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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Quickly Enter Clamshell Mode with an External Display in Mac OS X

Jun 8, 2012 - 15 Comments
Clamshell MacBook in a Book Arc

Keeping a portable Mac turned on while the lid remains closed is commonly referred to as clamshell mode. Clamshell mode basically docks the MacBook Air / Pro / etc and allows the GPU to power an external display only, which can help performance of some games and graphics intensive tasks. Additionally, some MacBook users just … Read More

Show iCloud Photo Stream as a Slideshow or Screen Saver on Apple TV

Jun 7, 2012 - 5 Comments
Apple TV slideshow of Photo Stream images

Want to show a quick slideshow to your friends and family of pictures contained within Photo Stream? Assuming you already have Apple TV signed into your iCloud account, do the following: From the main Apple TV menu choose “Internet” and select “Photo Stream” Choose “Slideshow” to start the slideshow By default this will go through … Read More

Redownload & Reinstall Any iOS App on iPhone or iPad

Jun 7, 2012 - 8 Comments
List Purchased Apps in iOS for redownloading

You can redownload and reinstall any previously purchased apps that have since been deleted from an iOS device, even if you deleted them a long time ago or never even installed them in the first place. As long as the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is using the same Apple ID where the original app … Read More

Fish Shell for Mac OS X Makes the Command Line Smarter & Friendlier

Jun 7, 2012 - 6 Comments
Fish Shell for Mac OS X showing autosuggestions

Are you looking for a way to make the command line a bit more user friendly? If so, you may find Fish to be a pretty nice alternative shell whether you are completely new to the OS X Terminal or you just want some general assistance when at the command line.

Enable Closed Captioning on iPhone, iPad, and in iTunes

Jun 6, 2012 - 4 Comments
Enable Closed Captioning of videos in iOS

Closed Captioning places written text at the bottom of video content, allowing for anyone to read along with the video rather than listen to the audio. This is an essential feature for certain accessibility purposes and for individuals who are hard of hearing, but it’s also just a useful feature to enable if you want … Read More

How to Check SHA1 Hash of a String

Jun 6, 2012 - 3 Comments
Check SHA1 Hash of a String

Do you need to check the sha1 hash of a string? You can easily find the sha1 hash of any string from the command line, and this trick works to check sha1 hash from Mac OS or Linux. We’ll use the openssl command to

How to Remote Wipe an iPhone or iPad

Jun 5, 2012 - 36 Comments
Remote Wipe an iPhone or iPad

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, you can remotely wipe the device with the help of an excellent free service offered through iCloud called “Find My iPhone” (or Find My iPad, etc). This is perfect for situations where a lost device is long gone with no chance of recovery, because it erases anything … Read More

Create a Sorted Applications Launcher & App Menu for the Mac OS X Dock

Jun 5, 2012 - 11 Comments
Group Applications by Category and use a sorted app launcher in the Mac OS X Dock

If you keep the Applications folder in the OS X Dock for quick app launching you’ve probably noticed it’s just a giant list of all the apps installed. Sure you can change the display to use a grid, list, or fan, but if you have a lot of apps you’ll still end up with a … Read More

14 Tricks & Tweaks to Speed Up Photoshop CS6 Performance

Jun 5, 2012 - 25 Comments
Speed Up Photoshop CS6

Photoshop CS6 is arguably the best release of the image manipulation app from Adobe in a very long time. It’s feature packed and generally quite fast, but not everyone is pleased with it’s performance on some hardware. With that in mind we’ve compiled a list of tweaks, adjustments, and tricks to speed up Photoshop. Some … Read More

Transfer Music from iPhone, iPod, or iPad to a Computer

Jun 4, 2012 - 78 Comments
Move Music from iPod or iPhone to computer

Everyone knows how easy it is to get music onto an iPod, iPhone, or iPad with the help of iTunes, but have you ever tried to get music off an iPod or iPhone and onto a new computer? As it turns out, transferring music from an iOS device and to a new or different computer … Read More

Add the Voice of Siri to Mac OS X

Jun 4, 2012 - 7 Comments
Add the voice of Siri to Mac OS X with Samantha

If you bought a new Mac with OS X Lion (or later) pre-installed you probably already have the voice of Siri enabled by default. Siri is actually called “Samantha”, but if you upgraded to OS X Lion manually from Snow Leopard you may have missed the addition of Siri’s voice completely, so here’s how to … Read More

Create SSH Bookmarks in Terminal for Quick Remote Server Access in Mac OS X

Jun 3, 2012 - 5 Comments
SSH Bookmarks in Terminal

Setting up SSH bookmarks within Terminal app is an easy way to quickly connect to remote machines. If you haven’t noticed these in Terminal before it’s probably because they aren’t labeled as bookmarks, and therefore the feature gets frequently overlooked by even the most advanced Mac users. Here’s how to create bookmarks within Terminal, and … Read More

iPhone or iPad Ran Out of Storage Space? Here’s How to Make Space Available Quickly

Jun 2, 2012 - 35 Comments
Find large apps to delete and free up space

You’ve been downloading tons of apps, books, music, and movies galore, and when you go to download the latest great app you find yourself unable to, confronted with a “Cannot Download – There is not enough available storage” message. What are you supposed to do when your iPhone, iPad, or iPod runs out of disk … Read More

Retrieve a Files Original Direct Download Address from Safari in Mac OS X

Jun 2, 2012 - 1 Comment
Copy the Downloaded files origin address

Have you ever downloaded a file from the web, and then down the road wished you could retrieve the origin download address? Maybe you want to redownload the file or send the direct download link to a friend. Whatever the reason, you can get the downloaded files URL and copy it to your clipboard easily … Read More

Change Color Profiles Instantly from the Mac OS X Menu Bar with ProfileMenu

Jun 1, 2012 - Leave a Comment
Color Profile Menu for Mac OS X

Whether you’re a designer, gamer, or you just frequently switch color profiles to use different external displays, you’ll find ProfileMenu useful. As the name implies, ProfileMenu stores all color profiles in an OS X menu bar item that can be accessed from anywhere, allowing you to instantly switch from one profile to the next on … Read More

How to Enable and Use Text to Speech on iPhone & iPad

May 30, 2012 - 31 Comments
Text to Speech in iOS

The newer versions of iOS include a fantastic text to speech engine that lets you select any text and have it spoken to you. This basically means you can have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch read you the content of any web page, notes, text files, or even eBooks and iBooks. Before you can … Read More

How to Completely Disable Audio & Sound in Mac OS X

May 30, 2012 - 11 Comments
Mute audio in Mac OS X

Whether you just like peace and quiet or you work in an environment that requires audio input and output to be disabled on a computer for security purposes, it’s fairly easy to accomplish in Mac OS X. We’ll cover how to handle turning off audio for both situations, the first uses mute for basic audio … Read More

Create & Extract bz2 Archives in Mac OS X

May 29, 2012 - 10 Comments
bzip2 archive in Mac OS X

The Bzip archive format is generally more effective at compressing than zip and gzip, and while the default Archive Utility or the excellent all-purpose Unarchiver tool will handle unarchiving bzip2 files with ease, you will have to venture to the command line if you want to create a bzip archive in Mac OS X. Creating … Read More

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