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.

Search Tips & Tricks

Remove the Alias Arrow Badge From Icons in Mac OS X

Jun 23, 2012 - 22 Comments
Remove the alias arrow badge from icons in Mac OS X

Anytime you create an alias in Mac OS X the resulting alias of a file, app, or folder, will include the arrow icon in the corner. This makes it easy to identify any item as an alias, but you can hide the alias arrow badge from icons if you don’t want to see them. Here … Read More

Merge & Clear Duplicate Contacts from Address Book and iPhone

Jun 22, 2012 - 17 Comments
Merge and remove duplicate contacts from Address Book an iOS

Duplicate contact entries occur with some regularity, whether it’s because a contact has changed an email address, phone number, name, or just because you accidentally entered someone twice into your iOS contacts list. If you have a Mac, the Contacts / Address Book app makes it very easy to merge these duplicate contacts and then … Read More

How to Remove Chrome “Most Visited” Web Thumbnails

Jun 22, 2012 - 10 Comments
Remove Chrome Most Visited thumbnails

Chrome’s “Most Visited” thumbnails capture snapshots of the websites you most frequently access. These thumbnails can very convenient but they can also be embarrassing, thankfully they are fairly easy to clear out: How to Remove Thumbnails from Chrome Most Visited List on Mac Quit Chrome From the Mac Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following … Read More

Swap the Last Two Characters Typed on Mac with a Keyboard Shortcut

Jun 22, 2012 - 11 Comments

How many times have you typed something to discover the last two characters are in the wrong order? You know, when “the” turns into “teh” and “something into “somethign”, a fairly common general mistype. Well the Mac has a solution to this, with a great little keystroke that swaps the last two characters.

9 Tips to Get the Most Out of Mission Control in Mac OS X

Jun 21, 2012 - 21 Comments
Mission Control tips

Mission Control is a powerful window and app manager built directly into Mac OS X, it combines elements of Virtual Desktops (Spaces), an application switcher, and a window manager, into one easy to use centralized location. If you aren’t using this excellent Mac feature on a regular basis then you should reconsider, learn a few … Read More

Silence Annoying Notification & Alert Sounds in iOS

Jun 21, 2012 - 3 Comments
Silence Notification Sounds in iOS

Just about every iOS app wants to send notifications and alerts to your iPhone or iPad. Twitter, Skype, Game Center, Instagram, all these are great services that have one thing in common: their notification sounds can be annoying, and arrive in huge bursts. Instead of muting an iPhone or iPad constantly, you can selectively silence … Read More

Determine the Manufacturer of Your Macs SSD (Hard Drive)

Jun 21, 2012 - 6 Comments
Check the Manufacturer of an SSD Drive in Mac OS X

If you’re wondering who made the SSD (flash storage) drive on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro it’s fairly easy to determine: Pull down the  Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”, then click on “More Info” Click “System Report” Look under “Hardware” for the “Serial-ATA” entry and select it Expand the chipset and … Read More

How to Show the Path Bar in Mac OS X to Work Better in the Finder File System

Jun 20, 2012 - 13 Comments
Show the Path Bar in Mac OS X

The optional Path bar shows the complete filesystem path to the current working directory in any Finder window of Mac OS X. This optional window-dressing item has more use beyond that though, because not only does it show you the present directory, it’s also interactive. In short, that means you can double-click the individual folders … Read More

Backing Up iPhone Contacts Without iTunes

Jun 19, 2012 - 20 Comments
Backup iPhone Contacts without iTunes

Anytime you use iCloud or iTunes to back up an iPhone or iOS device, the Contacts will be backed up automatically assuming the default settings are preserved. If you want to store an additional backup outside of iTunes and iCloud however, by far the easiest way to do that is with Address Book. This will … Read More

Downgrade iOS 6 Beta to iOS 5.1.1

Jun 18, 2012 - 88 Comments
Downgrade iOS 6 beta to iOS 5

If you went ahead and installed iOS 6 beta and determined the buggy nature of the first developer release isn’t for you, it’s time to downgrade. Most developers should know how to do this already, but if not this process is easy and you’ll be back to running iOS 5.1.1 in no time at all. … Read More

Access Terminal from Anywhere in Mac OS X via Keyboard Shortcut with TotalTerminal

Jun 18, 2012 - 3 Comments
Total Terminal brings Terminal access to anywhere via Hot Key in Mac OS X

TotalTerminal is an excellent tweak for those of us who frequently use the command line, it provides instant access to the Terminal from anywhere in Mac OS X with just a keyboard shortcut. Modeled after the classic Quake console, an official Terminal.app prompt drops down from the top of the screen where you can quickly … Read More

4 Ways to Run a Retina MacBook Pro at 2880×1800 Native Resolution

Jun 18, 2012 - 31 Comments
Retina MacBook Pro at 2880x1800 resolution

The Retina MacBook Pro 15″ screen resolution is 2880×1800, but because of how a retina display works the effective resolution is 1440×900 and the onscreen elements are just running in HIDPI mode. Apple provides an option to run at 1920×1200 through System Preferences, but as of now there is no built-in approach to running the … Read More

Use FaceTime for Voice-only Calls When Video Stutters or is Problematic

Jun 17, 2012 - 3 Comments
FaceTime Voice-only Call

If you’ve used FaceTime in an area without the best internet connections you’ve probably experienced the choppy video, breaking audio, and other call difficulties that can arrise as a result of poor internet service. Rather than giving up on the communication completely, you can turn the video call into a voice-only call and dramatically increase … Read More

Change Regional Settings, Measurement Units, Date Formats, & Currency in Mac OS X

Jun 16, 2012 - 3 Comments
Change Regional Settings in Mac OS X

If you travel internationally with a Mac or you split life between different parts of the world you can make your computing life easier by adjusting regional settings based on your current location. Mac OS X makes this very easy to do and you can switch from US to metric, change currency, and set the … Read More

Download Instagram Photos to Your Computer Easily

Jun 15, 2012 - 12 Comments
Download Instagram pictures to your computer with Instabackup

If you use Instagram and you’ve ever wanted to download all the pictures you’ve taken you’ve probably noticed there is no built-in option to do so. Thankfully there are several free options that let you back up all photos from Instagram and export them all directly to your computer. We’ve narrowed it down to the … Read More

Yet Another Way to Turn Off Internal LCD Display of MacBook Pro With Lid Open

Jun 15, 2012 - 43 Comments
Sleep the internal display while keeping a MacBook lid open

We have covered a handful of different ways to disable the internal screen on a MacBook Pro/Air while keeping the laptops lid open and the computer turned on, ranging from a command line approach, dimming brightness or using sleep, and even a silly magnet trick, but for whatever reason there have always been a few … Read More

How to Reset the Home Screen Layout and Remove Folders on iPhone & iPad

Jun 14, 2012 - 8 Comments
Reset Home Screen Layout in iOS

Ever wished you could easily start over from scratch when laying out your app icons on an iPhone or iPad without resetting the entire device to factory defaults? You can thanks to a handy feature that resets the app icon layout to it’s factory default settings. Not only will this restore the iOS home screen … Read More

How to Back Up Your iPhone Contacts

Jun 14, 2012 - 24 Comments
backing up iPhone contacts

For many of us, our contacts list are the most important part of our iPhones and what we care most about backing up. It’s easy to re-download apps and adjust settings, but it can be very difficult to rebuild a large contact list of names, email addresses, and phone numbers if you lose it. For … Read More

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site