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Take a screen capture from the command line

Jul 11, 2010 - 3 Comments

Taking screenshots from the command line is made easy, thanks to a utility included in Mac OS X called screencapture. Here’s how to use it: screencapture test.jpg The screen capture will then appear in the directory that the command was executed. There are more advanced features to the screencapture utility though, here’s a few examples. … Read More

Transfer Photos from iPhone to Computer

Jul 10, 2010 - 280 Comments

You can easily transfer Photos from your iPhone to your computer, and the process is very similar whether you are on a Mac or PC. The Mac treats the iPhone like a digital camera, and Windows can treat the iPhone as either a digital camera or a file system, depending on how the photos are … Read More

Disable iPhone GPS & Geographic Tagging Data in iPhone Photos

Jul 9, 2010 - 8 Comments
Disabling Camera Location EXIF data on iPhone

Want to disable iPhone GPS geotagging of photos and the camera? Many users may wish to turn off geotagging on iPhone photos for privacy reasons. In case you didn’t know, the iPhone Camera defaults to storing GPS and geographic tagging information in the EXIF data of your iPhone images. If you don’t want this type … Read More

How to Access and Read the iPhone SMS Text Message Backup Files

Jul 8, 2010 - 179 Comments

If you want to access and read the iPhone SMS backup file, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll walk you through how to access this text message file, which contains all of an iPhones text messages, SMS, MMS, and iMessages, and also show you how to read the files contents. This trick works for … Read More

Manually Restore the Last Browsing Session in Safari on Mac OS X

Jul 8, 2010 - 8 Comments

Safari for Mac includes the ability to manually restore your last web browsing session, this is helpful if you want to get back to where you were before a session ended or closed. Unlike Firefox and Chrome, Safari won’t prompt you with the little “restore” button though. While modern versions of OS X will attempt … Read More

Test Wireless Signal Strength from Command Line of Mac OS X

Jul 7, 2010 - 6 Comments
Monitor Wi-Fi Signal Strength from Command Line of Mac OS X

If you’re trying to tweak a wireless router to get the best signal, being able to continuously measure the wi-fi signal strength while you toy with the antennas, placement, and whatever else on the network is really valuable. While most users are best served by using the Mac Wi-Fi Diagnostics app to monitor signal strength … Read More

Get iPhone Photo GPS & Geolocation Data

Jul 6, 2010 - 7 Comments

If you want to know exactly where a photo was taken with an iPhone, the actual image file can often tell you that thanks to it’s embedded GPS and geolocation data. This is often referred to as Geotagging, and it’s a little known feature that is used on almost all smartphone cameras by default, including … Read More

How to Resize a Window That is Too Big or Off Screen in Mac OS

Jul 5, 2010 - 70 Comments

There are times when you will find a windows sizing controls have been rendered inaccessible, the most likely cause is from changing the Mac’s resolution by hooking it up and then disconnecting it from an external display, however I have also seen poorly written javascripts resize windows to outrageous proportions as well. Additionally, sometimes a … Read More

How to Disable iPhone Data Use

Jul 2, 2010 - 6 Comments

Want to turn off all mobile data use on iPhone? The iPhone offers a feature that allows users to easily disable all iPhone data usage when on a cellular network. This means if you’re about to hit your bandwidth cap, you can simply toggle cellular data usage off and avoid any potential overage charges from … Read More

How to Adjust Display Brightness on Mac Precisely

Jul 1, 2010 - 8 Comments

If you need to adjust the brightness of a Mac display precisely, you can turn to two different tricks that offer precision control on just how bright a Macs screen is.

Set Spotlight Search Priorities in Mac OS X

Jun 30, 2010 - 4 Comments

You can easily adjust the search priorities in Spotlight so that other items are listed first in the Mac OS X Spotlight search results. For example, you could adjust the priorities so that files and documents are listed above apps, or so that images are shown above everything else. There are a ton of options … Read More

Change the Font Size of Text in Safari on Mac with Keyboard Shortcuts

Jun 29, 2010 - 3 Comments
Change the Font Size of Safari on a Mac

If you want to make reading a web page a bit easier on the Mac with Safari, you can issue some simple keyboard shortcuts to change the displayed font and text size on a page. To increase the Safari web browsers readable text size, hit the Command key and + key (plus key, it’s located … Read More

Customize the Mac Finder Window Background

Jun 28, 2010 - 22 Comments

Did you know that you can customize the backgrounds of any Finder windows in Mac OS X? This is a nnice way to customize the appearance of your Mac a bit, and you can either choose images or colors, or go with the default setting of a simple white background. In the screenshot above, the … Read More

Disable the Internal Microphone on your Mac

Jun 25, 2010 - 36 Comments
Disable Microphone on Mac

All Macs have a microphone included in them, but if you want to disable the internal microphone on your Mac, you can do so through a variety of methods. We’ll cover the two easiest approaches to turning off the microphone; reducing the input volume so that no sound is picked up by the microphone, and … Read More

Opt out of iAd location and data tracking cookies

Jun 23, 2010 - 5 Comments

You can opt out of Apple’s new iAd location and data tracking service, which will use gathered data on you to serve targeted ads through Apple’s new iAds platform. To opt out of iAd cookies, visit http://oo.apple.com from the device you wish to opt out with. Note that you must be running the latest iOS … Read More

How to Backup your iPhone to iTunes

Jun 22, 2010 - 53 Comments

Backing up an iPhone is important because it allows you to recover all of your personal data, apps, and stuff, if you ever need to restore the iPhone, upgrade it, or replace it with a new phone, all of which is done by restoring from the backups that are made. By default your iPhone will … Read More

Make Hidden Application Icons Translucent in the Dock of Mac OS X

Jun 22, 2010 - 19 Comments
Finder icon on the Mac

One of the more interesting little known Dock modifications on the Mac is the ability to make hidden app icons appear as translucent and muted in the Dock to indicate their hidden status. If you look carefully at the screenshots of the Mac Dock in this article you’ll see the effect, as some of the … Read More

Remove the “Last login” Message from the Terminal

Jun 22, 2010 - 4 Comments
Mac Terminal icon

When you launch a new Terminal window or tab in Mac OS X (and most linux distributions) you’ll be greeted with a little message, either some “last login” details, or maybe even a message from the admin from /etc/motd. The last login details are default in a new Mac OS X terminal session, whereas the … Read More

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