Mac Tricks And Tips » Tip

Deleting Firefox Preferences On Your Mac

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:20:56 +0000

Hey

If you have ever played around with the preferences setting in Firefox (by typing about:config into the address bar), you may find out that you can quickly and easily add them to the list. Deleting them, however seems to be a lot harder. Basic commands such as pressing delete (or any such combination) don’t seem to work, neither is a delete menu present. To combat this you have to go down a different route. Since the preference options are simply saved in a file, we can edit this file and adjust the results as needed. You may need to delete preferences if you know (for certain) that something is wrong, or you have added an incorrect preference file and want to remove it. Most incorrect preference files usually get removed after a while, however its worth making sure.

To delete the preference file open up Finder and find the following path:

/Users/[name]/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[random letters].default

This stores a lot of your preferences and related files that Firefox uses. Within this list find a file called “pref.js” and open it in TextEdit or your favourite text editor.

Within this file you will find all of the user preferences that you set (not ones by the application itself, these are stored elsewhere). They take the format of:

user_pref(”preference.name”, value);

Look through the list and find the preference file you have added. To remove it, simply remove the line that the preference occupies. Save the file and restart Firefox. The changes should take effect and not be present when you type about:config in the address bar.

Its a simple tip, however I have used it once or twice when I want to delete a preference that I have added. If you have any more Firefox tips, please leave a comment below.

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Deleting Firefox Preferences On Your Mac

Changing Mail’s Copy Address Behaviour

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:49:44 +0000

Hey

This is a quick post about Mail. If you have ever copied an email address from any address field you will realise that if comes in the format of Name . Although these two parts are quite useful in certain situations, it may be more useful to change the format so you just get the email address. This way you can copy and paste it anywhere without the need to do any special formatting.

To change Mail’s copy format, open up Terminal and copy and paste the following.
defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

Restart Mail, and test to see if the command worked. Simply copy any address. Instead of being the name and email, only the email address will be present. I find this far more useful, especially when I need the address in certain situations.

To revert the process copy and paste the following into to Terminal.
defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool YES

Restart Mail again, and the format should be back to normal.

A simple tip, however I think it is very useful. If you have anything similar please leave a comment below.

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Changing Mail’s Copy Address Behaviour

Find The Location Of Recent Items

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:43:28 +0000

Hey

This is a quick tip that I would like to share with you. Its a handy short cut that can add a little bit more functionality to the recent items menu under the Apple menu item. If you have used this function before, every time you click on any of the items in the list it will load the item. For instance if you click on an application in the list, it will start the app, click on a file and the file will load and so on. If you press the Command key with this menu open, it will alter the menu state so it will take you to the menu item. This means when you click on the menu item a Finder window will open instead showing you the location of the recent item.

This can be useful if you want to open the containing folder of the item rather than loading it again. I use this option if a file loads and I can’t remember the original source.

There are hundreds of little tricks like this within the Mac operating system. Go around menu items and press Command, Control and Shift keys and see what happens. If you have any similar tricks, please leave a comment below.

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Find The Location Of Recent Items

Tracking Down System and Hidden Login Items

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:12:07 +0000

Hey

This post is going to be a continuation of a couple of old posts I wrote a while ago, How To Use Login Items and Speeding Up Login. They featured some basic and simple ways to remove login items. This post is based off one by OS X Daily, that found some of the other areas on your disk that contain the applications and preferences. I’m going to add a little bit of background to each of the folders (the preference files folder in particular), new users may end up deleting an important files located in the folders, and we don’t want that.

The first port of call is to check your System Preferences for login items. Before you go fiddling through all of these folders go to System Preferences > Accounts > [name] > Login Items. Check through that list and delete any applications you don’t want to run on start up. It may be basic but it is always worth checking.

System Folders

There are two locations where start up items can be located, the first is within the System files located on your hard drive, the second being in your User folder. The first set of files is located in /Library/StartUpItems, these files are used on start up when your computer is in boot. If you know there is a file or folder you want to remove since it is causing your trouble, delete it. Better still move it to a safe location and then restart to make sure the changes don’t do anything damaging. File located in this folder will more than likely be an application in one form or another.

The next step to check is /Library/LaunchDaemons, these are plist or preference files. They are essentially links to other preference files and applications. These files run on start up. To remove them from start up either delete them or move them to a different folder. If you don’t know what they do leave them be. Most of the time it is better to delete a file and then test it with a restart to make sure you haven’t broken anything. Preference files can be slightly difficult to understand however they tend to be formatted in the following way:

com.developer.program.plist

If you want to find out more, either google the program name and the developer to see which application it belongs to. More often than not it will be a defunct file which has been left, and it can be pretty safe to delete it. All of these files will be third party apps and not ones supplied by Apple.

Within the Library folder there is a second folder which contains a list of plist files. This is located in /Library/LaunchAgents, similar to the LaunchDaemons, these are plist files. Instead of running at startup, these run during login. These files apply to all users when they login.

We can now move on, this time into the System folder. First go to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. This is another folder that contains preference files, however this folder contains a lot of system files. These launch daemons run at start up, so its probably not a good idea to delete any of them, as you may find your computer may not work on start up. Only go into this folder if you know there is an application which is causing you trouble.

Similar to the Library folder there is also a LaunchAgents folder. This is under /System/Library/LaunchAgents, these are system items that run on login. Similar to the the System LaunchAgents there probably wont be anything in this folder worth checking out, however if you have a problematic application that messes about on login you can probably trace it back from this folder.

