Some OS X apps are so great and so universally useful that they earn the title of “must-have” on just about any Mac, and we’re bringing you an essential list of these must-have apps that also happen to be completely free. Whether you have a brand new Mac that needs some new apps and utilities … Read More
Knowing which wireless networks a Mac has been connected to in the past be can be helpful for a variety of reasons, including network troubleshooting, determining where a Mac has been, if a specific wifi password is recoverable, and a myriad of other technical reasons. Searching for past networks is completely different from finding currently … Read More
The next time you want to see a live preview of what a Font might look like without actually implementing it, use this great little trick to reveal a precise font preview anywhere in Mac OS X where the Fonts panel exists. All you need to do is open the Fonts window as usual, but … Read More
If you accidentally permitted a Mac app to gain access to things like your personal contacts list or location, or you’d just like to start over again and have granular control over which applications can access certain data, you can use the command line tool tccutil to change this and reset Mac app access to … Read More
Streaming Radio and podcasts are great features that are still around in iTunes 11, but along with much else the two have been shuffled around slightly, and in some cases aren’t visible by default for whatever reason. For Radio, check to see if the “Radio” tab is accessible. That will be found within the Music … Read More
Mac OS X allows you to set time limits for computer usage by way of Parental Controls. With the feature, you can set different limits to computer use for weekdays, weekends, and even set bed times, whereby the Mac would be unusable between some specified hours. This is obviously a good way to set computer … Read More
If you’re a frequent command line user, you’re likely to have found the history command to be quite useful before, whether it’s for discovering your most frequently used commands, dumping history and searching it to find specific past commands, listing all defaults commands used, or whatever else. That said, there are some obvious situations where … Read More
The ability to quickly find duplicate items in iTunes libraries is back in the latest version of iTunes 11 for both Mac OS X and Windows. First things first, you’ll need to update to iTunes 11.0.1 before attempting to use the feature again. Update to the newest version either through iTunes itself, or through Software … Read More
The Help Menu in OS X is an underused but great resource when trying to learn about new Mac apps, and it can even function as a keyboard-based action launcherto quickly access app features. If you’re using the Help Viewer to actually read help documentation though, you may have noticed that the windows default behavior … Read More
Did you know the photo screen savers in Mac OS X are interactive and can turn into slideshows? There’s really not a lot to this trick, just activate any of the Mac screen savers that rely on images and then use the left and right arrow keys to navigate forward and back between images in … Read More
Have you ever wished your MacBooks built-in trackpad could have a different acceleration curve than an external mouse? If you’re a gamer or digital artist, you probably have. Sure, Mac OS lets you control the tracking speeds separately, but the acceleration curve is a whole other beast. In you’re unfamiliar with cursor acceleration, we’ve discussed … Read More
If you want to be able to transfer music to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch wirelessly and without syncing everything on the device with iTunes, you’ll need to turn on iTunes Wi-Fi Sync. Yes, you read that correctly, in order to add a song to an iPhone (iPod, etc) wirelessly and without syncing the … Read More
The new iTunes interface can be a bit jolting at first, but whether you’re still trying to get the hang of the new iTunes 11 interface of you’ve already made the changes to bring some familiarity back to the app, you’ll find good use out of these keyboard shortcuts. We’ve split them up into three … Read More
Photos taken with digital cameras, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, all include some level of EXIF data, which is basically metadata with information about the image. With pictures taken from the iPhone and other smartphones, that data can even include details like precise geographic coordinates where the image was taken, (though that’s easy … Read More
Creating a new user account in Mac OS X either for yourself or for another person who may use your Mac is often a good idea. For another computer user, a separate user account insures that your data and their data is separate, effectively sharing the same computer but not the same files. For yourself, … Read More
The Contacts app in OS X makes sharing the contact information of anyone in your address book extremely simple, and if you have iCloud enabled you can share any address from your phone right from your Mac, without reaching for the iPhone itself:
If you upgraded to iTunes 11 you know the default view removed the sidebar with its playlist view. Sure it’s easy to show again, but if you’d rather keep with the new simplified user interface, don’t miss this simple trick to make a new playlist or add songs to a playlist, without using the standard … Read More
Advanced Mac users may have noticed that X11 is no longer bundled with OS X, and it’s also no longer available as a separate installation option through Developer Tools. Instead, to run X11 on OS X Mountain Lion (and later), you’ll want to download and install the free XQuartz system, which bundles all the necessary … Read More
