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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Use a Mac at Night? Save Your Eyes & Sanity with Flux

Feb 25, 2011 - 24 Comments

If you use your Mac at night or in the dark, you need to do your eyes and brain a favor by downloading Flux. The idea behind Flux is simple; when the sun is down you shouldn’t be staring at the immensely bright computer screen, whose intensity is made to emit as much light as … Read More

How to Hide the Mac Menu Bar in Older Versions of OS X

Feb 24, 2011 - 12 Comments

Want to hide the Mac menu bar? You can do that and set a few more options to automatically hide and show the menu bar with a free utility called MenuEclipse, the end result is pretty similar to the way you can automatically hide and show the Dock. In the screenshot above, I have the … Read More

Change Chrome to the Default Web Browser in Mac OS X

Feb 23, 2011 - 6 Comments
Chrome

The Mac defaults to using Safari as the default web browser, but what if you prefer to use Google’s Chrome web browser instead? There’s a few ways to change the default browser, but perhaps the easiest if you’re looking to use Chrome is through the Chrome browser itself. With that in mind, here is how … Read More

Tap a Date in Email to Add to Calendar on iPhone or iPad

Feb 22, 2011 - 6 Comments

The next time you get an email with a date mentioned in the body, you can use this neat trick to quickly add that date to your Calendar on iPhone or iPad. This is easy and it shortens the steps required to add events to a Calendar in iOS. The secret? It’s simple, you can … Read More

Adjust a Mac Apps CPU Priority with Process Renicer

Feb 21, 2011 - 2 Comments

As most modern OS’s go, Mac OS X is generally pretty intelligent with how it prioritizes processes. That said, if you want to give any running task an extra kick in the pants, you can use a free tool called Process Renicer.

Change File Permissions in Mac OS X

Feb 21, 2011 - 10 Comments

You can instantly change file permissions in Mac OS X without getting your hands dirty in the command line by using the Finder instead. All you need to do is access the “Get Info” panel for the file, folder, or application in question. These instructions demonstrate locating the file permissions manager, and how to adjust … Read More

How to Rename a Folder in iOS for iPhone and iPad

Feb 21, 2011 - 2 Comments

If you need to rename a folder in iOS on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you’ll find the process to change folder names is a complete piece of cake. This walkthrough will show you how to rename any folder name in iOS, it works exactly the same on iPhone and iPad.

3 Ways to Get Gmail Notifications on Mac OS X Desktop

Feb 19, 2011 - 12 Comments

With all the new tools like Twitter for Mac, it’s easy to forget that email is still a dominant form of communication online. I use Gmail constantly and I like to be alerted to new messages coming in without having a dedicated window open at all times, so with this in mind here are three … Read More

Need a Free Video to iPhone Converter? Get Miro Video Converter

Feb 18, 2011 - 7 Comments

Finding a decent iPhone to video converter can be a pain, and finding one that the average person finds easy to use can be even worse. Thankfully along with the Mac App Store came Miro Video Converter, a practically foolproof and no frills video conversion utility that can convert just about any video file into … Read More

Check Available Mac App Store Updates from the Dock

Feb 17, 2011 - 2 Comments

If the Mac App Store is open and there are updates available, you’ll notice a red badge appear on the App Store icon in the Mac OS X Dock. Of course most users click on that and update their apps from the Mac App Store that way, but for some versions of OS X there … Read More

How to Check your Apple Warranty

Feb 15, 2011 - 10 Comments
The Apple Logo icon

Wondering what the warranty status is of an Apple Product? You can easily check. Sometimes troubleshooting your problems just isn’t enough and you need to take your hardware in for service, but before you do so, you might want to check on your Apple warranty status. This is very easy to do for any hardware, … Read More

Prevent Annoying IM Text Styling with iChat

Feb 14, 2011 - 2 Comments

We all have that person (or ten) on our buddy lists that insist on having their IM text formatted in stupendously obnoxious ways. Maybe it’s just using tiny font sizes, but sometimes it’s a full fledged assault on your eyes with bright pink size 26 Comic Sans font clashing against a neon yellow background in … Read More

Change the default event length in iCal

Feb 13, 2011 - 5 Comments

iCal automatically assumes that a new event will be an hour long, but you can manually adjust that into shorter minute intervals by using the defaults write command. Here is the syntax to enter into the Terminal: defaults write com.apple.iCal “Default duration in minutes for new event” 15 You can set the 15 at the … Read More

Lock the Mac OS X Desktop via Menu Bar

Feb 10, 2011 - 9 Comments

We’ve shown a few different ways of how to lock your Mac screen with a keystroke or a hot corner, but another option is to lock the screen and desktop of your Mac through a little-known Mac OS X menu bar item. The result is a little lock icon in the menu bar of OS … Read More

FTP from Mac OS X

Feb 7, 2011 - 55 Comments

Did you know that your Mac has a built-in FTP & FTPS client? You don’t need to download any additional software or apps to connect to FTP sites from Mac OS X, instead you can connect to remote servers directly from your desktop by using an excellent and little known feature. If you’ve never used … Read More

Silence iPhone Ringer by Hitting Volume Buttons

Feb 6, 2011 - 33 Comments

Need to silence an iPhone phone call and hush the ringing quickly? If you’re getting an incoming call and you want to quickly silence the iPhone, just hit either of the volume buttons to instantly silence the ringer. Pressing a volume button during an incoming phone call will immediately mute the iPhone and stop the … Read More

Click and hold a Dock icon for App-specific Expose

Feb 4, 2011 - 7 Comments

If you click and hold on any open applications Dock icon, you will launch Expose for just that app and it’s corresponding windows. You can also access this app-specific Expose with the F10 key (Function+F10 on newer Mac models and keyboards), I’ve used this trick for a long time to quickly switch between windows in … Read More

Clear the “Open With” menu in Mac OS X

Feb 3, 2011 - 4 Comments

The more apps you install on your Mac, the more bloated your “Open With” menu gets. Some apps that are completely unrelated to the file type may show up in the “Open With” menu and just serve to clutter your choices. This is annoying, so lets restore the menu to what it should have. How … Read More

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