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I love watching movies and videos on my iPad. Its easy to sit on the Sofa an watch all of the home movies and other videos. The problem is iTunes, thus iPhones and iPads, only accepts mp4 videos with a specific codec. This means common formats such as .avi, .mkv, and many other video formats can’t be played on on your iOS device. There is a solution to this problem, we are going to convert the videos into a format that iTunes accepts, allowing us to play the videos on our favourite iOS device.

When you use Terminal there may arise a situation where you want to save the text or output that you have generated. This can be useful as a backup or a method to record what you have been doing. For example, if you want to save the list of files within a folder, this text can be saved for future reference. There are two methods to save out Terminal output. The first is to use the built in menu bar command, the second is to use a Terminal command. Both have there advantages and disadvantages.

Today’s post is going to show you a couple of hacks, tricks and tips for Apple Mail. By the end of this post you should be able to enable some hidden settings on your Mac. This post is very similar to the popular post of Finder hacks I posted a couple of weeks ago. All of these tricks will use Terminal. Open up the app within Applications > Utilities. Simply type each command into the window and hit enter. After every command if you want to see the effects, close and re-open Mail.

If you use Terminal a lot, or find yourself deep within your system you may want to find the size of a folder or file within the Terminal window. This can be done with a simple command. It allows you to find the size, which you can then use to work out if you have the right folder, or if it is going to beneficial to transfer the files over your network. This simple command allows you to output the size in a human readable format, so it will tell you if the size is in megabytes, gigabytes or a different size.

The dock is one of the most useful items, if you are new to the Mac or have used your OS for a while you find that you tend to go to it very frequently. If you like to have items organised you may want to add a spacer. This way you can have a section of work items, a section for games and a section for all of the other items in you dock. This quick Terminal trick will allow you to add a clear, icon sized, spacer to your dock. This allows a clear separation of dock items.

When your download any file off the web your Mac runs it through a built in malware checker to ensure it doesn’t contain anything that may harm your system This is a good way of ensuring your Mac has a small amount of protection. However, your Mac records every single file you download, and the source. I believe this is a bit of a privacy risk. This post is going to show you how to access this list, and how to delete it.

When you right click on any item (excluding Folders) in Finder you have the option to pick which applications you want to open the file with. For example with a text file you could open the file in TextEdit, Word and Pages to name a few. Depending on the type of file you are selecting you may have the option of a couple of applications to choose from, or many. Every so often this menu gets cluttered with duplicate items. It doesn’t happen very often but it is really annoying when it does. This tip is going to show you how to remove the duplicate items.

I have a quick tip that I would like to share with you. IN Mountain Lion the login screen significantly changed. One of these was the location of extra bits of information that would be displayed on your login screen. Useful stuff such as the hostname and the IP address. Items of information you can quickly access without needing to log on. Today’s post is going to show you how to do this in Moutnaion Lion. Its a quick Terminal command that takes a couple of seconds to do.