Tips & Tricks

Dashboard is the kind of thing you either love or hate, using the widgets constantly or not at all. How much use you get out of Dashboard will probably determine if you want the feature to stick around in Mac OS X or not. As regular readers may recall, we have discussed how unused Dashboard … Read More

We all want our Mac’s to run their very best, but sometimes it’ll require a bit of tweaking to get there. We have shown many simple tips to speed up older Macs, but for the really ancient Macs out there the site LowEndMac has posted a good read that includes eleven great tips to improve … Read More

Ever wondered how you can get image thumbnails to show up in the Finder of the Mac? You’re not alone, and a good question from one of our readers came in on this very topic. A recent switcher to the Mac, Carol Kavanaugh writes: “I got a Mac a few months ago and love it … Read More

I like Dashboard a lot, I really do, but it can be an awful memory hog even when it’s not being used. Once you hit F12, the widgets are loaded and don’t quit automatically which makes accessing them later faster, but it also wastes system resources. It’s not uncommon for each widget to take up … Read More

Brian W. asks the following great question: “I’d like to click a link such as “mailto..someone@anywhere.com” and have it automatically open up my web browser to Yahoo mail. Is there a way to set my default email client to my Yahoo mail account? I’d prefer not to use Apple’s Mail client.” Well Brian, you’re not … Read More

Chances are if you have a new consumer Mac it has a built-in iSight camera, just waiting to be used. If you’ve ever thought about setting up a webcam but figured it would be too difficult, fear not, because it doesn’t get any easier than this. Cam2Web is a tiny free no frills app that … Read More

If you’ve ever launched Activity Monitor or the command line utility ‘top’ and been confused at some of what you see, you aren’t alone. Much of the output is self explanatory (like percentage of CPU usage), but some of it is meaningless without a little explanation, such as the specifics of the System Memory tab. … Read More

Hello all you loyal OS X Daily readers! Recently we have been receiving a large number of Mac OS X related questions in our inbox. Normally our staff would try and respond with an answer to the best of our knowledge. However, sometimes we get a question we think would be better sourced to the … Read More

This is a list of eleven startup key commands that every Intel Mac owner should make note of. From reseting your NVRAM, starting up in safe mode, booting your Mac from a CD or DVD, switching bootable volumes and drives on system start, to forcing media to eject from a superdrive, this list has you … Read More

Here is a great feature that is widely unknown and certainly underused in Mac OS X, the ability to print nearly anything into a PDF document. Well, it’s not so much printing into a document as it is saving one, but you get the idea. I can think of a million uses for this, from … Read More

An incredibly useful feature that is built right into Mac OS X is the ability to create an archive instantly of anything, be it a single document, a folder, or multiple files. Creating archives is great for may reasons, they save space, and it’s a polite and easier way to send a group of files … Read More

The folks at the Beatnik Pad have released new builds of Firefox 2.0.0.2. The Firefox update includes many security fixes some of which were deemed “critical”. For those of you are unfamiliar with Beatnik Pad’s Firefox’s builds, they are optimized at compile time for the G4, G5 and the x86 Mac OS X architectures. Beatnik … Read More

After several hundred times of logging into your Mac you may be tired of looking at the same old login screen. Maybe you’d like to have a customized login screen for your school or employer’s workstations. Forget the $10 programs that automate the process, we’ll show you how to customize the login screen entirely on … Read More

If there are only two general usability tips that every Mac laptop owner must know about, these very well could be it. First, how to simulate a right click with your trackpad, and second, scrolling through documents much like is done with a scrollwheel. I have long assumed these were common knowledge, but I’ve heard … Read More

The title says it all, you can send and receive SMS text messages through AIM, Messages, or iChat by following these simple instructions. If you are so inclined, there is even a simple bash script allowing you to interface with iChat through the command line for such purposes. This is a great tip, and apparently … Read More

Want to change the name of your Mac computer? You can change the identified computer name of a Mac easily from the Mac OS system settings. This not only changes the Macs computer name, but it also changes what the name of the Mac is as identified by other users on a network, and by … Read More

Spotlight is probably the greatest feature to hit the Mac OS in years, once you get used to using it, going to a PC without it feels hopelessly inadequate. I use Spotlight for everything from launching applications, retrieving pictures, searching for old emails, literally just about everything. If you aren’t using Spotlight, you’re missing out. … Read More

If you’ve ever wondered how to extract flash videos (or any others) from a website, here’s a good way to do it using Safari and the command line download tool ‘curl’. Here’s the description from Chris Martin: “So say you come across a video online that is so great you would really like to save … Read More