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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Copy Keychain Logins & Passwords from One Mac to Another

Jul 5, 2012 - 21 Comments
Copy stored Keychain logins and passwords to a new Mac

Most Mac users are best served by using the easy Migration Assistant tool to copy all files, folders, preferences, and login data from one computer to another. This isn’t always an option though, perhaps because a hard drive is failing, or maybe you just prefer to manually migrate only very specific data from an old … Read More

Easily Convert a PDF to DOC File for Free from Anywhere with Zamzar

Jul 5, 2012 - 4 Comments
Converted PDF to DOC file, done free

PDF files are generally not intended to be edited, but what happens if you have a pdf document that you want to edit with something like Word or Pages? Or what if you need to convert a PDF to a Doc file so that you can make a few changes? The easiest thing to do … Read More

Delete All .DS_Store Files from Mac OS X

Jul 5, 2012 - 36 Comments
DS_Store Files in Mac OS X

DS_Store files are hidden system files that reside within almost every folder of Mac OS X, they contain folder-specific information and settings, like what view to use, icon size, and other metadata pertaining to their directory. Though ds_store files are invisible to the average user, if you’re sharing with a Windows PC or have hidden … Read More

Change Finder Windows View Style from the Command Line in Mac OS X

Jul 4, 2012 - 7 Comments
Finder window list view options

Unless it has been disabled, any Finder window in Mac OS X has the View option buttons in the windows toolbar. From left to right you can select icon view, list, columns, and coverflow. You may have noticed the window view style doesn’t always persist across Finder windows though, even if you selected “Always Open … Read More

Set the System Time in Mac OS X from the Command Line

Jul 4, 2012 - 16 Comments
Terminal in macOS

The clock in Mac OS X sets itself automatically by default, but if you want to set the precise time or are looking for a command line solution to set system time, you can do so with a tool called ntpdate, or the standard ‘date’ command.

Stop the Period Automatically Typing in iOS

Jul 3, 2012 - 15 Comments

Double tapping the spacebar on an iPhone or iPad inserts a period at the end of a sentence and starts another, a helpful shortcut feature that can really improve typing on the virtual keyboards of iOS, but not everyone likes the double-space to type a period behavior. If you don’t want the iPhone or iPad … Read More

Theme Mac OS X with an Ultra-Minimalist & Clean Silver Appearance

Jul 3, 2012 - 7 Comments
Custom grayscale Mac OS X appearance

Mac OS X doesn’t really have “themes” in the traditional sense, but you can create themes of sorts yourself by applying a few system tweaks. We’ve shown you how to do this before with a retro-inspired Classic Mac OS appearance and making OS X look like iOS, and now we’ll show you how to bring … Read More

Convert All Windows to Tabs in Safari with a Keyboard Shortcut on Mac

Jul 2, 2012 - 3 Comments
Merge multiple browser windows into tabs with a keyboard shortcut

It’s easy to find yourself in a sea of open web browser windows, but with Safari there’s a great feature that lets you merge windows into tabs. We’ll take that nice little merge-windows-to-tabs feature a step further and turn it into a keyboard shortcut, letting you instantly convert an ocean of windows into a single … Read More

Deal with a Broken iPhone Home Button by Enabling Assistive Touch

Jul 2, 2012 - 63 Comments
Enable a virtual home button in iOS

You can sometimes fix an unresponsive Home button by force quitting apps, but that doesn’t always work. If your iOS devices home button is completely broken then you can use an accessibility feature called Assistive Touch to enable a virtual home button instead, this lets you use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod even if the … Read More

Transfer a Playlist from iPhone, iPod, or iPad to iTunes

Jul 2, 2012 - 57 Comments
Export a playlist from an iPod or iPhone to copy to iTunes

Do you have a music playlist on an iPod, iPhone, or iPad that you want to move to iTunes on your computer? It’s fairly easy: Connect the iPod, iPhone to the computer and launch iTunes Under the “Devices” menu locate the playlist you want to copy to the computer and right-click on the playlist name, … Read More

Send Current Webpage to Chrome from Safari in iOS with a Bookmarklet

Jul 1, 2012 - 3 Comments
Send webpage from Safari to Chrome in iOS with a bookmarklet

The recently released Chrome browser for iOS is pretty good, and even if it’s not replacing Safari as your primary web browser on an iPhone or iPad quite yet, you may still find this bookmarklet handy which lets you instantly send the currently active web page from Safari into Chrome: From the iOS device, launch … Read More

Change the Font Size of the Track List in iTunes

Jul 1, 2012 - 3 Comments

The iTunes track list has a fairly small default font size, it works fine on displays with lower resolutions but if you’re using a higher resolution screen the text of song and artist names can be annoyingly small. Fortunately it’s easy to change and make larger: Open Preferences from the iTunes menu Under “General” look … Read More

Find What App is Using Location Services & Draining Battery Life in iOS

Jun 30, 2012 - 4 Comments
Find what app is using Location Services in iOS

Want to know what apps are using your location on iPhone or iPad? This can be useful information for many reasons, including potentially saving some battery life on your iOS Device. You may already know this, but you can tell if Location Services are being used on an iPhone or iPad because a little purple … Read More

Fix Dull Colors & Contrasts on New MacBook Air/Pro by Calibrating the Display

Jun 29, 2012 - 15 Comments
Calibrated vs Uncalibrated Display

If you have a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and the colors seem a bit dull and washed out compared to your previous Mac, you probably aren’t imagining things. Like most other hardware companies, Apple sources display panels from a variety of screen manufacturers, and though all the displays are of very high quality … Read More

Stop YouTube Links Opening the YouTube App in iOS

Jun 29, 2012 - 5 Comments
Stop YouTube Links opening in YouTube App

With how prevalent HTML5 is these days it seems unnecessary for the YouTube app to launch every time you tap a YouTube video link on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you’d rather watch the movie directly in Safari, here is how to stop the YouTube app from launching in iOS.

8 Typing Tips for iPad and iPhone That Everyone Should Know and Use

Jun 28, 2012 - 18 Comments
iPad and iPhone typing tips

Learning to type well on the touchscreen keyboards in iOS that we all use on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch can take some time. To speed that process up and improve touch typing, here are a handful of great tips to make typing on iOS virtual keys much easier and faster. Some of these … Read More

Run Android Apps in Mac OS X with BlueStacks

Jun 28, 2012 - 11 Comments
Run Android Apps in Mac OS X with BlueStacks

If you’ve ever wanted to run Android apps on your Mac, a new virtualization tool called BlueStacks makes it easier than ever before. The extremely simple to install solution includes 17 popular Android apps that can be run independently and without the need for running Android ICS in a virtual machine, removing the often clunky … Read More

Get 53+ High Quality Mac & Apple Hardware Icons Right in Mac OS X

Jun 27, 2012 - 7 Comments
High resolution Mac and Apple icons included in OS X

A large collection of high resolution Apple hardware icons is bundled right in Mac OS X, including great icons for nearly all vaguely recent Mac models, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Apple TV, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, and much more, going all the way back to the G4 series. Many of these icons are what … Read More

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