Frozen apps happen to the best of us for reasons we don’t always understand, and a Mac application can just suddenly become unresponsive and we see the spinning beachball of death (sometimes called SBOD for short). For those new to the Mac platform, getting around the spinning wait cursor might be confusing, so here’s two … Read More
There are several ways to go about changing the volume on your Mac, but did you know you can use the command line? I’m a big command line junkie so the more things I can do from the Terminal the better. If you want to adjust your system volume level directly from the command line, … Read More
There has never been a time when I am saving a document in Mac OS X that I don’t click the expand arrow to see the full save dialog screen. That little button is situated alongside the file name input, and when you click on it, you have access to the expanded dialog that allows … Read More
If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro you’ve probably noticed that it can get a bit warm, no surprise considering the tremendous amount of processing power stuffed into their respective cases. The cooling system is simple to understand; when your CPU load goes up, your fans will kick in. Well, not all users think … Read More
Regardless of how many Mac’s you administer, there will surely come a time when you’ll need to retrieve relevant System Information. This can be done from the graphical interface with the Apple System Profiler utility, but often you’ll need to pull system details from the terminal as well. Gathering system information from the command line … Read More
Preview is the default application to open just about any image or PDF file on your Mac, it’s a great program that blows anything comparable in the Windows world out of the water. One of the greatly underused features of Preview is the ability to view images and PDF files in full screen mode. Entering … Read More
When you click the yellow minimize button in Mac OS X, the snazzy Genie effect pulls the window into the Dock. Although you can change between the Genie and Scale effect from within the Dock preference pane, there is a third hidden effect that Apple has chosen to keep out of the preference pane. The … Read More
Any Mac user that has shared files from a Windows PC has surely found the always annoying and completely useless Thumbs.db files scattered around their directories. We’ve been asked about deleting Thumbs.db files a few times before, and typically we run a simple script from the command line, but there’s another even easier way of … Read More
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
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. … Read More
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 … Read More
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. … Read More
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:
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
Need to create an ultra-fast RAM disk in Mac OS X? We’ve got you covered with a command line trick that will generate a RAM disk of any size of your choosing. These instructions have been updated to support all versions of OS X, from modern releases to older ones too, so no matter what … Read More
