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.
With the help of a buried menu item, we can lock the Mac OS X screen right from the Terminal. This does not log a user out, it just brings up the standard Mac OS X lock screen and login window, requiring a valid user and password before the Mac can be used again. This … Read More
Web developers and website owners pay attention: you need to set a retina-ready iOS bookmark icon. The bookmark icons are called an Apple Touch Icon, and these custom images become the icon that is displayed on a users home screen when they bookmark a website on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch in iOS, or … Read More
If you’re worried about losing an iPad or iPhone, you can greatly assist the chances of getting the iOS device returned to you by setting a custom “If Found” message as the lock screens wallpaper. This only takes a minute or two to set up, and you can either use your camera or an app … Read More
Want to change a user name that appears at the login screen of Mac OS X? It’s very easy to do: Open System Preferences and click on “Users & Groups” Select the users name you wish to change from the left side Look for “Full Name” on the right side options and click in the … Read More
Personal Hotspot is one of the best features of an iPhone and iPad, allowing you to share the devices 3G or 4G LTE internet connection with up to five other connected devices through wi-fi, be them Macs, iPads, iPods, or PC’s. Personal Hotspot may be a mobile users and telecommuters dream, but tethering an internet … Read More
Automatically hiding the Dock is one of the more useful features you can enable if you work on a Mac with limited screen space. That experience can be improved by removing the auto-hide delay from the Dock in OS X, which reduces the delay from when a mouse is hovered near the Dock to when … Read More
Ever wondered what those Mac keyboard symbols mean and what they translate to? You see them on a lot of Mac keyboards and on plenty of keyboard shortcut lists, looking like strange glyphs (⌥), shapes (⇪), and bugs splattered on windshields (⌘). They can be fairly confusing, which is why we at OSXDaily.com always try … Read More
The iBooks app includes three different color themes that can be used at different times of day to improve the reading experience. Accessing the themes is easy: Launch iBooks and open a book Tap the “aA” button at the top of the screen and tap on “Theme” to show the three choices; Normal, Sepia, and … Read More
If you want to experiment with Linux without dual booting and potentially impacting your main operating system, the best way to do so is with virtualization. Virtualization allows you to run Linux directly atop your primary OS, whether it’s Mac OS X or Windows, in a separate virtual machine, with practically no potential for error. … Read More
Want to access the Dock faster on the Mac? If you use a hidden Dock in Mac OS X, you can speed up the time it takes to show the Dock with a defaults write command. This command removes the delay from when a cursor is hovered near the Dock location and to when the … Read More
Picture Frame is a great feature of iOS on iPad that turns the device into a rotating gallery of images. The iPad Picture Frame app defaults to flipping through all images contained in the Photos camera roll album, but you can improve the experience by creating a custom photo album and setting that as the … Read More
New windows and tabs in Safari default to displaying a 3×4 grid of “Top Sites”, representing the web sites you visit the most often with Safari. This can make for a nice home page, but sometimes it will display sites you don’t want showing up, and it can also slow down Safari on older computers. … Read More
It’s rare that app developers and web developers double as graphic designers, leaving some apps and websites to include fairly hideous iOS icons. As we’ve said before, icons matter, however superficial they may be, so instead of shipping an app or site with an ugly icon do yourself a favor and download this do-it-yourself retina … Read More
It’s easy to find text on a page with a desktop browser, with just a keyboard shortcut you’ll have a search field. This is a bit different in the world of smaller mobile screens though, and if you need to find text on a current web page with Safari for iPhone or iPod touch you’ll … Read More
Have some ePub and mobi ebooks that you want transferred over from a Mac or PC to an iPad for easier mobile reading? The quickest way to transfer the ebooks is through email sent from the computer to iOS device, but you will discover that a few additional apps are necessary so that you can … Read More
XBMC is a powerful free app that turns any Mac or PC into a full fledged media center. The newest version has been updated with a slew of improvements, but most interesting for iPhone and iPad users is the addition of AirPlay video support. This means you’ll be able to wirelessly transmit video from an … Read More
If you need to quickly retrieve the IP address of the router you are connected to or through, you can find this information immediately in the Terminal of Mac OS X.
If you have MKV movie files you’ve probably noticed they can’t be played on an iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, or a variety of other players. Not to worry though, because MKV video can be easily converted to the compatible M4V format using a free tool called Subler. If you want to get technical, this isn’t … Read More
