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.
Apple TV owners have an extra incentive to upgrade their Macs to the latest versions of OS X; AirPlay Mirroring. With AirPlay Mirroring, you can stream the Mac desktop and whatever application is on screen to an HDTV wirelessly through the Apple TV, making it easier than ever to watch videos from a Mac or … Read More
Alright so you downloaded iMessages for Mac beta and decided it was a little too beta for every day use, and now you want to use iChat again right? As you probably noticed, when you install Messages it replaces iChat, but that doesn’t mean that iChat is gone for good, and uninstalling Messages Beta is … Read More
Screen shots taken in Mac OS X save to files prefixed with “Screen Shot” in the file name, but the names of screenshots can be changed to anything else. We’ll use a defaults write command to adjust the naming convention of screen shots taken on the Mac. This can be helpful for many purposes, and … Read More
We have shown you how to uninstall Mac apps before, but some applications can leave residual elements around in the form of preferences, plist files, caches, logs, and even the origin DMG or PKG installer. If you want to thoroughly remove all traces of an application but don’t want to dig around in various directories … Read More
Sometimes, Mac OS may not remember wireless networks that have been joined or connected to before. This may be due to an error, or it may be because of a settings option. In this article we’ll discuss what to do if you find that a Mac is not remembering wi-fi networks as expected, including the … Read More
Mac OS X has a hidden super quiet volume setting that is somewhere between completely muted and the lowest volume level, here’s how to access it: Use the Volume Decrease key (F10 or F11) until the volume is muted, signified by the volume graphic with a slash through it Now press the Mute key (F9 … Read More
You can prevent the installation of new apps onto an iOS device by enabling a restriction setting. There are plenty of reasons to want to disable app installing, but this is a particularly effective kid-proofing feature before letting a youngster use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to prevent any accidental charges or purchases. Disable … Read More
Rarely, you will need to force quit an iOS app. While iOS is generally very stable, every once in a while you’ll encounter a third party app that misbehaves. iOS apps can freeze or become stuck, and you’ll usually know instantly because the iPhone or iPad becomes unresponsive to touch behavior, or something within the … Read More
Boosting the speed of Mission Control animations can make Mac OS X feel a bit faster when switching between windows, spaces, and apps within the feature. It’s easy to do and reversible if you decide you don’t like it, launch the Terminal to get started. These defaults commands work in Lion, Mountain Lion, and beyond. … Read More
Using a portable Mac with the lid closed is frequently called clamshell mode, and using clamshell has been made easier than ever since the introduction of Mac OS X Lion. There are actually two different methods, the first is for using a MacBook closed lid with or without external input devices attached, and the second … Read More
iCal has a hidden debug menu with 24 additional options and features that can be accessed with the help of a defaults write command. Quit out of iCal and then launch the Terminal Enter the following command: defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 1 Open iCal again to find the “Debug” menu Many of the options are … Read More
The Command+Tab application switcher gets a lot use by many Mac OS X power users, and by default it will include the Finder in the apps to be able to switch to and from. If you’d rather limit the App Switcher to only swap between open applications and not include the Finder though, you’ll have … Read More
If you’ve ever taken a screen shot in Mac OS X you’ll notice the cursor is nowhere to be found, even if you’re taking a screenshot of something like a menu in use. Instead, if you want to snap the mouse cursor or pointer as well in the screen shot, you’ll use a slightly different … Read More
Photo Stream is a nice feature of iCloud that pushes all of your pictures automatically to your other iOS devices and your Mac with iPhoto or Aperture. If you haven’t used it before, this means if you take a picture on your iPhone, it will automatically show up in the Photo Stream on your iPad, … Read More
Launchpad shows a fading transition anytime it is opened or closed, making for a nice effect over whatever is in the background. It’s pleasant looking, but if you don’t like it you can disable the fading with a few defaults write commands. You can also choose to disable only half of the transition, either for … Read More
With traditional clamshell mode for a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Macbook, an external display, mouse, and keyboard must be attached in order to maintain the running closed-lid clamshell state. Thanks to a third party kernel extension called NoSleep we can now remove those hardware limitations and run a Mac laptop with the lid closed … Read More
Clicking an email link in a web browser defaults to launching Mail.app, which is great if you use Mail but not so great if you use webmail services like Gmail. This is fairly easy to resolve, though you’ll have to configure it separately on a per-browser basis, with different methods for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and … Read More
An alternative to checking a SHA1 hash with shasum is to use openssl. Yes, the same openssl utility used to encrypt files can be used to verify the validity of files. The syntax is quite similar to the shasum command, but you do need to specify ‘sha1’ as the specific algorithm like so:
