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Move Background Windows While Keeping Them Out of the Foreground in Mac OS X

Jan 4, 2012 - 4 Comments
Move background windows in Mac OS X

Want to shuffle around some windows in the background without bringing them into the foreground? Hold down the Command key, and then click on a windows titlebar, the window can now be moved and dragged around in the background without bringing it to the foreground. This should work in all versions of Mac OS X. … Read More

Format an External Hard Drive or USB Flash Drive for Mac OS X

Jan 4, 2012 - 75 Comments
Format a USB Flash Drive for use in Mac OS X

If you want to insure full Mac compatibility of a new external hard drive or flash disk, you’ll want to format the drive to the Mac OS Extended filesystem. This is particularly necessary for purchases of generic PC drives, which almost always come preformatted to be Windows compatible rather than for Mac OS X. Yes, … Read More

How to Enable TRIM for All SSD in Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Mavericks

Jan 3, 2012 - 23 Comments
Enable TRIM SSD Support in OS X Lion

If you have a third party SSD you probably noticed that Mac OS X Lion probably doesn’t support TRIM on the drive. While OS X Lion supports TRIM for all Apple SSD’s, many third party SSD’s are left without trim in OS X 10.7, OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, and OS X 10.10.

Show the Dock in Full Screen Apps in Mac OS X

Jan 3, 2012 - 12 Comments
Show Dock in Full Screen Apps

The Dock disappears whenever an app is put into Mac OS X full screen mode, but that doesn’t mean you can’t access the Dock if you need it. To show the Dock in a full screen app, swipe twice at the bottom of the screen, the first swipe won’t show anything but the second swipe … Read More

Open New man Page Windows from an Existing Terminal in OS X

Jan 2, 2012 - 2 Comments
open a man page from the Terminal in OS X

The Mac OS X Terminal includes a great feature that lets you quickly access new manual pages from any existing Terminal window.

Enable Screen Zoom in Mac OS X

Jan 2, 2012 - 21 Comments
Screen Zoom in OS X Lion

Screen zoom is a useful feature of Mac OS X that zooms into the screen where ever the cursor is located, making it easier to see parts of the screen, examine pixels, read small fonts, and perform other functions with greater visual clarity. The zoom feature was enabled by default in some earlier versions of … Read More

Get Full Use of an Apple Keyboard in Windows / Boot Camp

Jan 2, 2012 - 3 Comments
Apple Wireless Keyboard Helper for Windows

Mac users who have Windows running in Boot Camp will appreciate this utility which grants complete keyboard access equivalency to Apple keyboards in Windows. The appropriately named “Apple Wireless Keyboard Helper” is a nice free Windows tool that restores many of the Windows-specific functions and keys that are seemingly lost when using an Apple keyboard, … Read More

Manage Drives & Mounted Volumes from the Mac OS X Menu Bar with FreeSpaceTab

Dec 31, 2011 - 7 Comments
FreeSpace Tab

FreeSpaceTab is a free utility that lets you manage hard disks and mounted volumes directly from the Mac OS X menu bar. With an attractive and simple GUI, you can pull the menu down to see all mounted drives and partitions, arranged by volume type (local drives, disk images, network volumes, etc) as well as … Read More

How to Exclude Hard Drives and Folders from Spotlight Index in Mac OS X

Dec 30, 2011 - 13 Comments
Exclude drives and folders from Spotlight index

Spotlight is a wonderful feature of Mac OS X that lets you quickly find literally anything on a Mac by search, that includes files, apps, folders, emails, you name it, and Spotlight will find it, but sometimes you don’t want everything to be indexed. Whether that’s an external backup drive, a scratch disk, a directory … Read More

Manage Clipboard History in Mac OS X with ClipMenu

Dec 30, 2011 - 9 Comments
Clipboard History menu with ClipMenu

ClipMenu is an awesome free clipboard history manager for Mac OS X that keeps track of nearly anything copied into the clipboard, ranging from plain and rich text, URLs, images, even files.

How to Move Apps Out of the Applications Folder in Mac OS X

Dec 29, 2011 - 13 Comments
Move Applications out of the Applications folder in OS X Lion

Have you noticed when you try and move an application out of the /Applications folder in modern versions of Mac OS X, you will end up creating an alias of the app instead? What if you want to move an application out of the Applications folder of MacOS, and put the app somewhere else?

Turn the iPhone into a Scientific Calculator by Rotating Calculator App

Dec 29, 2011 - 21 Comments
Scientific Calculator for iPhone

Need to use a scientific calculator on the iPhone? Instead of downloading a new app, just do the following ot instantly transform your iPhone into a complete scientific calculator:

How to Check Wireless Signal Strength and Optimize WiFi Networks in Mac OS X

Dec 28, 2011 - 47 Comments
Monitor wireless signal strength

Wi-Fi Diagnostics is an incredibly useful utility to troubleshoot and optimize any wireless network and the signal strength of computers that are connecting to it. This utility first came bundled in Mac OS X Lion and works with all wireless routers and not only the Apple branded ones, meaning you can improve the performance of … Read More

Enable a Hidden Disc Eject Menu in OS X

Dec 28, 2011 - 8 Comments
Hidden disk eject menu

If you use a lot of DVD’s or CD’s on a regular basis, you may find some use enabling a hidden disk eject menu item. Once enabled, you’ll have a Finder pull down menu that lists discs, and selecting a disk from the menu ejects it: Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the Go To Folder … Read More

Show an iOS App in the Mac OS X Finder

Dec 28, 2011 - 1 Comment
Show an iOS app in the Finder

We recently showed you where iOS apps are stored locally on the computer, but if you just want to quickly access that folder or get to a single app in the Mac OS X Finder, you can do so with a right-click within iTunes: Open iTunes and click on “Apps” under the library listing Right-click … Read More

Remove Shadows from Mac OS X with ShadowKiller

Dec 27, 2011 - 16 Comments
Remove Shadows from Windows in Mac OS X

Ever wanted to remove shadows from windows, menus, and box items in Mac OS X? You can with a free tool called ShadowKiller, and it works in newish versions of OS X too. All you need to do is launch the app, the screen will flicker briefly, and all on screen windows will appear shadowless. … Read More

Show Folder History in Mac OS X with Back & Forward Buttons in Finder

Dec 27, 2011 - Leave a Comment
Use Finder's back buttons as history browser

The Back and Forward buttons in Mac OS X Finder work much like their respective buttons in Safari or another browser, meaning not only do they go page or forward within the file system, but now Finder windows also track folder browsing history. After you’ve visited several folders, click and hold on the Back button … Read More

Expand or Shrink All Details in Get Info Windows on Mac with an Option Click

Dec 26, 2011 - 5 Comments
Get Info

If you want quickly expand (or minimize) all of the detail sections within a Get Info window on a Mac, you can do so with a super simple keyboard shortcut. To get started, you’ll need to be in a Get Info panel. Just select a file and access Get Info by hitting Command+i to see … Read More

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