Those who use external Bluetooth devices with a Mac, whether it’s a keyboard, mouse, headset, or anything else, are probably aware that connection strength between the device and the computer is going to directly impact how usable the device is. The next obvious question then is, how do you check the strength of such a connection? Regular readers may recall a previous tip that allows Mac users to quickly check the signal strength of a connected Bluetooth device, but we’ll expand on that greatly and get a bit more advanced, revealing a live connection monitoring graph that updates the RSSI (received signal strength indicator) of a connected Bluetooth device. This allows for easy troubleshooting when trying to find out if, and help to determine why, a Bluetooth accessory may have a poor connection to the Mac.

Symptoms of a Bad Bluetooth Connection

Symptoms of a weak or bad connection for Bluetooth headsets are audio that cuts out, inappropriately fuzzy audio or bad audio quality, or even no audible sound at all. For things like a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse, a bad connection may range from key presses going unnoticed, mouse movements being imprecise, and erratic cursor control. Gamers and graphic designers in particular are sensitive to shoddy Bluetooth signals since the imprecision of cursor control can make the difference in their activities.

Monitor Bluetooth Device Connections

The connection monitor will only be available to OS X if Bluetooth is enabled and a device is connected to the Mac.

• Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu
• Choose “Bluetooth” and select the device you want to monitor the connection for
• Next, Option+Click the little gear icon and from the pulldown menu choose “Monitor Connection RSSI” to bring up the connection monitor window

With the connection monitor visible, it’s time to check and perhaps troubleshoot the devices connection to the Mac.

With the signal graph now visible, let it gather data for a few seconds before jumping to any conclusions. The screenshot up top shows a device reading in the -40 range, which is quite good, and even though it moves around a tiny bit, that is not indicative of an issue.

Reading the Bluetooth Connection RSSI

RSSI can be a bit weird to read, but essentially a higher number means a better connection, and a lower number means a worse connection. Note however that the numbers are negative, so that may read opposite to what you’d expect. For example, a connection of -45 is significantly stronger and better than a connection of -100, which is weaker and more likely to have issues. The rough guidelines below may help read the connection, though the precise signal you get is going to vary on other factors we’ll discuss below:

• -40 to -55 is a very strong connection
• -70 and above represents a good connection
• -100 and below represents a bad connection
• -110 and below is almost unusable

If some of this looks familiar to you, it’s probably because the same RSSI scale applies to those who have enabled iPhone Field Test Mode before, where the numbers seen in the corner that replacing the standard cell bar signals are read the same way.

Taking Action on a Weak Bluetooth Connection

The two most likely reasons for a bad Bluetooth connection are low batteries and heavy interference from something in the environment. Batteries are easy to test, all you need to do is swap in a new set of batteries or charge the device in question and see if the RSSI increases and if the device becomes more stable. Environmental factors can be trickier to track down, but using the live connection monitor can make worlds of difference as you move a Bluetooth device around and watch the graphs response. If you see a huge drop in the RSSI when you move a headset behind a fireplace for example, you can surmise that something in the wall is causing the interference and you should rearrange the equipment accordingly. It’s also vaguely possible that the device itself has a defective antenna, though that’s fairly rare for most quality devices.

Moving email around between inboxes in the iOS Mail app is easy, and perhaps sometimes it’s too easy, because accidentally moving or archiving mail messages seems to be an ongoing issue for many. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions I get from newcomers to the iPhone or iPad is “where did my email go? It disappeared from my inbox, I think I pressed something accidentally and deleted it!” I’ve even accidentally done this myself in a half-daze of sleep at the wee hours of the night, only to return to my Mail inbox in the morning to not be able to find the email message I was looking for.

Not to worry, your archived emails aren’t missing – well, unless you deleted them, but even in that case if you move fast enough you can usually recover them from the “Trash” folder using the same method we’ll discuss below. Whether that email move was accidental or not doesn’t really matter because the process will be the same to get your mailbox in order again.

In this tutorial we will discuss how to locate and move archived emails back into the primary inbox of Mail app on iPhone and iPad.

