Tips & Tricks

The locate command is very useful if you’re looking to track down every instance of a file, filetype, app, extension, things hidden deep in system folders, or just about anything else that Spotlight can’t manage. It’s extraordinarily useful for troubleshooting and even more mundane tasks like completely uninstalling Mac apps. In order to use locate, … Read More

In the newest versions of iOS, you can swipe up to hide alerts and notifications on an iPhone or iPad when they show up at the top of your screen, but what if you have an older device running older iOS software? If you want to quickly get a notification off your screen in iOS … Read More

Users who rely on Spaces within Mission Control to manage multiple virtual desktops in Mac OS X will be happy to know that these desktops (Spaces, as Apple calls them in Mac OS) are completely adjustable. This means you can rearrange or move your desktop spaces as necessary, and as your needs change, and it’s … Read More

With iOS 5 you can hide many of the Apple default apps and their icons from appearing on the home screen of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. This includes YouTube and iTunes, but also the essentials like Safari and Mail if you are opting to use third party or web apps in their place. … Read More

Disappointed that Mac OS X 10.8 users aren’t showing up in your web logs? Spoof your own visits! In the spirit of pranking and Halloween, here’s how you can mimic a Mac OS X 10.8 user agent yourself: Launch the Terminal Enter the following command, replacing “http://url.com” no the end with the web address you … Read More

If you’ve downloaded Adobe Acrobat on the Mac you’ve probably discovered that it takes over Preview as the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X, which is annoying because Acrobat is slow to load and a fairly bloated application. Given that Preview comes bundled with Mac OS X, is extremely fast, and quite efficient at … Read More

If you have a newer MacBook Air you should pay attention. Some of the MacBook Airs are shipping with Samsung displays, and some are shipping with LG displays, both are quality displays, but the LG’s default color profile is lighter and a bit flat. Most users probably won’t notice this, but if you sit a … Read More

Bored with Launchpads background? You can make some changes to it in Mac OS X Lion by changing the background images default blur effect to three other options: unblurred (shown above), black and white blur, or black and white unblurred (both shown below): Open Launchpad Hit Command+B to cycle through the background image effects Update: … Read More

The first generation iPad got iOS 5, but it didn’t officially get multitasking gestures or display mirroring. Not a huge deal, because a user on ModMyi figured out how to enable these two features and has released a modified version of redsn0w so that it unlocks these abilities, without a jailbreak. It’s pretty easy to … Read More

You can easily re-open closed web browser windows in Safari for iOS on the iPad. This works in all iPad models with iOS, and it’s really easy to do at any time in Safari browser on the device:

Private Eye is a free real-time network monitor app for Mac OS X that is extremely easy to use. Upon launching the app, you’ll start to see all open network connections by application and process, and you can then filter connections by app, monitor all open connections, or watch only incoming or outgoing transfer. Connections … Read More

Despite the relative ease of updating to iOS 5 through iTunes either directly or by IPSW, some users are still reporting problems. In some cases this is user caused (error 3194 is easy to fix as is error 3200 & 3002), but if you’re continuing to have issues it could be related to a firewall … Read More

Spaces are the the Virtual Desktop feature in OS X, and it’s part of the Mission Control window management system on the Mac. If you’ve opened a few desktop spaces that you no longer need access to, you can close them. Perhaps the fastest way and most efficient means of closing a desktop space in … Read More

Want to sleep in? You can quickly turn off all your alarms on the iPhone by telling Siri simply to “turn off all alarms“, Siri will then confirm the alarm change plus show you the alarm settings. Oversleeping due to Siri likely won’t be a valid excuse to get out of school or work for … Read More

Want to tile a wallpaper on the Mac? A tiling wallpaper will repeat all over the desktop background, just like a tile is repeated in flooring or a wall. Well, you’re in luck because modern Mac OS X versions can do tile a wallpaper image, just like you could do way back in ancient Mac … Read More

The Mission Control “Spaces” feature in OS X is essentially a virtual desktop environment. A nice way to differentiate each individual desktop Space is to go about assigning different wallpapers to different desktop spaces. Setting unique wallpaper backgrounds per desktop is easy in Mac OS X now, here’s the quickest way to do this:

Don’t want to see the Stock Ticker and market details on the iOS Notification Center every time you swipe down to view it on your iPhone or iPad? Many users don’t, and this was one of the first questions a friend asked me after updating to iOS and discovering market details as a prominent feature … Read More

Want to see recent items on a per app basis? The Mac makes this easy with a variety of ways, but perhaps one of the most convenient involves a simple tap gesture. This is particularly fast and simple, and here’s how it works.