Tips & Tricks

The Finder window sidebar can hold apps and function as an application launcher, making it an excellent place to keep apps that are almost exclusively used alongside the file system, or for apps that are reliant on general filesystem access, but that aren’t necessarily used enough to warrant a place in the Mac Dock when … Read More

Many of us have found a situation where an iPhone just won’t turn on. Pressing the power button causes literally nothing to happen, the iPhone just displays a black screen. Fortunately, this is usually just a simple problem to resolve, because either iOS has suffered an unusually severe crash and needs the device to be … Read More

Have you ever noticed how some apps will have information pulled from your iOS Contacts list, like peoples names, numbers, and contact information? Or, contrarily, how some apps should have access to your address book, but don’t, and are then feature limited? Though this happens by choice, it’s fairly easy to overlook these settings during … Read More

You can change the icon of just about any file, folder, volume, or application in Mac OS X. This is an easy way to customize the appearance of items in the file system, and it can be a fun way to add a customized look to the desktop and home folder on a Mac. It … Read More

Use Mail app in Mac OS X to handle your email? Then this collection of some of the best tips you’ll find for Mail app in OS X is for you. We’ll cover some of the greatest tricks out there, including how to get new mail faster, see more messages at once, send attachments faster, … Read More

There are many extra symbols, characters, and glyphs available on iOS that are not immediately accessible, but by adding a new keyboard you can gain access to the glyphs and symbols. This includes fun ones like the   Apple logo and smiley face ☺, and though there is some similarity to emoji, these symbols and … Read More

If you’ve ever needed to quickly quit out of all open applications in Mac OS X, you’ve probably just resorted to flipping through every open application in the Dock, then hitting Command+Q, then repeating until everything is closed. But there’s a better way, and with an extraordinarily simple Automator app you can create a function … Read More

Can’t decide whether to have pizza or thai for dinner, but you’re all out of coins to flip and make the decision for you? Or maybe you can’t play Yahtzee or Bunco because you lost your dice? No big deal if you have an iPhone or iPad laying around, because Siri can both roll dice … Read More

Printing wirelessly from an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to a printer is very simple, particularly if the printer in question is AirPrint compatible. Essentially AirPrint means the printer has native wireless support for direct-from-iOS printing, and setup is an absolute breeze. If you don’t have a printer yet or are thinking about upgrading and … Read More

Large empty files are often used for testing purposes during disk access tests, development, QA, zeroing out data, and scripting. Though it’s certainly not applicable to most users, it’s easy enough to do that anyone can try it out even if you don’t have a specific need. We’ll cover three ways to quickly generate files … Read More

Need to quickly free up some processing power? You can do that easily by temporarily pausing and then later resuming any active process or application in Mac OS X. Technically, this is actually ‘stopping’ and ‘continuing’ a process, but a stop is not to be confused with the more aggressive killing or force quitting applications … Read More

If you need to create an encrypted PDF with password protection, forget about buying Adobe Acrobat or other expensive software, because Mac OS X has you covered with built-in tools. Yes, the Mac can natively create secure password protected PDF documents, meaning it’s free, and it’s also impressively easy to do.

Spotlight is the core of Mac OS X’s Search functionality, and if you want Spotlight to ignore a file, folder, or drive, the traditionally recommended advice is to drag the items to exclude from indexation into the Spotlight system preference panel exclusion list. That’s the recommended approach because it’s simple to use and easy to … Read More

Want to save that great video someone emailed you, so that you can access it anytime locally on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? You can, but as many users notice, saving video to iOS device is a bit different than saving photos locally. With video, you can’t just tap and hold to save a … Read More

While Photo Stream is a great feature of iCloud, if you self manage your iPhone photos, it can quickly end up eating tons of disk space on a Mac hard drive. How, might a reasonable individual ask? Well, it may be unintentionally adding duplicates of all the photos you’re already importing yourself. This happens because … Read More

Do you need to type foreign currency symbols on iPhone or iPad? The iOS keyboard supports a variety of major world currency symbols by default, and you can add other nations currencies symbols to the keyboard on an iPhone or iPad as well. This tutorial will show you how to type foreign currency symbols from … Read More

Something that many Android phones and tablets are able to do is connect to a computer as if they were an external disk drive. It’s remarkably easy to set up, and all that is required is connecting the Android to a Mac through USB, and it’ll then mount accessible through the desktop and Finder, from … Read More

Country association with an Apple ID, and thus the App Store and iTunes Store, can be changed easily. This allows access to content and apps that are country or region specific, and it’s extremely helpful for a variety of situations, whether for travelers, expatriates, or for anyone who is trying to view, download, or purchase … Read More