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Your iPhone is a smartphone, and if it isn’t making you smarter as well then you just aren’t using the devices included features to it’s full potential. Here are three super simple tips that let your iPhone make you smarter, these will be perfect for educators, learners, students, or really, just about anyone – unless you’re a human dictionary and encyclopedia, that is. There’s no need to download any new apps or do anything that’s not included in stock iOS.
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Have you ever gotten a new album or podcast, synced it over to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, then when you went to play the songs you discovered they were grayed out in the Music app? The album is there, the song title is there, but because the song is grey you can tap it all you want and nothing happens, the music won’t play. This is fairly common, and if you’ve run into it before it’s almost certainly nothing wrong with your music, iOS device, or iTunes, it’s probably just a transfer error. This usually means they songs are either not done transferring, or they haven’t transferred at all because the iOS device was disconnected from the computer before the transfer could complete. As a result, this is really easy to resolve:

• Relaunch iTunes on the Mac or PC and make sure the iOS device is connected either by USB cable or by wi-fi, then do either option 1 or option 2:
• 1: Resync the entire device completely
• 2: Selectively transfer the greyed songs only without syncing everything else by dragging and dropping them from the iTunes playlist to the iOS device
• Wait for the device to finish syncing before disconnecting again, as indicated by the disappearance of the spinning sync/transfer icons

Sometimes just reconnecting the device to a computer alone will restart the transfer too, this will be made obvious by the little spinning circle in the black iOS title bar and the same logo appearing alongside the device in iTunes. You can also open the Music app on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod and look at the grey songs, when they are transferring over again there will be an indicator showing you the progress of the song, when it reaches a full circle the song should appear black and be playable as usual.

It seems the grayed song issue is particularly prone to happen with syncing over wi-fi, and automatic syncing, both incredibly useful features that can have some hiccups if the wireless connection isn’t stable, there is heavy interference, a weak signal, or there are wifi or connection troubles in general.

There is always a possibility that songs aren’t transferring for other reasons, or that there is something else wrong. Here are some other possible problems and situations where you’ll end up with greyed out songs in the Music app:

• If connecting via physical cable, check if the device is fraying or torn, this could be impacting the sync and transfer. If so, you may need a new USB cable
• Try a different USB port
• Check for heavy interference on the wi-fi network, this is easy in OS X using Wi-Fi Diagnostics
• Determine if the music or songs play in iTunes, if they don’t play on the computer in iTunes, they may be corrupted or incomplete

In especially rare occasions, you may need to restore the entire device to get things working again too.

Update: Adobe apparently made some sort of error, and is not actually giving away any CS2 software for free. Here is what they have to say on their Community Forums:

On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated …

You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!

What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don’t require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.)

Instead, you should probably just get the best PS alternative around, Pixelmator, or download Gimp for free which is pretty capable too.

If you have an older Mac you’re in luck, because the entire Adobe Creative Suite 2 is available for free, including Acrobat, GoLive, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premier. Keep in mind that Adobe Creative Suite 2 (CS2) is dated from 2005, but if you have an older Mac (or Windows PC) that can support the old versions they’re actually very capable apps and for the most part aren’t too different from the gazillion dollar versions offered today. Here is all you need to do to download the apps:

• Create an Adobe account
• Head over to the Adobe download page and grab Creative Suite 2 apps for free
• Log into your Adobe account to get the serial number

Note this only works for older versions of Mac OS X that have Rosetta PPC support, meaning OS X 10.6.8 or earlier. Adobe is more specific is suggesting they only work for later versions of 10.2 to 10.4 but they will run in any version of OS X with Rosetta installed. Unfortunately that means OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users aren’t so lucky to get CS2 for free.

Update: Adobe’s site is getting hammered by all the attention this is getting and is often down, check back and refresh their download page from time to time and you should get through ok. The impatient can also check out a Slickdeals page which has direct download links to all of the disk images and installers.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in from Gizmodo

iTunes Home Sharing is a great way to share music libraries and playlists with others, but if you don’t want everyone to be able to sort through the shared library, you can easily require a password in order to access the shared playlists. This is perfect for situations where some content may be explicit and not appropriate for everyone to hear or see in your iTunes library, and it’s also excellent for when you only want to share and stream music with yourself from one computer to another, but you remain on the same network with others. Even for more mundane playlists it can still be a good idea to implement the password in multi-Mac households, offices, or schools, plus, you can combine it with sharing only specific playlists to hide that terribly embarrassing early 90’s music collection from everyone else in the office.

Requiring a password to access shared iTunes media can either be mandated during the initial Home Sharing setup, or it can be added after the fact to either the entire library or specific playlists, here’s how to do that:

• From iTunes, open Preferences and click on the “Sharing” tab
• Be sure Sharing is enabled, then either specify to share either the entire library, or only selected playlists
• To add password protection, check the box for “Require Password”, then enter a password that others will need to access the lists – if you intend to share the password with anyone else, do not use the same password here as you do with your administrator account or anything else
• Close out of iTunes Preferences

The next time someone goes to connect to the iTunes share, they will need to enter that set password to see and access the playlists or library. This applies to everyone, whether they are connecting from another Mac or PC running iTunes, or an iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone on the same network.

