Platypus is an excellent utility that lets you turn virtually any script into a self-contained Mac OS X application. Free and remarkably simple to use, Platypus will support just about any shell script, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Tcl, AppleScript, Expect, and even other scripting languages.
Virtually everyone knows you can click the yellow pill button in the upper left corner of a window to minimize a window in Mac OS X, but there are actually a few other ways minimize windows faster than that. The first is my preferred method which is a quick keystroke, and the other lets you double-click anywhere to send a window hiding.
By far the fastest way to minimize windows is the Command+M keystroke, which works anywhere with the currently active window. You can modify it by adding an Option+H as well to minimize and hide everything including the currently active window with Command+Option+H+M
Longtime Mac users should be familiar with this feature which lets you double-click anywhere in the titlebar to minimize a window. To do this in OS X, you’ll have to enable the feature in preferences:
This feature has been around in various forms since the early days of Mac OS 7, 8, and 9, long before OS X came along.
Running out of iCloud backup capacity happens quick whether you have a single iPhone or a handful of iOS devices. You’ll know this has happened because you get a friendly popup informing you of “Not Enough Storage” and that the automatic backup can not occur as a result. So what to do? There’s really two choices, one is the most obvious and involves upgrading the iCloud account, and the other is free and relies on you more actively managing your backups.
Troubleshooting computer problems is never particularly fun, and with so many potential third party add-ons, plugins, extensions, scripts, and whatever else is buried into OS X, how are you supposed to find everything to help determine what’s causing an issue? You need Consultant’s Canary, because whether you’re troubleshooting your own Mac or someone else’s, it’s going to save you tons of time and hassle.
Consultant’s Canary is a free self-contained python script that lists an absurd amount of information about the OS X installation that it’s launched from, including general system information, all login items, overly privileged processes, and a whole slew of third party system changes and augmentations, including address book plugins, Automator actions, additional frameworks, Safari plugins and extensions, kernel extensions, launchd jobs and launch agents, Mail plugins, third party System Preference panels, screen savers, Spotlight add ons, startup items, and more. Got all that? In other words, virtually every third party add-on that is currently installed on the Mac will be found and reported back in an easy to follow list that even includes the full file paths to the found items. Nothing is modified however, leaving the task of determining what doesn’t belong in the lists up to you.
Using Consultant’s Canary is easy, you can run the standalone Consultant’s Canary app directly on a single Mac which launches Terminal and a python script on it’s own, or you could open the apps package to find the heart of the app “dispatcher.py” which could then be used over a network to remotely diagnose and troubleshoot multiple Macs. The same version of Consultant’s Canary will work on any version of OS X later than 10.5, including Lion.
CC may just be the ultimate troubleshooting aid for Mac OS X, a remarkable feet for a free utility, making it’s an absolute must-have addition to a Mac power users toolkit.
Thanks to Jean N for the great tip
Certain Wi-Fi networks require clients to use static IP addresses or manual DHCP information in order for a device to connect properly to that network. Adjusting the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to use a static IP address or manual DHCP settings is easy in iOS, here’s how you can do it with any version of iOS software.
This weeks Mac setup is brimming with hardware for both work and play. Coming to us from Terkel G, this awesome workstation features a couple of decked out Macs, iOS gear, and lots of other hardware for programming and making music. Hardware shown includes:
I don’t know a thing about music but this setup looks pretty great. The floating speakers above the desk is a nice touch too.
For anyone else who was wondering about the vi/vim cheat sheet wallpaper, we’ll post a link if we get our hands on it.
Want your Mac setup featured on OSXDaily? Send in a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a brief description of what you use your Apple gear for to osxdailycom@gmail.com
Ever wish you had a system wide equalizer to adjust all audio output in Mac OS X and not just in iTunes? Maybe you want to adjust the way all audio output sounds or maybe you just want to boost the output volume of the built-in Mac speakers. We’ll show you how to do both by creating your own universal EQ using two free tools, follow along:
Requirements
Download and install both Soundflower and AU Lab, you will then need to restart your Mac to have full access to the audio components. Once rebooted, follow along with the instructions below:
Optional final step: If you want the EQ settings to load on every Mac OS X boot, right-click on the AU Lab icon, go to Options, and select “Open at Login”
It’s important to note that AU Lab must be running in order for the equalizer to have an effect, keeping it running will consume a small amount of CPU resources but it’s much less process hungry than some of the third party alternatives available on the market.
