Customizing the Mac Finder window toolbars can be a good way to gain quicker access to features you use often, and to help navigate around the file system of OS X , but what if you overdo it and the toolbar becomes cluttered with way too many buttons and doo-dads, resulting in a toolbar that … Read More
If you’re coming to Mac OS X from elsewhere in the unix & x11 world, you might be used to the focus of Terminal windows following your mouse cursor. With a little command line magic, we can enable this hidden feature in the Mac OS X Terminal.app too.
Is that Magsafe cable cord getting in your way when using your Mac laptop? Try attaching the cord to the side of your Mac’s display by using the cables clip as shown in the pictures. This works with newer MacBook Pro’s, unibody MacBooks, and new MacBook Air too, it clips directly onto the side of … Read More
The Finder window sidebar makes navigation in Mac OS X easier, with quick access points to various aspects of a users home directory, as well as throughout the file system. Users can choose to show the Finder sidebar, or to hide the Finder sidebar, depending on their individual preferences.
Using the powerful ‘networksetup’ utility, we can connect to wireless networks directly from the command line of Mac OS X. The syntax you’ll want to use to accomplish joining a network is as follows: networksetup -setairportnetwork [interface] [router SSID] [password]
You can quickly launch a new styled Terminal window through the apps Mac OS X Dock icon. Just right-click (two-finger click for trackpad users) on the Terminal app, navigate to “New Window” select a preconfigured style.
You can find some interesting things in iOS apps that you’ve downloaded from the App Store, all you need to do is extract the file from its container and then you’re free to browse around like any other application package. This works with any iPhone or iPad app, and you’ll obviously need a Mac with … Read More
If you would like to see the folder sizes on the Mac, you can do so easily by enabling a folder size calculation when looking at directories in the List View of Finder in Mac OS X. What this trick does is show folder sizes on the Mac, calculated in megabytes, kilobytes, or gigabytes, depending … Read More
If you get easily distracted by things sitting around in the background, HazeOver might be for you. It’s a free utility that casts a shadow on all inactive windows, in other words, any window that isn’t in the foreground will be “hazed over.” Windows actually phase in and out of the shadow so it’s a … Read More
Booting a Mac with Verbose Mode can be a helpful troubleshooting trick for some obscure situations where users are trying to determine what is going wrong with a Mac during the system boot process. Just as it sounds, verbose mode is verbose, meaning it lists everything going on behind the scenes, and you’ll watch as … Read More
Want to use a rotated display on a MacBook? You can do exactly that, and the same way that you rotate screen orientation on a display connected to a Mac can be done with the built-in display of a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air (pictured).
Have iPad envy? Do you prefer the ease of the iOS interface? Maybe you just like the way iOS looks and want your Mac to resemble that user interface. By combining a few tips, we can make the Mac OS X desktop look a lot like iPad’s iOS: 1) Add Spacers to the Mac OS … Read More
Mac users can often reclaim significant disk space by clearing out their Downloads folder. Just how significant depends on the user, what they download, and if they tend to that directory often, but… See that screenshot? That’s my Macs Downloads folder measuring in at a whopping 26.18GB and begging for deletion. I’m a pretty savvy … Read More
Generally speaking, if you kill the Mac OS X Finder it will automatically restart itself as it should. We say “generally” because from time to time things don’t go exactly as planned, and on rare occasions the Finder won’t reopen itself after being killed, restarted, or manually quit. When the Finder doesn’t auto relaunch itself … Read More
A Macs startup drive can be changed during system boot by holding down the OPTION key, start holding down Option the moment you hear the boot chime sound and while the screen is still black, this will bring up the boot drive manager. From this startup boot disk menu, you can use the mouse or … Read More
For security reasons, it’s always a good idea to lock your Mac screen when you step away from the keyboard. On the other hand, there are times where you’ll be away from your Mac but you don’t want to have to re-enter your password to login, or you just don’t want your screensaver activating or … Read More
If you’ve ever needed to reboot in the middle of an iChat conversation you know how distracting it can be to your train of thought, plus it’s also a huge interruption to the flow of conversation. An easy solution to this is to set iChat to keep track of your last messages:
If you’ve been provided with an App Store promo code, here’s how to redeem it from the Mac App Store client and iOS App Store from iTunes: Redeem a Promo Code on the Mac App Store: Launch the Mac App Store From the Featured or Top Charts tab, look at the right side under “Quick … Read More