Find My iPhone and Find My iPad are security features that make it simple to locate lost iOS devices by tracking them on maps through GPS. A potential problem is that after a device has been lost, or perhaps more accurately, after a device has been stolen, GPS or Find My iPhone can be turned off which thereby disables the Find My iPhone service’s ability to track the missing device. A great fix for that is to use iOS Restrictions to prevent Location Services from being turned off at all, which basically forces GPS and Find My iPhone to stay on all the time. This means that as long as the device is turned on, GPS will be on, making it trackable the entire time.

Be sure you have gone through the process to set up Find My iPhone first, then proceed with the instructions below to lock down Location Services.

• Open Settings and tap on “General”
• Find “Restrictions” and tap on it, entering the password if it’s already enabled. If Restrictions it not yet enabled, at the next screen tap on “Enable Restrictions” and enter a password to access the feature
• Now scroll down to “Privacy” and tap on “Location Services”
• Make sure Location Services are turned ON, then scroll to the very bottom to verify that Find My iPhone is also turned ON
• Now go back to the very top (tap the titlebar to jump there), and choose “Don’t Allow Changes”
• Exit out of Settings

With this configured, there is now an additional layer of protection for the device with GPS and Find My iPhone forcibly left on. And yes, this works the same on an iPad or iPod touch too, though the accuracy of the Find My service is not going to be as reliable on a wi-fi only device, and thus we’re focusing on the iPhone here.

It’s a good idea to use a different password for accessing Restrictions than you do for your lock screen password, and if you’re traveling, prone to losing devices, or in a high risk theft area, consider placing a lock screen message on the device with your ownership information on it, which makes it particularly easy to return should a nice person get ahold of the phone.

G-Form, the makers of extreme protective cases for iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones, is demonstrating the effectiveness of their latest iPhone 5 case by sending a device 100,000′ into the atmosphere with a weather balloon, and then letting it free fall and crash land back to Earth. As you probably guessed, the device survives just fine, thanks to the impact absorbing shell of the Extreme case line, but even knowing that makes the video embedded below fun to watch:

G-Form has a knack for entertaining product demos, and they’ve thrown iPhones out of airplanes and tossed MacBooks out of two story windows, and done a similar 100,000 foot drop with an iPad. Obviously in each instance the device survives unscathed within the case,

Heads up to MacGasm for finding this one

The ability to block incoming calls on the iPhone is missing on older versions of iOS, and though new versions of iOS can block calls, older devices are left withthe Do Not Disturb feature. Do Not Disturb is excellent, but it’s not really blocking unwanted calls, it just sets a time period where any calls won’t bother you.

So what can you do if you want to actually block a phone call on the iPhone? You have a few options. You can attempt to contact your cellular carrier and request a specific number be blocked, but not all carriers support that option and you’ll be spending plenty of time on hold and bouncing around tech support menus to even find out if it’s possible. That’s not really viable for evryone though, which leaves a few iOS features as the next best thing, allowing you to create your very own do-it-yourself “block” list of sorts that is centralized and configured to be easily ignorable and also easy to add to.

1: Create an “Ignore” Contact for Numbers & People to Block

Though it may seem completely counterintuitive to create a contact for the people or numbers you don’t want to accept calls from, it’s necessary if you want to ignore those numbers by way of software.

• Open Contacts and tap the [+] button to add a new contact
• Name it “Ignore” or something similar, and tap on the number field, add every phone number you wish to ignore to this newly created contact

2: Turn Off Alerts, Vibrates, & Use Silent Ringtones for the Call List

Now that you have the “Ignore” contact created, we’ll disable every alert sound, tone, and vibration for the contact, causing each number within that list to fall silent.

