Tips & Tricks

Brian asks: “I need to add line numbers to a text file. I don’t mean line numbers in the text editor, I mean adding a number next to each item inside a text file. Is this possible to automate or do I have to manually edit the file typing 1, 2, 3 and going insane?” … Read More

You can adjust Gmail Notifier’s mail checking frequency interval by accessing an advanced preference in the application. In this example we will change the email check interval to 3 minutes. * Click the Gmail Notifier menubar icon * Hold down Command+Option keys and click on “Preferences” in the drop down menu * Enter the following … Read More

Growl is a desktop notification system that allows applications to publish updates and items to floating windows on your desktop. This allows you to see things like updates, information, and status changes to whatever application is publishing the Growl notification. The advantage to Growl is that regardless of what application has the focus, you’ll see … Read More

You can watch many AVI movies without any additional software on a Mac just by playing them in the included QuickTime Player (located in the Applications folder). Just double click the file and it should work, as modern versions of QuickTime in Mac OS X support a wide variety of video files and video codecs, … Read More

Want to re-run the last executed command? Or what about re-running the last used command but running it as root? You can do both! Ever typed a nice fancy string command into the terminal and been frustrated to discover that you need to run it all over again? Or perhaps you discovered that the aforementioned … Read More

The MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro screen backlighting is set to automatically dim and adjust in different situations. For the MacBook, it will adjust based on the power source and based on how long the computer is not in use. For the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, the same is also true, in addition … Read More

If you want to save and watch many web-based movies and Flash files directly to your Mac for later offline viewing try this neat reader provided tip out. Sent in by Robert Warner, he writes this handy trick to download just about any videos directly to your Mac using only Safari and the little-used Activity … Read More

Property List files, or more commonly known as plist files, are basically Mac application specific preference files. They contain information and settings for various applications and are usually in the easily identifiable format of com.developer.Application.plist and located within the /Library/Preferences/ directories at the system and user level. If you simply want to view a plist … Read More

You can make save a lot of clutter from showing in the Dock of Mac OS X by making applications minimize into their own Dock icon. What this means is that if you minimize an app, rather than having the little thumbnail stay on the right side of the Mac Dock, it will minimize directly … Read More

You can create a folder that is hidden from the default Finder GUI view by taking advantage of Mac OS X’s unix underpinnings. That probably sounds a lot more complex than it is however, and it turns out it’s actually really easy to make a completely hidden folder on the Mac. This walkthrough details how … Read More

Would you like to manually choose which graphics card is in use on a MacBook Pro? You can now keep track of which GPU is in use and then manually switch between the two graphics cards included within the MacBook Pro series, thanks to a third party utility called gfxCardStatus. It’s a free app and … Read More

“The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occured (error code 0).” You’re likely to see this error when you are attempting to copy files to an external hard drive that is formatted as FAT. FAT32 is a Windows file system that can be read and written to by Mac OS X. The problem … Read More

Updated 5/31/2015: By default, iTunes will automatically launch when any compatible device is connected, be it an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Nano, whatever. Having iTunes open itself automatically can be helpful but it can also be annoying, it really depends on your user preferences. If you don’t want this to happen, you can easily turn … Read More

You can run Mac OS X in Grayscale mode by adjusting the display settings in the Accessibility or Universal Access control panel. Likewise, you can stop a Mac from running in greyscale mode and get full color back by disabling the setting in the same system control panel. This is an easy display settings adjustment … Read More

iTunes 9.1 and forward changed the way it handles song conversions. I’m not quite sure why but Apple made it so converting a song to a different format is no longer just a matter of right-clicking and converting. Instead, with iTunes you’ll have to make an adjustment in iTunes Preferences first. First, select the conversion … Read More

Do you have a collection of images and photos that you’d like to become a screen saver on the Mac? This offers a simple and nice way to customize a screen saver to include only your own images and pictures, and it’s quite easy to accomplish in macOS and Mac OS X.

Ping is an essential utility for network administrators, but it’s also pretty handy to check if websites are online, how your internet connection is working, if you are experiencing lag or packet loss on a network connection, or to determine if a network resource is available. Mac users can access and use ping to target … Read More

If you are running a dual-display setup, you can easily adjust the primary display monitor in Mac OS X. When would you want to do this? For example, if you have a MacBook Pro 13″ hooked up to a larger external display, and you want the external display with it’s higher resolution to become the … Read More