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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List All Mounted Drives and their Partitions from the Terminal

Dec 1, 2009 - 7 Comments

To list all mounted drives and their accompanying partitions from the Terminal on Mac OS X, you can use the diskutil command with the list flag. This approach will display all disks, drives, volumes, and containers on any drive connected to the Mac, including boot volumes, hidden volumes (like the Recovery partition), empty volumes, unformatted … Read More

Move the iTunes Library to a Different Location

Nov 30, 2009 - 6 Comments

Moving your iTunes music library to another location or machine is really easy to do because Apple has made iTunes store and maintain all of your music in one central location. Thus, that directory is fairly transportable, and if need be it can be relocated to a different location with relative ease. Unless you have … Read More

Open Current Folder in Finder from Terminal of Mac OS X

Nov 30, 2009 - 14 Comments

Want to open a Finder window from the current directory location in Terminal? Mac OS makes this easy! From the Mac Terminal, you can immediately open whatever folder or directory you are working within into the Finder of MacOS and Mac OS X by simply typing the a short command string and executing it. To … Read More

Schedule a Mac to Startup via Command Line with pmset

Nov 28, 2009 - 5 Comments
Terminal in macOS

Most Mac users who want to schedule a Mac to startup at a specific time will use the Energy Saver schedule tool in System Preferences, but for the more technically savvy, another option is to schedule the boot time of a Mac through the command line. We’ll show you how to use the pmset command … Read More

Enable & Access Chinese Character Input in Mac OS X

Nov 27, 2009 - 9 Comments

With modern versions of Mac OS X you can input Chinese Characters directly into the trackpad! This is an extremely cool feature but requires a newer Mac with a multitouch trackpad as well, so it’s best for Mac laptops and the Magic Trackpad surface.

Rate iTunes Songs from the Dock of Mac OS X

Nov 26, 2009 - 1 Comment

You can rate iTunes songs directly from your Dock in Mac OS X! Just right-click (or control-click) the iTunes icon within the Dock, and scroll up to ‘Rating’, this will open up a submenu and from there users can select the Star Rating they want to assign for the song that is playing. This is … Read More

Share your Mouse and Keyboard between Mac OS X and Ubuntu

Nov 25, 2009 - Leave a Comment

Got a Mac and a PC running Ubuntu and want to control both from one computer? Make your life easier and share a mouse and keyboard between the two machines using Synergy! There’s a nice walkthrough on how to do this at Donncha O Caoimh’s blog, don’t pass it up if you’re an Ubuntu user. … Read More

Option-Click the Airport Menu for Extra Wireless Info

Nov 24, 2009 - 5 Comments

If you Option-Click the Airport Menu you can get extended information about the wireless network you are connected to (and the ones you’re not as well), including Channel information, MAC address of the access point, signal strength, and the transmission rate. This is Snow Leopard only, if you haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard yet and … Read More

Convert WMV to MOV for free

Nov 23, 2009 - 11 Comments

You can easily convert WMV movie files to MOV format for free by using the FlipForMac Quicktime component plugin and QuickTime itself. Here’s what you will need to do: Convert WMV file to MOV format in Mac OS X First download FlipForMac, it is a WMV component plugin for Quicktime, the free version is all … Read More

Copy a File or Folder Path to the Terminal by Dragging and Dropping

Nov 23, 2009 - 2 Comments
Terminal in Mac OS X

Did you know you can quickly copy a files path to the Terminal just by dragging and dropping the folder or file into the Terminal window? Try it out, open any terminal window then take something from the Finder and drop it into that Terminal, it’ll instantly print out the full path to the file, … Read More

Suggest Words When Entering Text in OS X with the Escape Key

Nov 21, 2009 - Leave a Comment

You can suggest words while entering text into many applications by simply hitting the Option+Escape keys while typing in most OS X apps. This is so useful for writing. For example, if you can’t remember how to spell a word but remember that it starts with a V? No problem, type V and then hit … Read More

Silently Adjust Sound Volume Level by Holding Down the Shift Key

Nov 20, 2009 - 7 Comments
Adjust the Sound Silently in Mac OS X - No Quack!

You can adjust your Mac’s sound volume level silently by holding down the Shift key and then pressing the volume up or volume down keys. This complete silences the audio feedback of quacking and beeping as the sound goes up and down, allowing you to change the volume without creating a bunch of noise. Remember, … Read More

Resize Partitions in Mac OS X with Disk Utility

Nov 20, 2009 - 26 Comments
Resize Partition in Mac OS X with Disk Utility

You can easily resize any disk partition in Mac OS X using the included Disk Utility app, located in /Applications/Utilities, and you can even resize a mounted volume. In fact, you can grow or shrink HFS+ (Mac OS X) Partitions on the fly, with the resizing done live regardless of whether the drive is internal … Read More

Instantly Create an Alias of a File, Folder, or Application on Mac with Command-Option

Nov 19, 2009 - Leave a Comment

Aliases are wildly useful on the Mac, offering quick access to anything in the file system. Most Mac users make aliases through the File menu, but did you know there’s a fast trick for dragging and dropping to create an alias of anything?

Force Dictionary to Use One Window in Mac OS X

Nov 18, 2009 - Leave a Comment

If you regularly use Spotlight (or Services) to access the dictionary app in Mac OS X, you may have noticed that with each definition a new window is spawned. This can quickly lead to clutter, which annoyed TUAW enough to ask MacOSXHints for a solution. Like magic, MacOSXHints provided one and that’s what we’re sharing … Read More

Secrets of the Command-Tab Mac Application Switcher

Nov 17, 2009 - 14 Comments
Application Switcher Command+Tab tricks for Mac OS X

The Command-Tab key sequence in Mac OS X works to summon a quick application switcher, it’s an excellent trick that many advanced users frequently use to switch apps and help multitasking, but it seems lesser known amongst Mac users in general. Even if you know of the Command+Tab trick, it turns out there are many … Read More

Convert AVI to MOV

Nov 16, 2009 - 37 Comments

There are multiple ways to convert AVI video files to MOV video format on the Mac. Perhaps the easiest free ways to convert video from an AVI file to MOV format in Mac OS X is bt using an external app like Miro, VLC, or by using the Perian plugin for QuickTime. Here’s a step … Read More

Access Wikipedia from Spotlight in Mac OS X

Nov 16, 2009 - 1 Comment

Did you know you can quickly access Wikipedia from anywhere in OS X by using Spotlight? Yes seriously you can, similar to the Spotlight dictionary feature. Here’s how Wikipedia access from Mac OS X works:

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