• From the newly crafted “Ignore” contact, navigate down to the ringtone section, tap on it, and choose a silent ringtone. If you don’t have a silent ringtone handy, creating one takes just a moment or two with QuickTime Player
• Next, tap on “Vibration” under Ringtone and choose “Nothing”
• Now move on to text tones, and as the alert tone choose “None”
• Finally, go to “Vibration” under Text Tone and choose “Nothing”

3: Adding New Numbers to the Blocked List

Got a phone call from a new number you want to “block” and not be notified of again? No problem

• Send the caller to voicemail with a double-tap of the power button, let it ring out on mute, or answer it
• When the call is no longer active or ringing, tap the blue (>) arrow button next to the number in the Recents list
• Scroll down and choose “Add to Existing Contact”, locate the “Ignore” contact and add the number to that list, causing all texts, calls, and alerts to be nonexistent for the caller

Having a centralized “block” contact like this is also far more preferable to creating a bunch of different contacts for all numbers you want to ignore, because it will keep your address book clean and you only have to adjust the alert settings once. Keep in mind that inbound calls and texts from these numbers are still going to come through to the phone, they just won’t alert you or bother you in any way, making them easy to ignore.

This is very much a workaround obviously, but until a true block feature is either implemented at the iOS level or universally allowed from cell providers, it’s really the only choice we have.

Again, all modern versions of iOS support contact blocking natively so you won’t need to do use this list method, but for older devices, the block list works just fine.

Retrieving a list of preferred wireless networks can be helpful when troubleshooting wi-fi problems, amongst other reasons too. If you’re looking to print out a list of wi-fi networks the Mac has used as preferred and connected to before, the following trick will do just that!

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Managing slews of email can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts of ones day, but with the help of VIP lists in iOS and OS X you can help to weed through some of the nonsense by simply having defined persons get precedent over others. On the desktop side of things, we’ve discussed using VIP in OS X’s Mail app before, including having the new mail notification and alert only notify you when a VIP email has come through, and you can do something quite similar on the mobile side of things too with iOS. By setting a custom Alert tone for VIP lists, you’ll know by sound alone if a message is important enough to warrant a quick response, before you even look at your inbox.
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A new iPhone TV commercial titled “Dream” is running that focuses on the excellent Do Not Disturb feature of iOS, which allows you to block out certain hours where notifications, sounds, and alerts won’t bother you unless they’re from a pre-selected important list. The advertisement features the professional tennis player Williams sisters, playing table tennis against the narrator, which as other recent iPhone commercials, is Jeff Daniels voice, who says the following:

“Ever had a really cool dream? I’m having one right now. I don’t want to be disturbed, and I won’t, because before I went to sleep, I set this. Now my iPhone knows not to ring unless its important. Because disturbing this would just be… wrong.”

The ad is embedded below to view, and is airing on primetime TV now.

Ironically, the “Dream” commercial started airing right at the same time that a prominent Do Not Disturb bug came to light, whereby the feature wasn’t turning itself off automatically as scheduled to. That bug has been acknowledged by Apple and it resolves itself on January 7.

If you haven’t configured Do Not Disturb yet, here’s how to set it up the right way with schedules and exclusion lists, it works the same on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Ever wondered what maintenance is truly essential for a Mac? Maybe you’re wondering what the best backup solution is? Or maybe you just want to secure your Mac a bit more? Take the time for these simple digital resolutions to make your Mac perform better, be safer and more secure, plus give you some added peace of mind. We’ve broken these tips into three simple sections; system maintenance, file backups, and security measures, so follow along and your Mac will thank you for years to come.

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2012 is at it’s end, and just like with our favorite Mac tip collections of the year, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful multi-trick collection posts for iOS, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch too. Again, we are aiming to give you the absolute most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite multiple tip roundup posts and so we’re skipping the single walkthroughs and guides that we post every day. Read through them all and you’ll be mastering iOS with must-know tips, typing tricks, genuinely useful Siri commands, better iPhone macro photography, faster website access, and much more.

14 Must-Know Tips & Tricks for iPad
These usability tricks will help you get the absolute most out of your iPad.

6 Tips for Freeing Up Storage Space in iOS
Because of their smaller storage capacity, it’s easy to run out of storage on an iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Spend a few minutes with these tips though and you’ll be freeing up tons of space in iOS in no time at all.

6 Tips for Taking Better Macro Photos with iPhone
Improve your iPhone photography skills by learning how to take better close-up macro shots with the camera.

5 Tricks for Taking Panoramic Pictures with iPhone
Panorama Mode is a fantastic feature available to the latest iPhones, and you can learn to take panoramic photos the right way with these tricks.

8 Typing Tips for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch
Typing on the touch screen keyboards can be challenging, but you can type faster by using a variety of smart tricks for the iOS virtual keyboards

6 Tips to Improve Typing on the iPad
Speaking of typing in iOS, this a collection of ways that should improve your typing specifically for the iPad

7 Genuinely Great Uses for Siri
Siri is incredibly useful and can perform a lot more tasks than you may realize. If you aren’t using the iOS virtual voice assistant there is no better time to get started, you’ll be making hands-free phone calls, checking and replying to emails, getting movie times, and much more.

