Tips & Tricks

The Mac OS X Application Switcher is a handy way to quickly cycle through open applications, but did you know you can quickly quit programs you aren’t using with the Application Switcher as well?

Google is rolling out a feature that allows you to change the background picture of Google.com to a user defined image. Here’s how to customize your Google.com landing page background image.

Want to use an external Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad? You don’t have to use Apple’s official iPad keyboards, instead if you already own a Bluetooth keyboard the chances are good that it will be compatible with the iPad. If you’re looking to do a lot of typing on the iPad then it’s hard to … Read More

Every once in a while you’ll come across a video that has audio syncing problems. Sometimes it’s minor where the sound track and dialogue is off by a few milliseconds and it’s barely noticeable, other times it can be off by as much as a few seconds and this makes watching the video almost impossible. … Read More

You can quickly compare any two images side-by-side by using Mac OS X’s QuickLook feature. * Select the two pictures within the Finder that you want to see side-by-side * Hit the Spacebar to enter into QuickLook mode * Click on “Index Sheet” at the bottom of the Quick Look window (it’s the icon with … Read More

You might be asking yourself, what’s mouse acceleration? Essentially mouse acceleration is an algorithm that is deployed in an attempt to make mouse movements feel “natural”. For many PC users, when you first use a Mac, it becomes quite obvious that the mouse is behaving very differently. It will feel sluggish, unpredictable and unresponsive (to varying degrees depending … Read More

Did you know you can broadcast IRC-style notification commands in Messages for Mac? Indeed you can, even with Messages in modern MacOS releases. This fun trick was originally discovered with iChat (back when Messages was known as iChat, remember that?) and it’s fair to say that many people never knew about the uses of an … Read More

Finding the numerical IP address of a website or domain URL is pretty easy. We’ll use a terminal utility called nslookup, the command can be used to discover whatever domain resolves to a specific IP. This works for Macs with OS X but also in other unix varieties and even Windows DOS prompt too.

When you have extended information displayed under icons with the Finder from the ‘show item info’ Finder preference, you’ll occasionally run into an annoying truncation with used and available disk space. While one easy solution to this is to expand the spacing to show the full file names of Mac desktop items (the recommended method), … Read More

The Google Chrome browser is an excellent choice, because not only is it fast and powerful, but it sandboxes Flash to prevent the plugin from going totally nuts, and it offers tons of customization options. If you’re an avid Chrome user, you likely would appreciate using Chrome in full screen mode, and fortunately, you can … Read More

I’m kind of annoyed when I click a web link and it happens to be an iTunes Store link… iTunes then opens and it takes me out of my browser. I searched around for an easy solution and came across a method that reliably stops iTunes from launching when an iTunes App Store or Music … Read More

You can instantly open anything in fullscreen Quick Look mode by selecting the item and then hitting the Command+Option+Y keys. If you select multiple files and enter into fullscreen mode, it’s easy to navigate between them by using the arrow keys. You can then exit full screen mode by hitting the escape key. As a … Read More

iTunes can adjust the volume levels of your music for you, so that each song is closer to one another in volume output. This is a great feature, and it has always peeved me that some songs will play louder than others, and a playlist can quickly go from one moderately loud song to one … Read More

Cyberduck is a great free FTP client for Mac OS X, but on my portable Mac’s 13″ screen the Growl popup notifications really drive me crazy as they appear on each server connection and transfer completion. Oddly enough, if you look around in the Cyberduck preferences, you won’t find an option to disable the Growl … Read More

The ambient light sensor on the newer Unibody MacBook Pro (all models: 13″, 15″, 17″) is located directly next to the iSight camera at the top of the display. You can verify the location by holding your hand over the area to the left of the iSight camera and watch as your screen dims and … Read More

Want to save a document or web page as a PDF file, but you don’t own Adobe Acrobat? No problem, you can print documents, webpages, or nearly anything as a PDF, this means it creates a PDF file directly in Mac OS X using a built-in feature, without the need for any additional software or … Read More

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