A big thanks to Dan Wong for sending in this tip
A new report from Bloomberg appears to confirm rumors that the next iPhone will have a larger display. Although Bloomberg doesn’t mention a specific screen size, the earlier reports from Wall Street Journal and Reuters claim it will measure 4″ diagonally.
According to Bloomberg, the late Steve Jobs worked closely on the redesigned iPhone project before his death last year, reiterating rumors that surfaced last October that the so-called iPhone 5 was his last big project.
The report goes on to speculate the next iPhone will also include 4G LTE internet access, a longstanding rumor that gained significant strength after Apple released the 4G LTE equipped 3rd generation iPad.
No release date is known for the next iPhone, though most assumptions point to a release on the same Fall schedule set last year by the iPhone 4S, suggesting an announcement sometime around September or October.
Photo Stream is an excellent iCloud feature that automatically syncs all pictures taken on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to one anothers Photo libraries, and it will even sync with Mac OS X through the iPhoto app. Not everyone uses iPhoto to manage pictures though, and if you just want quick access to those pictures from the Mac Finder you can use a neat trick to access the entire iOS Photo Stream directly from the Mac desktop.
There are tons of interesting pictures posted to Instagram all the time, but unless you’re using the iPhone apps, the website, or Android app you can’t really see what’s going on there. That’s where Screenstagram comes in, it creates an attractive screen saver using an array of images pulled from either public photos or your personal Instagram feed, and sets those images as a lovely changing grid screen saver in Mac OS X or Windows.
A recent tip covered how to announce when a command line task finished by using OS X’s text-to-speech abilities. The obvious downside to that method is the sound makes it less useful to those who are using Macs in quiet environments like offices, schools, or libraries. An alternate solution is to use growlnotify to create a silent notification when a command line task has finished.
You will need the following for this to work:
Assuming both Growl and growlnotify have been installed, append growlnotify to the end of another command and use the -m flag to specify the notification message to use after the initial command has finished running. For example:
make install && growlnotify -m "Install Completed"
The Growl message “Install Completed” will appear when make install has finished running.
Growl also makes it simple to send notifications to other hosts running growl, this can be done with the -H flag and by specifying an IP address. This is helpful if you’re compiling something large on a desktop Mac and want to send the completion notification to a MacBook Air while you’re working elsewhere.
The notification icon and other details can be modified through growlnotify command as well, use the –help flag to see all the options.
Thanks to Theo & Jason for the tip idea
iOS updates can come with some unexpected surprises regarding battery life and iOS 5.1.1 isn’t much different. While there are a fair amount of reports of positive battery improvements not all of us were so lucky, the battery life on my iPad 3 absolutely tanked after updating to iOS 5.1.1.
After rebooting several times and trying a handful of troubleshooting solutions, I discovered this to be a fairly common issue with users who updated iOS through on-device OTA updates, though there doesn’t seem to be much explanation as to the cause. Fortunately the fix is simple, so if you have experienced a drop in device longevity after the 5.1.1 update try the solution below.
Before proceeding you should perform a quick manual back up through iCloud or iTunes just in case something goes wrong. This process resets all iOS device settings, meaning you will have to re-enter Wi-Fi passwords, auto-fill info, Apple ID, etc.
Battery life should be immediately improved, though a comment left on Apple Discussion Boards suggests letting the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch drain down to 0% and then recharging for an hour or so past 100% before disconnecting from a power source is a good follow-up.
This worked wonders for my 3rd gen iPad and battery life is now back to the 10+ hours I had before the update. If you’re still having problems you can try some of our past tips on improving and maximizing battery life for iDevices.
Apple has pushed out another update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3, as the anticipated summer public release of OS X 10.8 nears. The new build is 12A206j and can be downloaded through the Mac App Store by any registered Mac developer running 12A193i or later of Mountain Lion.
The latest build includes noticeable changes to Notification Center, Notes, Share Sheets, and several other prominent OS X 10.8 features. 12A206j also features many bug fixes though it continues to have a handful of prominent issues that are yet to be addressed. Additionally, some 2007 MacBook Pro models are currently missing support in the new version, though that is expected to be resolved in a future update.
Having a backup of your iOS device and its settings is important, so rather than completely disabling iOS backups in iTunes, you can choose to selectively disable only the automatic backup process. This is a much better solution because it allows you to create and retain local backups of an iPad, iPhone, or iPod when you want them, but they are no longer initiated on their own during the sync process.
