MacTricksAndTips.com

This is a quick tip I stumbled upon while randomly messing around with my Mac. It is to do with hiding applications / windows on your Mac. Normally if you press Command + H with the current application open it will hide the windows for that app. However this can also be achieved if you press alt (or option key if you prefer to call it that) and click the dock icon of the app you want to hide. In the blink of an eye your Mac will hide every window for that selected application. This tip can also be extended if you press alt and select a different application. This will hide the application windows you are currently using and switch to the dock app you just selected.

This is a rather cool quick tip that can save you a lot of time. Most modern search boxes now a days have a drop down auto-complete feature to help you complete words a lot quicker, this is generally useful and can save you some time and effort. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could expand this auto-complete feature to more text boxes around your operating system. Thankfully you can. Simply press Command + Period (or full stop) and your Mac will bring up a list of words which you can use to complete the word you are typing.

If you ever get those random errors saying a file is in use by an application it can be quite difficult to figure out what is happening, and why the application wont close. Alternatively you may want to know what files an application is using to run, this can be useful in diagnosing problems. Although you can use a terminal command to find which files an application has open the Terminal output can be massive and take a long time to dig through to find the bit of information you may want. Today’s tip is going to show you how you can do this using Activity Monitor which is far more user friendly.

If you have an Apple Remote and you want to disable its usage on your Mac, for example in a School environment or you just don’t want the receiver switched on its very simple to do. This post will show you how to disable your remote control infrared receiver so it can’t be used any more.

I like RSS feeds, you can find mine here, and I usually use them all the time. What better way to use them than to integrate them into a screensaver. Luckily Mac OS X has a built in screen saver which allows you to do just this. Its great if you want to view your Twitter feed or your favourite RSS feed, while you Mac’s screen saver is running. This is a simple yet useful trick.

Some people hate using and having Spotligh turned on. It can use a lot of CPU and take up quite a bit of time with disk access. If you want to turn it off, there is hundreds of different methods and ways to do this. Most involve changing system files. Although this might be relatively straight forward it can produce some problems and may break the stability of your system. Today’s post will show you how to turn off Spotlight without having to fiddle with anything.

I stumbled across this little trick by accident, but I think it is rather cool. If you have ever used Exposé with a lot of windows open, you may find that they can get rather small, very small, especially if you have the option to show every window and not ones from a specific application. Instead of trying to search through these small windows using you can press the space bar while hovering over a window to bring into view.

This is a rather cool little trick that I want to share with you. If you have ever used the colour picker on your Mac (a screenshot is below), that little application window that appears every so often, and you want it up more frequently for what ever reason, it can be quite hard to do this. However with a little work around, and using Apple Script, you can create a small application of just the colour picker.