Restoring an iPhone to a previous backup is really easy, and though it’s fairly rare that you will need to restore an iPhone, or any other iOS device for that matter, it can still be necessary from time to time. What restoring from a backup does is pretty straight forward: it clears everything off the … Read More
Updated 5/9/2012: If you don’t have a credit card you can still create an iTunes account. Effectively this is creating a free iTunes account, with access to download all the great free apps and other free content from the App Store. Setup iTunes Account Without a Credit Card This is the process to create an … Read More
You can easily convert any WAV file to MP3 format by using one of two free methods we’ll detail below, both are simple and fast. The first trick uses iTunes, and the second tip uses a utility called All2MP3 to handle the audio file conversion. iTunes is ubiquitous and cross-platform with Windows and Mac OS … Read More
Ever wanted to know where exactly a specific file came from? Perhaps some document that appeared in the Downloads folder of a Mac, or maybe a weird file that’s laying on your desktop, what is the origin of that file? Maybe it’s an archive file, maybe its an mp3 or m4a file that you want … Read More
There are numerous ways to eject a DVD from a Mac, but using a relatively unknown menubar item you can do this directly from the menubar too. To enable this feature, navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ and double click on Eject.menu The easiest way to do this is with the “Go To Folder” key combo, which … Read More
You can watch what a process is doing with your filesystem by using the opensnoop command. To try this out, launch the Terminal and then follow along to learn how to watch by applications, file usage, process ID, and more.
Mac users can quickly get the bitrate of any MP3, m4a, or other audio file from the command line of Mac OS X.
If you’re looking for a discrete and barebones keylogger for Mac OS X, logkext will likely fit the bill. For the unfamiliar, a key logger does what it sounds like; it quite literally records every single key press and key stroke on a computer, and stores that typing data within an encrypted log file so … Read More
Have you ever closed a window that you really wish you didn’t in Safari? It’s pretty common to accidentally close an important tab or browser window, and sometimes the Safari app will even crash too. But don’t freak out, you can re-open your last browser sessions in Safari regardless of why they were closed. Session … Read More
You can easily hide or show the “Macintosh HD” main hard drive from the desktop of Mac OS X, along with any other internal volumes and removable drives by adjusting some Finder options. If you like to keep your disk drives available on the desktop for easy access like this, here’s what you can do … Read More
If you come across a song playing in iTunes that is not playing at an appropriate level, perhaps it’s playing back way too loud, or maybe it’s far too quiet and it doesn’t play loud enough for your preference, you can individually increase the volume level of any specific song in your iTunes Library. Likewise, … Read More
An underused feature of Mac OS X is the ability to use any Finder window as an application launcher. This is actually a feature of the Toolbar, which is usually thought to just hold things like the back and forward buttons, list and icon views, etc. But in fact, that same toolbar can launch apps … Read More
If you’re looking for a solution to triple boot Mac OS X with Linux and Windows without using Boot Camp, you can do this using a third party boot menu called rEFIt (get it? re-EFI-it? rEFIt?? Alrighty then). rEFIt works very well and, upon boot, you’ll discover a nice menu like the above screenshot on … Read More
If you need to convert a .docx file to .doc, don’t pay for one of the many conversion sites or utilities out there. Your Mac has the ability to handle the file conversion entirely on it’s own already built in, and it’s completely free, no downloads or third party software is required. To convert the … Read More
If you frequently access a file server from a Mac it’s pretty helpful to map the network drive to your desktop. There’s two ways to do this, one method is just mapped for one time use and will reset after a reboot, and another method is a more permanent route that allows the mapped network … Read More
This is a rather strange error message which you may see in Mac OS X, you’ll get the notification “Another device on the network is using your computer’s IP address” and then you’ll lose internet access with the dialog box telling you to try connecting again later. No thanks, we need internet access now! So … Read More
Here’s a Quick Look tip that’s pretty useful: you can zoom into any picture or PDF within Quick Look by holding down the Option key and then using the scroll wheel or trackpad. Try it out!
You can trim any MP3 file for free in Mac OS X thanks to the bundled QuickTime Player app, which comes preinstalled on every single Mac. Though we’ll cover trimming MP3’s, it turns out you can actually use QuickTime to trim just about any audio file, as the app supports many more other audio formats … Read More
