Updated: 11/27/2021 Ever wondered how to change the default web browser app on your Mac? Maybe you prefer Chrome to Safari, or maybe you want to use Firefox instead of Safari, or vice versa? Whatever your choice, it’s easy to do in macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS X Yosemite and new versions, and older versions of Mac OS X too. This is not an unusual question, in fact, one of our readers Sarah R. writes in wondering about her Macs default web browser set in Mac OS:

“I downloaded Firefox and accidentally clicked the button for it to be set as my default web browser. Now every time I open a link it goes into Firefox instead of Safari. How do I get back to Safari as my default? Help!”

Don’t worry Sarah (and everyone else!), this isn’t the first time we’ve been asked about changing the default web browser on the Mac, so allow us to explain the remarkably simple answer – you’ll be changed back to whatever web browser you want in no time at all, whether it’s Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or any other.

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Mac rumor site AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for a finder feature that would allow different sized icons to be within the same window, with the size of the icon being representative of that items importance. This feature would make a lot of sense for many directories that are crowded with loads of folders and files needed for the application to run, but largely useless for the user to see or interact with. Read on for a mock-up illustration of how this feature would appear within Mac OS X.

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Tim Russell, the man behind the disabling favicon tip for Firefox, sent us another good Firefox tidbit today:

“The worst thing about Firefox is undoubtedly that any image larger than your browser size is automatically resized, which has the effect of distorting pictures and generally being annoying. For some reason, Firefox didn’t include the ability to turn this on and off in the standard preferences, but you can do it easily with the about:config dialog, as follows…”

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One of the essential functions of the command line of Mac OS X, Linux, or any Unix, is understanding some basics about how to use pipes. Essentially, pipes allow you to direct the output of one command into the input of another command, allowing the following command to manipulate, adjust, or work with the prior commands return. Knowing how and when to use pipes is vital to effective command line usage, and it’s a core piece of knowledge for Terminal users.

Without further introduction, here’s some information on command line pipes, what they do, and most importantly, how to use the pipes to control command line output, effectively ‘piping’ it to elsewhere:

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Don’t like favicons in Firefox? You can disable the showing of Favicons in Firefox with a settings adjustment.

Tim Russell writes in with this tip: “If there’s one thing I hate about websites out there it’s the accompanying favicon’s that litter my browser tabs and bookmarks menu. Surely I’m not the only one that dislikes this so called feature, so if you want to turn off favicons this is all you have to do…”

We generally like favicon’s but to each their own, continue on for the simple instructions on how to disable them in Firefox.

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Many schools, employers, and countries restrict access to certain websites for any number of reasons. The easiest way to get around the restrictions is by browsing the web through anonymous proxies, and the web is littered with thousands of proxy sites that are capable of fulfilling this duty for you. But why use a third party site if you can setup a proxy server right on your own Mac? DressToSurvive walks you through the install and configuration process so you can do just that:

DressToSurvive: Anonymizing Proxy for OS X

If the above link isn’t working for you, try another walkthrough, like this one that made the news recently:
Setup an Anonymous Proxy for Iranians Using Squid in OS X

When it comes to increasing productivity within Mac OS X you can never know too many keyboard shortcuts. Found on the Mac developer blog, Theocacao, we’ve covered over half of these shortcuts before, but those that we haven’t are worth knowing, and those that we have are worth a reminder. Shortcut #6 is probably my favorite on the list, Option-Command-H, which hides all applications other than the frontmost one, immediately reducing distractions and clearing clutter. Repeated below are the rest from Theocacao.com:

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If you have ever looked at your Mac root directory and wondered what some of those other directories are for, you’re probably not alone. Mac OS got a whole lot more complex with the advent of Mac OS X, adapting a unix file structure that is largely unfamiliar to Mac OS 9 and Windows users. So just what is /System, /Library, /usr, and all the others for anyway?

Here you will find a brief overview of these directories, as well as an explanation of each system level directory as found in Mac OS X and macOS system software.

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Most of us use iTunes to transfer files to and from our iPod, but apparently you can also use the command line. Sasha Ingbram writes in with this tip: “I realize this is a controversial position to take, but I’m not always thrilled with iTunes and how long it takes to get things done. For me, going through the command this is much faster and more efficient rather than launching iTunes and waiting for the store to load and everything else. I found that you can transfer data to your iPod through the terminal though by using the following command:
cp -R /Volumes/YourIpod/iPod_Control/Music /Users/YourUserName/Music
of course you have to fill in your iPod name rather than YourIpod and your username rather than YourUserName.”