10 Tips to Reduce iPhone & iPad Personal Hotspot Data Use
The iPhone and iPad can both share their cellular internet connections and serve as a personal wi-fi router, but before you setup Personal Hotspot, consider these tips that can help you reduce your data usage so you can avoid costly overage fees.

3 Best Places to Sell Your Old iPhone
Did you get a new iPhone this year? If you have an old iPhone laying about, here are the three best places to sell it, letting you get the most cash for your old device. This is geared for iPhones, but it’ll pertain to iPads and iPods too…

2 Ways to Listen to Podcasts with Music App Again
The iOS Music app is often a better choice for listening to podcasts because it’s faster on many devices, and here are some simple ways to do that again after iOS 6.

2 Super Simple Tips to Get to Websites Faster in iOS
Sometimes the simplest tips are the most used, and these two are as easy as pie while letting you jump to websites faster than ever on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Happy New Year!

With 2012 coming to an end, OSXDaily.com is looking back and gathering some of the most useful Mac multi-tip and trick collection posts from the year past. Yes, we post individual tips and walkthroughs every day, but we’re aiming to give you the most bang for your reading buck here by focusing on our favorite roundups, so take the time to read them all and you’ll be mastering a wide range of Mac topics. From general OS X tips that improve Mac productivity, little known keyboard shortcuts, to some more advanced tips for the command line, we’ve got something for everyone at every skill level, so read on and learn some new tricks for the new year! (Don’t miss our favorite iOS, iPhone, and iPad tip roundups too!)

14 Must-Know Tips & Tricks for Mac OS X
Master these tips and tricks for OS X and you will be more productive on your Mac.

4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips
Maintaining your Mac is critical for optimal performance, but it shouldn’t be complicated. Here are a few super simple tips to follow to keep a Mac in tip-top shape.

9 Command Line Tricks for OS X You Should Know
Whether you’re an advanced user or just want to learn more about the command line that sits underneath OS X’s GUI layer, these terminal tricks are essential.

5 Quick Tips to Free Up Disk Space on a Mac
Everyone runs out of disk space sooner or later, but you may be surprised to find out where all your storage capacity has gone. Run through these quick tips and you’ll be freeing up tons of drive space on a Mac in no time.

8 Simple Tips to Speed Up an Older Mac (or Any Mac, Really)
Does your Mac need a speed boost? Things slow down over time, and while these easy tricks are aimed at older Macs, they’ll work to speed up any Mac, even the newest models.

9 Reasons a Mac is Running Slow, and What To Do About It
If your Mac feels like it’s running slower than it should, there are usually reasons why that is. We cover the 9 most common reasons Macs start to run slow, and more importantly, we tell you what to do about it so you can be back to normal again.

8 Tips to Protect a Mac from Viruses, Trojans, and Malware
Macs are much more resilient to viruses, trojans, and malware than Windows PC’s, but they’re not completely impervious. The good news is, Macs are extremely easy to protect against such baddies, and with some simple tips you can protect any Mac from almost all known threats.

11 Must-Have Free Apps for Macs
Whether you just got a brand new Mac or you just want to get some new apps, these 11 apps are essentials for any OS X user, and best of all, they’re completely free!

5 Tips to Make iTunes Look Normal Again
iTunes 11 completely changed the interface of Apple’s desktop media player and store, and while some people are OK with those interface changes, others would rather iTunes look familiar again. These tips will make iTunes 11 look normal again, so you won’t be fumbling around looking for podcasts, media, iOS devices, and that ever-useful sidebar.

10 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for the Open & Save Dialogs in Mac OS X
The Open & Save dialog windows are surely some of the most used in all of OS X, and these keyboard shortcuts will have you mastering those file dialogs in no time.

12 Keyboard Shortcuts for Navigating & Selecting Text in Mac OS X
For Mac users who type and write often – and who doesn’t? – learn these keystrokes that help you navigate and select text faster than ever before.

21 iTunes Keyboard Shorcuts
Master iTunes with keystrokes for just about everything, from accessing libraries to controlling your media library and playing music.

8 Shortcuts to Navigate the Mac OS X Dock
Did you know the OS X Dock can be navigated with just the keyboard? Forget the cursor, you can launch and switch apps easily without ever lifting your hands from the keys.

