Though we generally recommend staying on the latest versions of OS X, some users may find incompatibilities or problems associated with updating their Macs to OS X Mavericks, and for these unique circumstances it can make sense to downgrade the Mac back to a prior release version of OS X. For such specific cases, we’ll cover downgrading from Mavericks (10.9) back to OS X Mountain Lion (10.8). To accomplish a downgrade using this method, you must have made a Time Machine backup made prior to the OS X 10.9 upgrade / install. If you do not have a Time Machine backup prior to OS X 10.9 being installed, this particular walkthrough will not work for you.

Be sure to back up the current volume and all files before attempting the downgrade process, otherwise you may lose the files and data that was created between the original upgrade to Mavericks and this downgrade procedure.

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Do Not Disturb is an excellent feature of iOS that, when turned on, mutes notifications and alerts for all incoming calls, messages, and apps. It’s easy to toggle on and off, providing for some digital peace and quiet with a quick switch. But if you’re actively using an unlocked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch while Do Not Disturb is on, the alerts, calls, and notifications will still make sounds, which may defeat the purpose of the setting for some users, and can make it appear as if the Do Not Disturb feature is not working at all. That’s what we’ll settle here, insuring that Do Not Disturb remains always silent when it’s set on. Even if the iOS device is actively in use, all phone calls, texts, and alerts will automatically be silenced (unless they’re on the exceptions list, of course). It’s a simple settings adjustment available in new versions of iOS, but one that is often overlooked:
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Changing the login screens background wallpaper is a great way to customize the appearance of a Mac. The process of doing so seems to change with every release of OS X though, and that’s no different with swapping out the login wallpaper in OS X Mavericks. Changed yet again with OS X 10.9, you will find that rather than replacing a single file with a new image, you’ll have to replace four separate files to gain a similar customization of the login window, which is seen both upon system boot and with swapping logins with Fast User Switching.

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The Dock received a significant visual overhaul along with almost everything else in modern iOS versions, and though the days of the OS X look-a-like are gone, you can still customize the coloration and transparency of the Dock a bit. One option is to change the wallpaper, which has a profound effect on the appearance on the Dock along with other user interface elements of iOS, but what if you like your wallpaper and just don’t like the way the Dock looks with it?

That’s what this trick will help, achieved indirectly by using the contrast setting that is intended to improve usability, it removes the sometimes garish hyper color look of the iOS Dock that comes from using certain wallpapers, replacing it with a simple translucent Dock color with much higher contrast, typically a dark color roughly based on the wallpaper. The result is greatly improved readability, and sometimes a much approved appearance of the Dock overall too. Note that there are some other UI changes that will occur with this setting, making it undesirable to some users.
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Dictation is the new speech-to-text engine that lets your Mac type out what you are saying as you talk, and it’s one of the many excellent features included with modern versions of Mac OS X. Now from Mavericks onward, you can improve Dictation considerably by enabling an option called “Enhanced Dictation”, this will provide two significant advancements; continuous dictation with live feedback as you talk, and full offline support – meaning you won’t need a Mac to be connected to the internet in order to use the feature.

If you use Dictation with any regularity this is a highly recommended option to enable, as enhanced dictation is sure to improve your usage of the excellent speech to text feature on the Mac.
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Have a bunch of Notifications and Alerts sitting on the lock screen of your iPhone or iPad that you don’t want on there anymore, but don’t want to unlock the device or leave the lock screen? No sweat, rather than swiping to unlock the iOS device and then manually addressing the notifications, you can shuffle them all away and store them into Notification Center where they belong, immediately clearing off the lock screen without ever leaving it.

This swipe gesture trick is similar to how you can dismiss alerts from anywhere, and it’s super easy to use:
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Already installed OS X Mavericks, but now you want to create an install drive for other computers? Or maybe the Mavericks installer became corrupt during the process? Whatever the situation, you can easily re-download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store.
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Java has plenty of real-world applications and uses, but because it has been used as an attack vector in the past, Apple has made OS X reasonably aggressive in limiting Java on Macs. As a result, Mavericks does not come with Java preinstalled, and upgraded Macs will remove Java in Mavericks installation process. For most users this is a very good thing, it further reduces the unlikely event of a trojan or something nefarious being installed on Macs, and many Mac users won’t notice Java missing at all. On the other hand, many of us do need Java installed in OS X.

Many common applications use Java, ranging from the excellent cloud backup service CrashPlan, to the Eclipse IDE, and even some online banking and financial services, and without installing Java yourself in Mavericks you’ll find these apps and websites simply don’t work. Fortunately it’s a simple fix just like in 10.8, and you can go about installing Java on OS X Mavericks in several different ways.
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Swiping down from the very top of your iPhone screen (or iPad), you’ll find Notification Center swoops on down, where alerts, notifications, iMessages, and missed calls appear. There’s also the “Today” tab, which aggregates information from your Calendars, Reminders, Stocks, and destinations, and puts them into an active days summary of what’s on tap for today.