Thanks Sasha! We haven’t been able to test this one right now because we don’t have an iPod laying around at the moment, perhaps someone else can try it out.

Ever wished you could send the output of a command to a file or append that output to an existing file? That’s what redirects do. To put it simply, command line redirects allow you to take the output of certain commands and create new files or add to existing ones with this data, this is incredibly useful indeed, and the knowledge expands to OS X, Linux, and any other variant of Unix.

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Apple has just released an update to their Boot Camp software, although it still is technically in beta. If you don’t want to shell out the bucks for Parallels or VMWare but you want your Mac to run Microsoft Windows, Apple’s free Boot Camp is what you need. For those that don’t know, Boot Camp allows you to partition your Mac’s hard drive to be able to dual boot between Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista, choosing which OS to boot on system start.

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If you have ever wanted to turn a DMG file into an ISO file, look no further than the handy command line utility called hdiutil, which is bundled in all versions of OS X. This can be helpful for many reasons, but one of the primary reasons to convert a DMG to ISO is for compatibility. Perhaps your Mac doesn’t have a writable media drive, or it’s not up to speed, or the multitude of other reasons you’d want to have or burn an ISO from a PC rather than a DMG on your Mac.

Forget downloading the shareware apps that promise to convert DMG files to ISO, you can do it right from Mac OS X’s command line, for free, using the hdiutil command as outlined below.

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Love it or hate it, but we live in a multi-platform world with multiple operating systems. Sure we prefer Mac’s, but the chances are high that at some point you’ll have to interface your Mac with a PC to share files between the two machines, particularly if you are in an office environment or school. Heck, even at home, many of us have old PC’s around still with tons of files on them, even if they’re mostly collecting dust. This begs the question; “can you easily mount a Windows PC shared folder to your Mac?” – the answer is; you bet, and it’s quicker than you might think!
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Ever needed to eject a disc, cd, DVD, or media from the command line on a Mac? You can do that from the Terminal, as we’ll show here.

To eject a disc or media from the command line on Mac, open up your Terminal and type the following:
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Most new consumer Macs come with a built-in iSight / FaceTime camera which can be used for all sorts of fun, ranging from live video chatting in FaceTime, Skype, and iChat, to horsing around in Photo Booth, to using third party apps like Gawker to capture time lapse photography of whatever is going on. That hardware camera is located at the top of the screen as the little black dot on the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac.

Despite the many fun and harmless uses of the hardware Camera, there are some security concerns with having a built-in camera particularly in academic and institutional settings, and because of this some System Administrators have taped covers over the iSight and even removed them from the machines entirely. Thankfully, there’s a much easier way to disable the built-in iSight camera, all you have to do is move a file.

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Booting Mac OS X as usual shows the Apple logo and eventually you’ll wind up at a login screen or desktop, that’s attractive and all, but some users would prefer to see what’s going on behind the scenes. That’s what Verbose Boot Mode does, it shows you what is really happening during system startup on a Mac, and is great for troubleshooting purposes, but it can also just be interesting to see what exactly is going on during the MacOS and Mac OS X booting process.

Typically, if you wanted to boot in verbose mode on a per boot basis you would hit Command-V during startup, which brings up the familiar white on black console looking screen with a lot of scrolling text. On the other hand, some users may prefer to always see the complete verbose booting process on every boot including all kernel extension loading, details, and system messages on boot, and to do that you can adjust the firmware from the Terminal with the nvram command, as we’ll cover here.

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Yes we have covered UNO in the past, but todays release of version 1.5 is a complete rewrite, offering even more features and interface improvements. For those that don’t know, UNO offers interface enhancements to Mac OS X to remove the brushed metal interface, thus unifying the appearance of Mac OS X to more closely resemble the sleek iTunes GUI. The new version also finally fixes some interface troubles with iTunes and Quicktime. Useful? Not really, it’s pure eye candy. Check out the screenshot below, and unify your Mac’s GUI!

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Anytime you visit a website or do any other kind of DNS lookup, the IP address conveniently gets cached. While what’s convenient for most of us can be a real nuisance for others, particularly administrators who are moving around servers. This set of quick tips that Systems Administrators (and others) will surely appreciate covers flushing DNS caches in early release versions of Mac OS X system software, like 10.4, 10.3, 10.2, 10.1, and 10.0 (!).

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