Tips & Tricks

Ever wanted to know where exactly a specific file came from? Perhaps some document that appeared in the Downloads folder of a Mac, or maybe a weird file that’s laying on your desktop, what is the origin of that file? Maybe it’s an archive file, maybe its an mp3 or m4a file that you want … Read More

You don’t need to download any apps to send group text messages with your iPhone. Hidden away in iOS 4 is the ability to send group text messages, now this may not seem that exciting by default but here’s why it’s great: using group messaging, you can send 100 people a text message but it … Read More

There are numerous ways to eject a DVD from a Mac, but using a relatively unknown menubar item you can do this directly from the menubar too. To enable this feature, navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ and double click on Eject.menu The easiest way to do this is with the “Go To Folder” key combo, which … Read More

You can play any song or audio file directly from within the Quick Look windows of Mac OS X, and that means music can be played from Finder as well as Open and Save dialogs, or anywhere else you can use the Quick Look function.

Mac users can quickly get the bitrate of any MP3, m4a, or other audio file from the command line of Mac OS X.

This is a really great terminal command that compresses every file within a directory, turning them into a zip archive. We’ll offer two variants of it; one that removes the original source file and leaves only the compressed files, and another command that leaves the uncompressed source files intact. This has been tested and works … Read More

If you want to mass upload a ton of pictures to Facebook from your Mac, using the Facebook built-in photo uploader tool can be annoying. Another solution is to use Mac OS X’s highly customizable Services feature and download the Facebook Services automation scripts, which then allow you to select any number of pictures from … Read More

Have you ever closed a window that you really wish you didn’t in Safari? It’s pretty common to accidentally close an important tab or browser window, and sometimes the Safari app will even crash too. But don’t freak out, you can re-open your last browser sessions in Safari regardless of why they were closed. Session … Read More

If you’re new to using the command line and trying to learn the Terminal, setting a cheat sheet of command syntax for commonly used tricks as your background picture can be a pretty helpful way to help remember commands.

You can easily hide or show the “Macintosh HD” main hard drive from the desktop of Mac OS X, along with any other internal volumes and removable drives by adjusting some Finder options. If you like to keep your disk drives available on the desktop for easy access like this, here’s what you can do … Read More

If you come across a song playing in iTunes that is not playing at an appropriate level, perhaps it’s playing back way too loud, or maybe it’s far too quiet and it doesn’t play loud enough for your preference, you can individually increase the volume level of any specific song in your iTunes Library. Likewise, … Read More

Are you tired of the scribbly marker looking font in the Notes app on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Want to have a different font in Notes app for iOS? No problem, you can select a variety of font options to be the default on the Notes app.

If you’re tired of looking over a man (manual) page within the Terminal, you can use a nifty command sequence to launch any specified man page into the Preview app of Mac OS X. This is done by piping the standard man output into the open command and Preview. Launching the man Page into Preview … Read More

An underused feature of Mac OS X is the ability to use any Finder window as an application launcher. This is actually a feature of the Toolbar, which is usually thought to just hold things like the back and forward buttons, list and icon views, etc. But in fact, that same toolbar can launch apps … Read More

If you need to convert a .docx file to .doc, don’t pay for one of the many conversion sites or utilities out there. Your Mac has the ability to handle the file conversion entirely on it’s own already built in, and it’s completely free, no downloads or third party software is required. To convert the … Read More

If you frequently access a file server from a Mac it’s pretty helpful to map the network drive to your desktop. There’s two ways to do this, one method is just mapped for one time use and will reset after a reboot, and another method is a more permanent route that allows the mapped network … Read More

Here’s a Quick Look tip that’s pretty useful: you can zoom into any picture or PDF within Quick Look by holding down the Option key and then using the scroll wheel or trackpad. Try it out!

You can trim any MP3 file for free in Mac OS X thanks to the bundled QuickTime Player app, which comes preinstalled on every single Mac. Though we’ll cover trimming MP3’s, it turns out you can actually use QuickTime to trim just about any audio file, as the app supports many more other audio formats … Read More