If you want to customize the appearance of Today view, either where things appear in the list as you scroll, or to hide specific items, you can do that directly through iOS settings.
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Network Utility is a great tool that has been around on the Mac since the very first version of Mac OS X. It provides a variety of helpful networking tools and details, the “Info” tab includes general network info on a per interface level showingIP address, MAC address, link speeds, and sent/received data transfer statistics, and you’ll also have easy GUI access to what are otherwise command line tools, like netstat, ping, nslookup, trace route, whois, finger, and a port scanner.

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Sharing files between Macs and NAS drives and Windows PC’s has always been very easy, but Mavericks brought a slight change that has caused some problems for certain users in mixed PC and Mac environments. Without getting too geeky, Apple adjusted the default protocol for SMB (Samba, the Windows file sharing ability) from SMB1 to SMB2, and the SMB2 implementation apparently carries a bug which is incompatible with many NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices, and some versions of Windows. The issue is pretty obvious when you encounter it: Many Windows PC’s, NAS drives, and Linux machines won’t access or mount from the Mac, and instead will try to connect or mount forever and ultimately time out, preventing connections, mapped drives, and general access.

Fortunately there’s a very easy workaround to connect to SMB and NAS shares from OS X Mavericks, OS X Yosemite, and OS X El Capitan:
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App Nap is a great feature that arrived with OS X Mavericks which automatically pauses applications once they have gone unused for a period of time, helping to reduce energy consumption and saving battery life for portable Macs. Though App Nap can make a big difference in extending the battery life of MacBooks, there are some unique situations where users may not want an application to pause itself when unused, inactive, or otherwise in the background. For these situations, you can selectively prevent App Nap by disabling it on a per-application basis. Most users should not disable App Nap without a compelling reason to do so.

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All of the latest versions of OS X have opted for a conservative approach to showing the users ~/Library/ directory, a folder which contains a variety of important files, settings, preferences, caches, and many specific files that are required for apps to run as intended. Because of the possibility of unintentional harm to a users Mac, OS X defaults to hiding that folder, with the intention on preventing novice users from making changes to it. OS X Mavericks is no different, but with the release of 10.9, all Mac users have an easy option to permanently show the User Library directory without having to result to the command line or other tricks that were previously required for access to the ~/Library folder.
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Many of us rely on the iPhone as an alarm clock these days, but unless it has been changed, the default alarm clock sound effect is usually the same as the default iPhone ringtone. That can cause some frustration and confusion as you’re half asleep and the alarm goes off, sounding like you’re getting a phone call, but fortunately if you would rather hear something else play it’s really easy to change the alarm clocks tone to be another sound, or you can even pick a song if you want to as your iPhone alarm clock sound.

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Automatic Updates is a feature that came along with modern iOS versions which allows updates to installed apps to download and install themselves, allowing for a very hands-off approach to the app updating process on an iPhone or iPad.

For many users this is a good thing to leave on, since it takes the hassle out of updating and managing your apps, and you’ll only have to use the App Store to download new apps instead.

But automatic updates are not always a desirable feature for all users for a variety of reasons, whether you’re trying to squeezes maximum performance out of a device, reduce overall network bandwidth used by an iPhone or iPad, or perhaps you’d just prefer to control the app updating process yourself.

If you’d rather have apps not update themselves in the background, you can take a moment to turn the feature off in iOS.

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For Mac users who use external screens, multi-display support has been greatly improved in new versions of OS X, but one feature that is either loved or hated is the addition of the secondary menu bar that is visible on the external display(s). The secondary menu bar serves the obvious purpose of providing easy access to menu items, but it also functions as an active focus indicator, letting you know which of the multiple displays has the currently active focus for windows and the mouse cursor. When one screen is active, the menu bar on that display will be shown at normal brightness, whereas the display that does not have focus will show a dimly faded translucent menu bar, as shown in this screen shot:

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The default solution for installing OS X Mavericks is to download it free from the App Store and then perform an upgrade from a previous version of Mac OS X, whether that’s from Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard. Upgrades are fast, efficient, and most important, very easy, and that’s the recommended option for the vast majority of Mac users. Nonetheless, some users may want to start fresh with a blank slate, using what’s known as a “clean install” and that’s what we’re going to cover here. Performing a clean install can be desirable for a variety of reasons, from ditching years of built-up cruft on older Macs from many years of OS X upgrades, to troubleshooting difficult issues, to transferring ownership of a Mac to a new owner.

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Want to quickly search the web or Wikipedia from the Home Screen of iOS? Just turn to Spotlight, the built-in search engine.

Sure, the Spotlight search is often used as an application launcher or a way to quickly find old emails, notes, and contacts in iOS too, but you can also type more generic queries into it the same search box to immediately search either the web or Wikipedia for those terms. Tapping on a result from wikipedia or the web will open the Safari web browser on iPhone or iPad to complete the return of the search query.

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