Want to open a Finder window from the current directory location in Terminal? Mac OS makes this easy! From the Mac Terminal, you can immediately open whatever folder or directory you are working within into the Finder of MacOS and Mac OS X by simply typing the a short command string and executing it. To … Read More
Most Mac users who want to schedule a Mac to startup at a specific time will use the Energy Saver schedule tool in System Preferences, but for the more technically savvy, another option is to schedule the boot time of a Mac through the command line. We’ll show you how to use the pmset command … Read More
With modern versions of Mac OS X you can input Chinese Characters directly into the trackpad! This is an extremely cool feature but requires a newer Mac with a multitouch trackpad as well, so it’s best for Mac laptops and the Magic Trackpad surface.
Got a Mac and a PC running Ubuntu and want to control both from one computer? Make your life easier and share a mouse and keyboard between the two machines using Synergy! There’s a nice walkthrough on how to do this at Donncha O Caoimh’s blog, don’t pass it up if you’re an Ubuntu user. … Read More
Did you know you can quickly copy a files path to the Terminal just by dragging and dropping the folder or file into the Terminal window? Try it out, open any terminal window then take something from the Finder and drop it into that Terminal, it’ll instantly print out the full path to the file, … Read More
You can suggest words while entering text into many applications by simply hitting the Option+Escape keys while typing in most OS X apps. This is so useful for writing. For example, if you can’t remember how to spell a word but remember that it starts with a V? No problem, type V and then hit … Read More
You can adjust your Mac’s sound volume level silently by holding down the Shift key and then pressing the volume up or volume down keys. This complete silences the audio feedback of quacking and beeping as the sound goes up and down, allowing you to change the volume without creating a bunch of noise. Remember, … Read More
You can easily resize any disk partition in Mac OS X using the included Disk Utility app, located in /Applications/Utilities, and you can even resize a mounted volume. In fact, you can grow or shrink HFS+ (Mac OS X) Partitions on the fly, with the resizing done live regardless of whether the drive is internal … Read More
Aliases are wildly useful on the Mac, offering quick access to anything in the file system. Most Mac users make aliases through the File menu, but did you know there’s a fast trick for dragging and dropping to create an alias of anything?
If you regularly use Spotlight (or Services) to access the dictionary app in Mac OS X, you may have noticed that with each definition a new window is spawned. This can quickly lead to clutter, which annoyed TUAW enough to ask MacOSXHints for a solution. Like magic, MacOSXHints provided one and that’s what we’re sharing … Read More
The Command-Tab key sequence in Mac OS X works to summon a quick application switcher, it’s an excellent trick that many advanced users frequently use to switch apps and help multitasking, but it seems lesser known amongst Mac users in general. Even if you know of the Command+Tab trick, it turns out there are many … Read More
Did you know you can quickly access Wikipedia from anywhere in OS X by using Spotlight? Yes seriously you can, similar to the Spotlight dictionary feature. Here’s how Wikipedia access from Mac OS X works:
Grave, tilde, acute, circumflex, umlaut… all the fun accent codes that you might need to use. So if you need to type an accented letter in Mac OS X, we’ll show you how to quickly type them using the special option key based keystroke modifiers.
If you have the Terminal application stored in your Dock on Mac OS X, you can quickly execute any new command by right-clicking (or control clicking) on the Dock icon and navigating up to “New Command” in the popup menu. This will prompt you for a command to run, which then launches into a terminal … Read More
You can securely delete files from Mac OS X right from the Finder. This is by far the simplest method to securely delete something on the Mac, and the process is pretty straight forward, very similar to the normal procedure of deleting a file except that you will access a separate option to enable the … Read More
¢ is the symbol for the Cent, and typing it on your Mac may not be as obvious as it should be. But like most of the other special characters, it is actually really easy to type out:
Want to type the Apple Logo with your Mac keyboard? The Apple logo is actually a special character available to type rather easily from a keyboard in OS X. This is a fun little typing trick that looks pretty cool too, here’s what it looks like typed out: Shown larger, it’s the exact … Read More
The next time you need to quickly reboot, shut down, log out, or sleep a Mac, all you need to do is hit the right keyboard shortcut. When we say quick we mean it here too, because these keyboard shortcuts will not prompt you to confirm, they are quite literally instantaneous in their results, and … Read More
