We often get asked what the single most useful Mac tip is, or what a handful of the best tricks are. It’s impossible to answer such a question given the diversity of use cases of OS X, but here’s a collection of what are surely some of the absolute best tips for Mac OS X … Read More
Keeping a portable Mac turned on while the lid remains closed is commonly referred to as clamshell mode. Clamshell mode basically docks the MacBook Air / Pro / etc and allows the GPU to power an external display only, which can help performance of some games and graphics intensive tasks. Additionally, some MacBook users just … Read More
Want to show a quick slideshow to your friends and family of pictures contained within Photo Stream? Assuming you already have Apple TV signed into your iCloud account, do the following: From the main Apple TV menu choose “Internet” and select “Photo Stream” Choose “Slideshow” to start the slideshow By default this will go through … Read More
You can redownload and reinstall any previously purchased apps that have since been deleted from an iOS device, even if you deleted them a long time ago or never even installed them in the first place. As long as the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is using the same Apple ID where the original app … Read More
Are you looking for a way to make the command line a bit more user friendly? If so, you may find Fish to be a pretty nice alternative shell whether you are completely new to the OS X Terminal or you just want some general assistance when at the command line.
Closed Captioning places written text at the bottom of video content, allowing for anyone to read along with the video rather than listen to the audio. This is an essential feature for certain accessibility purposes and for individuals who are hard of hearing, but it’s also just a useful feature to enable if you want … Read More
Do you need to check the sha1 hash of a string? You can easily find the sha1 hash of any string from the command line, and this trick works to check sha1 hash from Mac OS or Linux. We’ll use the openssl command to
If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, you can remotely wipe the device with the help of an excellent free service offered through iCloud called “Find My iPhone” (or Find My iPad, etc). This is perfect for situations where a lost device is long gone with no chance of recovery, because it erases anything … Read More
If you keep the Applications folder in the OS X Dock for quick app launching you’ve probably noticed it’s just a giant list of all the apps installed. Sure you can change the display to use a grid, list, or fan, but if you have a lot of apps you’ll still end up with a … Read More
Photoshop CS6 is arguably the best release of the image manipulation app from Adobe in a very long time. It’s feature packed and generally quite fast, but not everyone is pleased with it’s performance on some hardware. With that in mind we’ve compiled a list of tweaks, adjustments, and tricks to speed up Photoshop. Some … Read More
Everyone knows how easy it is to get music onto an iPod, iPhone, or iPad with the help of iTunes, but have you ever tried to get music off an iPod or iPhone and onto a new computer? As it turns out, transferring music from an iOS device and to a new or different computer … Read More
If you bought a new Mac with OS X Lion (or later) pre-installed you probably already have the voice of Siri enabled by default. Siri is actually called “Samantha”, but if you upgraded to OS X Lion manually from Snow Leopard you may have missed the addition of Siri’s voice completely, so here’s how to … Read More
Setting up SSH bookmarks within Terminal app is an easy way to quickly connect to remote machines. If you haven’t noticed these in Terminal before it’s probably because they aren’t labeled as bookmarks, and therefore the feature gets frequently overlooked by even the most advanced Mac users. Here’s how to create bookmarks within Terminal, and … Read More
You’ve been downloading tons of apps, books, music, and movies galore, and when you go to download the latest great app you find yourself unable to, confronted with a “Cannot Download – There is not enough available storage” message. What are you supposed to do when your iPhone, iPad, or iPod runs out of disk … Read More
Have you ever downloaded a file from the web, and then down the road wished you could retrieve the origin download address? Maybe you want to redownload the file or send the direct download link to a friend. Whatever the reason, you can get the downloaded files URL and copy it to your clipboard easily … Read More
Whether you’re a designer, gamer, or you just frequently switch color profiles to use different external displays, you’ll find ProfileMenu useful. As the name implies, ProfileMenu stores all color profiles in an OS X menu bar item that can be accessed from anywhere, allowing you to instantly switch from one profile to the next on … Read More
The newer versions of iOS include a fantastic text to speech engine that lets you select any text and have it spoken to you. This basically means you can have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch read you the content of any web page, notes, text files, or even eBooks and iBooks. Before you can … Read More
Whether you just like peace and quiet or you work in an environment that requires audio input and output to be disabled on a computer for security purposes, it’s fairly easy to accomplish in Mac OS X. We’ll cover how to handle turning off audio for both situations, the first uses mute for basic audio … Read More
