Tips & Tricks

Tips and tricks for all things Apple! Whether you want to learn tips for a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or much more, you will find many tricks, tips, tutorials, and excellent walkthroughs for Apple devices and software here.

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How to Hide the Menu Bar on External Secondary Displays in Mac OS X

Oct 27, 2013 - 11 Comments
Hide or show the menu bar on external Mac displays in OS X

For Mac users who use external screens, multi-display support has been greatly improved in new versions of OS X, but one feature that is either loved or hated is the addition of the secondary menu bar that is visible on the external display(s). The secondary menu bar serves the obvious purpose of providing easy access … Read More

How to Clean Install OS X Mavericks

Oct 26, 2013 - 11 Comments
How to Clean Install OS X Mavericks

The default solution for installing OS X Mavericks is to download it free from the App Store and then perform an upgrade from a previous version of Mac OS X, whether that’s from Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard. Upgrades are fast, efficient, and most important, very easy, and that’s the recommended option for the vast … Read More

Search the Web & Wikipedia from the iOS Home Screen with Spotlight

Oct 26, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Quick web search from iOS home screen with Spotlight

Want to quickly search the web or Wikipedia from the Home Screen of iOS? Just turn to Spotlight, the built-in search engine. Sure, the Spotlight search is often used as an application launcher or a way to quickly find old emails, notes, and contacts in iOS too, but you can also type more generic queries … Read More

Turn Off “My Photo Stream” to Free Up 1GB+ of Space in iOS

Oct 25, 2013 - 19 Comments
My Photo Stream working as intended

Photo Stream is undoubtedly a useful part of iCloud for those with multiple iOS devices, but it has a feature that often goes unused which may be wasting your preciously small iOS device capacity. This love-or-hate feature is the “My Photo Stream” album, it’s enabled by default and intends to automatically sync your most recent … Read More

Access 40+ Beautiful Wallpapers Hidden in OS X El Capitan & Mavericks

Oct 25, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Hidden wallpapers in OS X Mavericks

Some of you may recall that a series of beautiful new screen savers were introduced with the OS X Mountain Lion, and we here at OSXDaily showed you how to uncover the amazing images from those screen savers with a little bit of digging to use as your desktop wallpaper. It turns out you can … Read More

6 of the Best Simple Tips for OS X Mavericks

Oct 24, 2013 - 4 Comments
Simple but great tips for OS X Mavericks

OS X Mavericks is an excellent update for Mac users that has tons of great features, but even though the free update is aimed at power users with many advanced behind-the-scenes improvements, that doesn’t mean that all the tricks are complex. In fact, some of the best features new to Mavericks are some of the … Read More

Enable Subtle Fading Transition Effects in iOS 12, iOS 11, iOS 10 etc to Replace the Zoom Motions

Oct 23, 2013 - 10 Comments
Fading transition effects introduced in iOS 7.0.3

Have you ever noticed that iOS moves around a lot? With lots of zips, zooms, motions, parallax, there’s a lot going on with the animations on iPhone and iPad If all the crazy user interface zooming in-and-out effects of iOS 12, iOS 11, iOS 10, iOS 9, iOS 8, & iOS 7 aren’t your cup … Read More

Create an OS X Mavericks Installer Drive in 4 Simple Steps

Oct 23, 2013 - 145 Comments
Create an OS X Mavericks Install Drive

OS X Mavericks is now available to everyone as a free download, and while you can update as many Macs as you want by downloading the installer repeatedly from the Mac App Store, a better option for many is to create a simple bootable USB install drive. We covered this some time ago using a … Read More

Show the Last Time a File Was Opened & Accessed in Mac OS X

Oct 21, 2013 - 6 Comments
Show file access time on a Mac

You can show the precise last time a specific file was opened, an app was launched, or folder was accessed on a Mac, and the information is visible directly in the OS X Finder. There are actually two simple ways to see this file access information, and both are equally useful though as you’ll see … Read More

Prepare a Mac for OS X Mavericks the Right Way

Oct 19, 2013 - 3 Comments
Prepare a Mac for OS X Mavericks

OS X Mavericks is the newest major operating system release for Mac users, versioned as OS X 10.9, and it’s now available as a free download. Packed with over 200 new feature enhancements and refinements, it includes some very handy new features that will make a lot of Mac users happy, ranging from Finder tags, … Read More

How to Use Private Browsing with Safari for iOS 14, iOS 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, etc

Oct 19, 2013 - 13 Comments
Safari icon for iOS

Private Browsing is an optional Safari browsing mode that causes no data from the browsing session to be saved, this means no cache files, cookies, or browsing history will be stored or collected in iOS, making for a fairly anonymous session on the client side. Using Safari Private Browsing is a popular browsing choice for … Read More

How to Quickly Create Beautiful Abstract Wallpapers for iOS 7

Oct 18, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Before and After wallpaper creation

Many have noticed that iOS 7’s overall appearance is largely dependent on the devices wallpaper, and a good or bad wallpaper can make or break the look of things along with general usability, particularly for the home screen. It turns out that some of the best looking wallpapers on iOS 7 are very abstract, multicolored, … Read More

Hide Contact Photos from “Favorites” on the iPhone

Oct 17, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Phone app

The iPhone now displays a small contact photo thumbnail alongside contacts in the “Favorites” section of the phone app. This certainly looks nice if you have a lot of custom pictures set for contacts, but having a bunch of goofy contact photos can look unprofessional in some environments, and for users without a contact photo … Read More

7 Handy Command Line Tips You Don’t Want to Miss

Oct 17, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Terminal icon in OS X

Getting comfortable with the command line is often just a matter of learning a few command tricks and finding uses for them, and we’re going to offer six handy tricks that you’re almost certain to find some use out of regardless of your skill level in the Terminal. Read on, you’ll be downloading files, using … Read More

How to View Only Videos Taken with iPhone in the Photos App

Oct 16, 2013 - Leave a Comment
View Only Videos on the iPhone

A very welcome change has arrived to the Photos app post iOS 7 that allows you to easily view only videos taken with an iOS device, presenting them in an easy to view and share format. This is a huge improvement to past editions of Photos app, and the new sorting feature prevents you from … Read More

Use “Show All Music” to Toggle iCloud Songs Showing in Music App for iOS

Oct 15, 2013 - 5 Comments
Turn Off "Show All Music" to hide iCloud songs from iTunes

Music bought from iTunes and stored in iCloud are part of the iTunes Match service, which basically lets you store all your songs and music in iCloud, and can then be streamed and downloaded to your iOS devices. By default, those songs are shown in the iOS app Music playlist with a little cloud icon … Read More

Recover Deleted Files from Mac with DiskDrill

Oct 15, 2013 - 5 Comments
Recover deleted files in Mac OS X

Did you remove a file or folder from your Mac drive or an external drive, and now you need it back? Don’t freak out yet because there is some potentially good news; you may be able to recover the deleted files from the Mac with the help of a third party tool called DiskDrill.

Prevent Zip Clutter by Moving Archives Automatically After Unzipping in Mac OS X

Oct 14, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Automatically Move Archives After Extraction in Mac OS X

Anyone who downloads files from around the web, ftp, torrents, and elsewhere will eventually wind up with a lot of archive clutter sitting around on their Mac in the form of tons of zip, rar, sit, and other compressed file formats. This is because the default behavior is set for archives to maintain their existence … Read More

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