43 Gorgeous Secret Wallpapers in OS X Mountain Lion
Start the new year off with some beautiful new wallpapers that are already buried in OS X, all you need to do is uncover them!

If you’ve sent emails out with Siri before, you have probably noticed that Siri will often respond to the initial email request with an inquiry about what the mail subject or body should contain, making you respond with another phrase and continue a back-and-forth dialog with Siri until the to, subject, and message fields are completed. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that approach, but you can write complete emails with Siri much faster by using certain keywords in your speech commands.

The important keywords to use for complete mail messages are: “to”, “about”, and “and say”, and they must be used in a command format like so:

send email to [recipient] about [subject] and say [email body]

For example, to send a complete email addressed to “Danny DeVito” with the subject of “Taco Carts” and the body message of “I found the best taco cart ever” you would use a complete phrase with Siri like that shown below. The important keywords have been placed in bold to emphasize their placement in relation to the command:

Send an email to Danny Devito about Taco Carts, and say I found the best taco cart ever

Siri will write out the email as usual, but rather than requesting a body or subject from you again, it will fill everything in automatically, with the mail message immediately ready to send out. Siri will finish by asking if the message is ready to send, you can simply say “Yes” or tap the “Send” command on screen yourself.

This is significantly faster than the question and answer method that goes along with the standard “email name” command, give it a try with Siri yourself.

Siri is impressively useful in more ways than you may initially realize, don’t miss our other Siri tips to get more use out of the virtual voice assistant.

Thanks for the tip idea Greg

This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Dean K., a musician who uses his Mac setup for listening to music and editing.

• MacBook Pro Retina 15″ 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 – 16GB RAM – 256GB SSD
• MacBook Air 1.6GHz Core i5 – 4GB RAM – 128GB SSD
• iPad 3 – 16GB LTE
• MacBook Black 13″ 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo – 4GB RAM – 250GB HDD
• Belkin stand for MacBook
• Bose SoundDock Portable
• Apple Wireless Keyboard
• Apple Magic Mouse
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• Sennheister HD598 Headphones
• LaCie 4TB Thunderbolt external hard drive
• Lacie 1TB USB 3 external hard drive

Finding the black MacBook is a bit like playing Where’s Waldo, it’s barely visible under the MacBook Pro stand. The photo was taken with an iPhone 5 32GB.

Send us your Mac & Apple setup shots! Email a good picture or two, along with a brief description of hardware and what the hardware is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Minimally styled clock screen savers are fairly popular and we’ve shared a variety of them here before, but it’s hard to get more minimal than a binary clock. The aptly named BinaryClock is just that, a free and simple binary clock screen saver for OS X that has some nice color effects that change with the time. Binary clocks are also fun because the average person may look at it with utter confusion, while you’ll be able to read the time (and don’t worry, if you don’t know how to read binary clocks, we explain it simply below).

• Get BinaryClock free from GitHub

To install the quartz file as a screen saver, download the “BinaryClock.qtz” file from GitHub and save it to ~/Downloads or the desktop. Now launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose Desktop & Screen Saver. Locate the BinaryClock.qtz file and then drag and drop it into the preview pane of the Screen Saver preference panel to install it. Alternatively, but perhaps better for most advanced users, you can just toss the .qtz file into ~/Library/Screen Savers/ to install it manually.

BinaryClock has a few configuration options regarding the screen savers color schemes, and you can choose to hide or show the numbers on the clock itself. Speaking of showing numbers, if you’re new to reading binary clocks it’s best to keep them shown until you get the hang of reading the time.

How Do I Read a Binary Clock Anyway?

Though it may look foreign, it’s actually easier to read than you may think at first glance. This screen saver makes it even more simple because it doesn’t include the time in seconds as well, but the basic idea is just a matter of adding the highlighted numbers in the top row to get the hour, and adding the highlighted numbers in the bottom row to get the minutes. The screenshot below demonstrates this with the numbers shown, and once you remember the positions of the numbers you can hide them and the method remains the same.

You’ll find that not all binary clocks are positioned exactly the same way, but the method of telling the time is the same whether the numbers are shown in columns or rows.

Update: Right after publishing this, we discovered a minor albeit important typo in the BinaryClock screen saver, where in the minutes the 4 is duplicated twice, the 2nd of which should be the number 2. Basically, if you show the numbers but don’t correct that in your head, then the time will be off by two minutes. Presumably that bug will be fixed by the developer quickly, but anyone with knowledge of Quartz Composer can also do it themselves easily.

Update 2: The aforementioned typo has been fixed, that was quick!