tap-to-click is best done from Mac OS X System Preferences, but advanced users who require more control, automation, or remote enabling of the feature can also enable tap-to-click through the command line … Read More

Need to find a system file or several, but you aren’t entirely sure the directory path of where that system item is located on Mac OS? Maybe you’re looking for a plist file and you aren’t sure if it’s in the user Library folder, or the System Library folder? Rather than digging about in the … Read More

The Control Center feature of iOS offers quick access to some of the more frequently used settings toggles on the iPad and iPhone, like wi-fi and orientation lock. This is undeniably convenient, but not every user wants these toggles to be readily available to anyone who picks up their device, and in some higher security … Read More

Banner notifications pop up on the side of the screen in Mac OS X and disappear on their own within a few seconds. Some users may find that banner persistence time to be either too long or too short, and that is what we’re going to focus on changing here, giving you some control over … Read More

The tap-to-click ability is enabled by default on most PC laptops, while on the Mac side of things it’s usually disabled by default. For the unfamiliar, tap-to-click means that a single tap or touch on the MacBook trackpad or Magic Trackpad is registered as a click, thereby preventing the need to actually press down the … Read More

The menu bar of OS X has two default color choices, simple grey, or translucent, which varies a bit based upon the wallpaper used. Neither of these looks are really anything to write home about. That’s why the third party mod ObsidianMenuBar is a nice alternative, it gives your Mac a black menu bar. It’s … Read More

The Disk Utility app bundled with Mac OS X has a command line equivalent which offers advanced users the ability to perform disk maintenance from the terminal, including disk verification and repairs. This allows for a variety of helpful troubleshooting abilities, including the possibility to remotely issue disk repairs though SSH, or through Single User … Read More

While some writing and text apps have native word and character counters as part of their built-in feature set, not every app does. That can be changed easily though by creating a Mac OS X Service that will provide word counts and character counts from just about anywhere on a Mac that text is selectable. … Read More

Most iPhone and iPad users know the iOS multitasking screen is where you can quit the apps you no longer want open, and it’s also where you go to switch between any of the open apps on the device. But if you have a lot of apps open, you may notice that switching from the … Read More

The Mac menu bar clock isn’t particularly fancy nor is it meant to be, but if you’re a tinkerer and like to customize things, you might find some enjoyment in adding some time-changing emoji characters to the clock as an addition to the standard AM / PM indicators that show up alongside the time. Adding … Read More

If retro Macs built out out LEGO that double as iPad stands aren’t your thing, maybe you’ll enjoy this little Easter Egg of sorts that Apple seems to have left on their 30th Mac Anniversary website. It’s a free 62 character font of Mac icons, ranging from the original Macintosh 128k through the PowerBook lineup, … Read More

Virtually all iPhone and iPad users should set an iOS passcode for their individual devices. This forces anyone attempting to use the device to enter a password before being able to unlock it or gain access to anything on the device, and it also requires the same passcode before any user is able to make … Read More

Facebook recently began to auto-play videos that are contained within the news feed of the Facebook app for iOS (and presumably Android). Though the videos play without sound, that auto-play behavior can still greatly increase the iPhones cellular data usage due to the large size of video files as they are streamed to the device. … Read More

The iPhone Home Screen has room for 20 app icons on the front page and four Dock icons across the bottom, with even more app spots available for the iPad. If that seems like 20 icons too many for you, using a little trick lets users create a completely blank home screen page in iOS, … Read More