The vast majority of users should retain the default behavior and allow iTunes to manage and back up your devices. This tip is intended for advanced users who have a compelling reason to disable the automated process.
Disable Automatic iTunes Backups
defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
Once automatic back ups are disabled, you can backup manually at any point by right-clicking on the device within iTunes sidebar and choosing “Back Up”, and you can continue to use iClouds manual initiation as well.
Re-Enable Automatic iOS Device Backups in iTunes
To reverse the change and re-enable automatic device backups, open Terminal and use the following defaults command before relaunching iTunes:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false
Both sides of this change should only impact iTunes and have no effect on iCloud behavior.
A big thanks to Matt for the tip left in our comments!
We’ve all had the experience of one of our favorite app getting updated and the new version being worse than the previous version. Maybe it’s more intrusive ads, maybe it’s a terribly annoying feature, whatever it is, a poor app update can easily ruin your app experience. The easiest way to avoid this potential letdown is to save a copy of iOS apps, allowing you to downgrade them if you discover the new version is worse. This is much easier to do than you may think, we’ll cover the process of saving a local backup of the app and also how to downgrade to the prior version if you dislike the newest iteration.
Note that if you backup exclusively through iCloud you won’t have this option because the apps will not be stored locally. You can always backup locally in addition to iCloud to prevent that being an issue.
This process is best done manually before you update an app.
Saving & Backing Up Individual iOS Apps
If you feel like it, you could backup that entire directory to another location, though that’s usually unnecessary.
Sidenote for Windows users: the directory you are looking for is: C:\Users\Username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications\
With the app backed up, you can now safely update to the newest version directly on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. If you decide the new version is awful, downgrading is very simple.
Downgrading to Previous Version of an iOS App
In some situations the older versions of apps won’t be compatible with the newest version of iOS, you’ll know this is the case because the app won’t launch when you attempt to open it on the iPhone/iPad, or you will get a message stating a new version is available and asking to upgrade.
Finally, if you use something like Time Machine, you can always dig through the Time Machine backups to access older versions of apps if you’re in a pinch, but it’s generally easiest to just keep a specific backup of an app if you prefer a past version.
The next generation iPhone will feature a 4″ display, according to two separate reports from Reuters and Wall Street Journal.
The dual reports appear to confirm long existing speculation that Apple would increase the size of the new iPhone screens from the current 3.5″ display to a larger 4″ display. Larger displays are increasingly common in the smartphone world, and both Reuters and WSJ cite competition from Android phones as part of the motivation to increase the screen size.
Other details are scant and the source of the information is the routinely vague “people familiar with the situation”, but WSJ and Reuters have a history of providing accurate Apple rumors and leaks in the past.
Assuming existing iPhone 5 rumors pan out, the next-gen phone could potentially include the following features:
The next iPhone is expected to launch later this year, likely around September or October.
Automatic termination is a feature of macOS since OS X Lion that comes from the realm of iOS, the idea is that after an app is unused for a period of time and becomes inactive, it will automatically terminate to free up resources for other tasks. With the help of the new auto-save feature, the user should theoretically never notice any of this going on and they can continue on with their work as usual when they need to, letting Mac OS X manage processes and resources for them without quitting apps or manual interaction through Activity Monitor.
Anytime an iOS device is connected to a computer it will sync and backup the device, and though the syncing process can be annoying sometimes, the backup process should be considered crucial so that you always have a way to restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod should anything go wrong.
With that said, there are a few limited situations where some users may want to disable the iTunes & iOS backup process completely, which is different than stopping iTunes from automatically syncing because it continues to allow for device syncing but minus the backing up aspect.
We’ll show you how to turn off backups, but we want to warn everyone this is not a good idea unless you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, leaving this option best for select jailbreakers or just for demonstration purposes.
defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES
With backups disabled nothing will be added to the local directory or iCloud, and anything already there can be deleted through iTunes or manually. Remember, disabling this feature removes the ability to restore an iOS device should you need to, which for 99.9% of people is a bad thing.
defaults delete com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled
The instructions above are intended for Mac OS X, but Windows users can disable the device backups by launching iTunes with a flag attached to it, this can be executed from the Run menu or by right-clicking iTunes:
"%ProgramFiles%\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt DeviceBackupsDisabled 1
To reenable backups with windows, change the 1 to a 0 and run iTunes exe again.
Thanks to Jeremy for the tips.
