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Access Wikipedia from Spotlight in Mac OS X

Nov 16, 2009 - 1 Comment

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:

Type Accented Letters with Accent Codes in Mac OS X

Nov 11, 2009 - 14 Comments

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.

Quickly execute new Terminal command from the Dock

Nov 10, 2009 - 4 Comments
Terminal icon in OS X

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

Securely Delete Files in Mac OS X from the Finder

Nov 9, 2009 - 2 Comments

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

How do I type the Cent Symbol on a Mac?

Nov 6, 2009 - 7 Comments

¢ 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:

How to Type the Apple Logo on Mac OS X

Nov 6, 2009 - 62 Comments
Type the Apple Logo with a keystroke

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

6 Must-Know Power Function Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac

Nov 6, 2009 - 7 Comments
Mac power button

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

Magnify Dock Icons Instantly in Mac OS X

Nov 5, 2009 - 5 Comments
Magnifying Dock icon animation in OS X

Even if you have the Mac Dock icon magnification turned off in your system preferences of Mac OS X, you can still force Dock icons to magnify on the fly by using a simple keystroke. This can be a helpful trick if a Mac Dock is set to be small and you want a better … Read More

Use Spotlight as a Calculator in Mac OS X

Nov 4, 2009 - 6 Comments

You can use Spotlight as a calculator on the Mac, and it actually works impressively well. Yes, the Spotlight search feature can do calculations! While many longtime OS X users probably know this, there are tons who are new to the Mac who aren’t aware that Spotlight is so robust, so the next time you … Read More

How to Stop Dock Icons from Animating in Mac OS X via defaults Command

Nov 3, 2009 - 2 Comments

The Mac OS X Dock becomes animated when an app is launching, with a continuous bouncing animation, and also when an app wants to get your attention, with a less consistent and more urgent animated bounce. Both of these can be effect alert methods, but they can also annoy some users. Regardless, you can make … Read More

Follow a Simple Apple Guide to Install Windows 7 on a Mac with Boot Camp

Nov 2, 2009 - 4 Comments

Bootcamp has been around a while, and it makes it pretty easy to install and run other Windows OS’s in conjunction with Mac OS X on the same Mac computer. It’s hard to have missed all the hooplah surrounding the Windows 7 launch, and many Mac users may want to try it out themselves, so … Read More

Why Disable The Caps Lock Key When You Can Reassign The Function?

Nov 2, 2009 - 6 Comments

Rather than disabling the Caps Lock key on your Mac, consider a better idea for many users: simply reassign the key to a new keyboard function. This means that if you press the Caps Lock button, instead of initiating THE SCREAMING CAPS LOCK ALL UPPERCASE function, it could trigger something like the Control button, Command … Read More

Sweep All Windows Into Another Spaces Screen on Mac

Nov 1, 2009 - 2 Comments

Need to migrate all of a Spaces set of windows to another Spaces screen in Mac OS X? Using a simple keystroke you can do just that. To sweep all of your open apps and windows into a group via Spaces, here’s what you need to do and a quick overview of how this great … Read More

Set a Local Domain to Ease Local Development

Oct 28, 2009 - 8 Comments
Terminal in macOS

If you’re a web developer you probably do a fair amount of development on your local machine using either the built-in Mac OS X Apache server or, in my case, something like MAMP. Because a local web server like this is really handy for testing this, you can make your local development life a bit … Read More

Play MP3’s, M4A, AAC, and Other Music Files from the Command Line

Oct 27, 2009 - 3 Comments
Terminal in macOS

Ever wanted to play music while you’re working in the command line? Maybe you want to play a podcast from the command line on Mac? With the command line tool ‘afplay’ you can do just that, you can play practically any audio file format, whether it’s M4A, AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, or whatever else is … Read More

Change File Associations in Mac OS X

Oct 25, 2009 - 31 Comments

It really drives me nuts when files can be of the same kind but different type open different apps, I want to open all my images in Preview and all my video files in VLC. You can make Mac OS X open every file of a certain format type with a certain application by changing … Read More

Force Safari to Open Target Links in New Tab Rather Than Window in Mac OS X

Oct 21, 2009 - 5 Comments

Mac users can issue a defaults command string to force Safari to open targeted new window links into new tabs instead of those new windows. This is handy if you open a lot of links that would usually launch a new window but would rather send them into easily managed tabs instead.

Bypass Mac Firmware Password

Oct 19, 2009 - 150 Comments

Need to get around the boot level Mac firmware password? You can bypass a firmware password by doing a little bit of a hardware hack. There’s many reasons you’d want to get around firmware protection, but here’s why we got the instructions from an anonymous submitter:

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