How to Remove Attachments from Mail in Mac OS X

Aug 27, 2013 - 1 Comment

Mail icon Removing attachments from an email or everything in Mail app can be useful for a variety of reasons, from ditching a file that is no longer relevant to an email thread, to lowering the file transfer size when sending/replying to a message, or for more extreme cases for individuals with smaller hard drives, for reducing the overall disk space consumed by the Mail attachments directory.

Whatever the case, use some caution when removing attachments this way, as there is no way to retrieve the mail attachment locally after they have been removed from Mail app. For this reason, if you intend on deleting many attachments from many emails you may want to make a manual backup of the attachment directory beforehand, which we will also cover below by showing you where the attachment files are stored in OS X.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 1 Comment

Hide Email Previews from the Lock Screen of iPhone, iPad, iPod touch

Aug 26, 2013 - 3 Comments

Hide email previews from the lock screen of iOS devices

New email arrivals display a small preview of the message itself on the lock screen of iOS devices, which shows the sender, the subject, and part of the actual email message body. Because emails can contain some very private and/or personal details, you may wish to hide those email message previews from showing up on the lock screen completely.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 3 Comments

Copy Music Directly to iPhone / iPod Without Adding to the Computer iTunes Library

Aug 26, 2013 - 17 Comments

iTunes icon Got a song, podcast, or another audio track that you want to copy directly to your iPhone, but don’t want to add to your computers general iTunes library? You can skip adding the song to the computer iTunes library completely by using a simple but little known trick, letting you directly transfer music and audio to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. The end result is that you will have music stored only on the iOS device, without having it kept in iTunes as well, completely bypassing the iTunes libraries on a Mac or Windows PC.

This is a nice trick for some added control when managing very specific music libraries, using alternate computers, and particularly if a computer is running low on disk space and you’re wanting to copy music directly from an external drive to an iPhone or iPod without importing anything into iTunes.
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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, iTunes, Tips & Tricks - 17 Comments

Convert a Blu-Ray or DVD to MKV Easily in Mac OS X with MakeMKV

Aug 25, 2013 - Leave a Comment

We’ve covered a handful of the best MKV player apps for the Mac before, but what if you have a Blu-Ray disc, DVD, or ISO that you want to make your own MKV file out of? Creating a watchable MKV file on your computer from a Blu-Ray or DVD is commonly called ‘ripping’, and that’s exactly what we’re going to show you how to do with a great app called MakeMKV. Other apps may get the job done as well, but we’re focusing on MakeMKV because it is free, fast, efficient, and extremely easy to use.

Convert a Blu-Ray Disc to MKV format
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - Leave a Comment

Record the Screen as an Animated GIF in Mac OS X

Aug 23, 2013 - 2 Comments

Recorded screen capture exported as animated GIF in Mac OS X LICEcap is a screen recording app that captures a portion of the Mac OS X (or Windows) desktop and saves it directly as an animated GIF. Incredibly simple to use, the apps functionality should be familiar enough to anyone who has used screen recording with QuickTime before, except that rather than a movie being exported, you wind up with a GIF.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 2 Comments

Unlock an iOS Device Directly from an External Keyboard

Aug 22, 2013 - 2 Comments

Unlock an iOS device directly from an external keyboard

Did you know that you can unlock an iPad or iPhone using an external keyboard, without ever having to touch the screen or hardware buttons on the device itself?

This trick is particularly great for unlocking an iPad with an external keyboard, but it works with iPhone and iPod touch too.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 2 Comments

Start a Web Search in a GUI Browser from the Command Line

Aug 22, 2013 - 3 Comments

With the help of a simple command line function, you can quickly initiate a web search in your GUI web browser of choice right from the Terminal app. We’ll cover a few examples, demonstrating searching the web with Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Wikipedia, and using a variety of different web browsers, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Because the command syntax is fairly straightforward, you can further customize the search functions or apps used as you see fit.

Search the web from the command line
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By Paul Horowitz - Command Line, Tips & Tricks - 3 Comments

OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 6 Released

Aug 21, 2013 - Leave a Comment

Apple has released the 6th developer preview of OS X Mavericks to Mac developers. No new features are expected in the new build, as typically these updates focus on bug fixes and minor refinements.

OS X Mavericks

The latest version weighs in between 1GB-3GB, depending on hardware, and is recommended to install for all users running OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 5. The quickest way to get the update is from the Mac App Store via Software Update.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, News - Leave a Comment

Erase Free Space on a Mac Hard Drive with OS X Disk Utility to Prevent File Recovery

Aug 21, 2013 - 7 Comments

Use Disk Utility to erase free space on a Mac hard drive The Mac OS X Disk Utility app provides an ability to erase free space on traditional hard drives, which overwrites vacant disk space on the drive to prevent any potential recovery of deleted files (that is, files that have been removed traditionally, rather than through secure methods). For most users this is an unnecessary procedure, but if you plan on transferring ownership of a traditional hard drive or computer to someone else and you don’t want to securely format the entire hard drive first, this provides an alternative option that instead allows you to securely overwrite and remove only the files that have been deleted.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Security, Tips & Tricks - 7 Comments

Find & Replace Text in Multiple Documents from the Command Line

Aug 20, 2013 - 1 Comment

Using Terminal for batch find and replace across multiple files If you’re comfortable with the command line and ever in a situation where you need to find and replace a word, phrase, URL, or character across a group of multiple text documents, perl does the job quite well. A simple command string will very quickly perform a group batch find and replace on text, whether in a single document or spanning a group of multiple documents.

Like many things in the command line, there is no confirmation process, so you’ll want to make sure your syntax is set correctly before initiating a command, otherwise you may need to do another find & replace to repair your typo.

The basic command syntax is as follows:
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By Paul Horowitz - Command Line, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 1 Comment

Find Where You Parked the Car with iPhone & Maps

Aug 20, 2013 - 3 Comments

Maps icon in iOS Visiting a new city, or maybe just a part of town you’re unfamiliar with? If you’re concerned you may forget where you parked your car (or bike, mule, horse, chariot, whatever), just pull out your iPhone at that location and use the Maps app to save the location. This simple trick means you’ll never forget where you have parked ever again, even if you’re in a place you have never been before.

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By Paul Horowitz - iPhone, Tips & Tricks - 3 Comments

Make a Dashboard Widget from Parts of Web Pages in Mac OS X

Aug 19, 2013 - 1 Comment

Dashboard in Mac OS X Dashboard is a largely under appreciated feature of Mac OS X that adds little widgets to the Dashboard space or added directly to the desktop itself. Much of Dashboards lack of use comes down to not having widgets that pertain to interests of the user, and that’s where this trick comes in, which allows you to quickly create your very own custom Dashboard widget from any web page or web site element. Best of all, the widgets created this way maintain their live functionality, meaning a web widget will continue to update live as if it was on the web, even though it is now contained within Dashboard.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 1 Comment

Enable Time Zone Support in Calendar App for Mac OS X

Aug 17, 2013 - 6 Comments

Set the Time Zone for Calendar app in Mac OS X

The Calendar (once called iCal) app of Mac OS X has full support for Time Zones for the entire calendar, individual events, shared calendars, and even invitations, but it must be enabled separately within the preferences. If you rely on Calendar app for just about anything and travel or work across time zones with any regularity, this is a worthwhile feature to turn on, particularly for those who also sync the calendars between OS X and iOS.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 6 Comments

This Goofy Mac Bug Lets You Freeze a Window Askew While Remaining Functional

Aug 16, 2013 - 1 Comment

Skewed window bug in Mac OS X

A quirky bug in Mac OS X lets you freeze any window half-way through the minimize animation, providing for a completely askew window that retains the intended functionality of that minimized window.

Obviously freezing an animation mid-animation isn’t particularly useful, but it can be fun to use, it looks pretty silly, and maybe it has some hidden purpose that we’re just not aware of. Anyway, freezing the minimize animation is very easy to replicate, here’s how to do it on Mac:
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By Paul Horowitz - Fun, Mac OS - 1 Comment

iOS 7 Beta 6 Download Available for Developers

Aug 15, 2013 - Leave a Comment

Apple has pushed iOS 7 Beta 6 to all compatible iOS devices registered with the iOS Developer Program. The 6th beta build is 11A4449d, and is said to include improvements and bug fixes. Arriving as a remarkably small OTA download weighing in between 12-25MB for most hardware, the smaller builds are appearing on the iPhone and iPod touch and slightly larger versions for the iPad.

As usual the simplest way to download iOS 7 beta 6 is with a device already running iOS 7 and using Over-The-Air update, accessible through Settings > General > Software Update.

iOS 7 beta 6 download
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By Paul Horowitz - iPad, iPhone, News - Leave a Comment

Get pngcrush for Mac OS X with or without Xcode

Aug 15, 2013 - 3 Comments

PNG icon PNGcrush is an image optimization utility whose primary function is to reduce the overall file size of the PNG images in a lossless manner. It’s quite popular with developers and designers alike, and though it’s bundled in some versions of linux from the get-go, it’s not included in OS X by default without installing Xcode. We’ll cover four easy ways to get the utility on the Mac, with or without Xcode, and also offer an excellent free GUI alternative which may be more appropriate for many users.
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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 3 Comments

Turn the Terminal into a Matrix-Style Scrolling Screen of Binary or Gibberish

Aug 15, 2013 - 3 Comments

The command line is usually thought of as serious and we usually only cover useful terminal tricks that are fairly advanced, but not everything in the Terminal has to be useful. To prove that, we have three command strings that when pasted into the OS X Terminal, do nothing but scroll screenfuls of random text, binary, or your very own custom message, making your terminal window look a bit like the computer screens from the 1999 movie The Matrix.

Scrolling binary terminal window
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How to Move an Off Screen Window Back Onto the Active Mac Screen in Mac OS X

Aug 14, 2013 - 55 Comments

Ever had a window get lost partially off screen in Mac OS X, where the window titlebars and close/minimize/maximize buttons are no longer accessible? Typically this looks something like the following screen shot:

Window stuck off screen in Mac OS X

There a variety of potential causes and even random situations for windows to move offscreen like that, but it often happens with multi-display situations where one display is disconnected, leaving a large window behind where it’s titlebar is inaccessible off screen. The next time you find yourself in such a situation, try these two tricks to move any window back onto the Mac screen and regain access to the title bar and buttons again.

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By Paul Horowitz - Mac OS, Tips & Tricks - 55 Comments

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