User Folders

The majority of launch items are in the Library and System folder as mentioned, however these is one in a User folder. Go to /Users/[name]/Library/LaunchAgents. There shouldn’t be many items in this folder, these are login items specific to that user when they login. So if one problem occurs when only one user logs in an not another, the problem may be found in this folder.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have understood all of the specific folders that contain login and start up item. If you are confused there is a simple rule to remember. LaunchAgents are when a user logs in, file can be global (for all users) or specific users. LaunchDaemons are when your Mac starts up as a result there is no specific folder for users. Within these type types there is also system and application folders. Third party applications are found in the Library folder, and System items are found under System/Library. Most of the time third part files are found in the library folder only.

It can be quite complicated to find the correct location for a file. However look through all of the folders and see if you can find the required folder. Then either delete the file or move it, before testing the result.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave one below.

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Tracking Down System and Hidden Login Items

Yellow Icon Design – High Quality Mac Icons

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:51:19 +0000

Hey

Today is only a quick post i’m afraid, University takes it toll. Anyway, I wanted to post this site for a while but I have never got round to it. If you ever get slightly bored of the current icon stylings of your Mac, you may want to replace them. You could search the Internet forever and a day trying to find a good solution and a good source of icons but you may come up trumps. Todays post is dedicated to Yellow Icon, who specialise in icon design. I wanted to show you some of the cool icons that they offer and how you can apply them on your Mac.

If you head over to the downloads page using the link above there is a variety of styles which you can use. I prefer the “flat” icons and Star Wars icons as shown in the images below.

To download the icons, select the Mac download buttons below the image. You will be given a zip file which you can then extract. Depending on the style you may be given a variety of icons to use.

To use an icon in an application or file select the icon you want to use and press Command + I. The icons are currently are set as folders with the icon design as the folder, it’s a little confusing so bare with me. Once you have opened the new icon, find the application or folder you want to apply it to. Again, press Command + I to bring up the info window.

The next step is to copy over the new icon design. Select the icon you want to copy in the Info window and press Command + C to copy it to the clipboard. Then select the destination location and press Command + V, if every thing goes according to plan, you should have a new icon in your application or folder. If you hear a “dunk” noise and nothing happening you need to change permissions. As shown in the image below, unlock the application by clicking on the lock and entering your password. Then under “everyone” change to “read & write”, if your name is present you could change the permissions to “read & write”, it doesn’t matter. Then copy over the file icon as before. To be safety conscious, change back the settings to the previous settings.

You are now done, rinse and repeat until you have changed all the icons you want. If you ever want to change it back, simply select the icon you want to revert and press delete. The icon should go back to the original after a couple of seconds.

In total I wanted to share this icon design website because I really like the designs they produce. Many times I have seen icons which are not up to the Mac quality I expect. If you have any high quality Mac icon designs from similar websites please leave a comment below.

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Yellow Icon Design – High Quality Mac Icons

Looking In Detail At Network Utility

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:16:58 +0000

Good afternoon.

Every so often I write a post explaining in a relatively large amount of detail one aspect of the Mac OS X core, in the past I have spoken about the Anatomy of Network Preferences, as well as various other posts. Today I am going to talk about Network Utility. Its a general purpose application which is found in your Utilities folder under Applications. If you haven’t guessed by the title its an application which is very useful for finding specific bits of information about your network and various other network utilities. It’s highly useful for people who are working with a network, and worth knowing about if you are not a network geek.

Most of the tools in Network Utilities and available from other locations, usually from the Terminal command line. The Network Utility app allows you to have all of the tools in one place and have an easy to use GUI placed on top, it also makes printing results (from File > Print) a lot easier. To access Network Utilities go to Applications > Utilities and double click on Network Utilities. The app will take a moment to load and configure itself. Once it has loaded you are ready to go, you should have a window open which looks something similar to the image below. Note that I am doing this review from Snow Leopard, older versions may have a different layout, but the core functions remain the same.

Info

The main screen is very basic and designed to give you a general overview of your network connections. It shows you hardware address, also known as a MAC address and is useful for knowing if you want to give specific hardware access from routers. IP address, pretty obvious inclusion. The link speed and status is good is you need to know the speed of your network. Finally the model, is the type of network card including in you Mac or the connection you are using. This is useful if you need to solve hardware specific problems.

On the right of the screen you get some basic transfer stats. Most of the time its a log of the sent and received packets. If you are getting network problems, such as poor performance and errors its highly likely you are dropping packets or there are collisions. Collisions shouldn’t happen on newer networks but may be prevalent if you run on older or damaged hardware.

The drop down box at the top of the page is used to select the type of connection. You can switch between Ethernet, Airport and any other connections you may have installed. Overall the info box is good to peel off quick statistics about your hardware.

Netstat

Netstat is really only useful for the hardcore administrators who need to figure out what is happening with the networks. For the every day person, such as myself, its not really needed. However if you need to learn a little bit more about your network or are just wondering what is going on, Netstat can provide a wide variety of information.

Netstat has four different states, with the information shown in the bottom half of the window. The routing information shows which IP addresses have connected to your Mac and how they are linked. Its quite complicated on how it works and more information can be found here.

The network statistics (second option) is quite interesting, it shows a lot of information on what you network is doing. It gives details such as the packet sent and received as well as various other statistics relating to network transfer. It is useful if have problems with your network or want to troubleshoot what is happening with your packets. Most of the time, it useful to look at, in a similar manner to the multicast information button.

The final option, socket connections, shows you which IP addressed you are connected to. This includes open ports and open connections. This is useful for snooping in on what is happening when you use your network.

Ping

The ping option is very simple. If you want to see if a web server or IP address is up and running you can use the ping option to see if it is alive. When you enter a web address or IP address, the ping option will see if it alive and return a message. If there is no reply you can assume the server or computer at the other end is offline or not accepting pings. This option is very useful if you find a website is down and want to see if it is running or not.

Lookup

The look up option is, again, used for people who need specific information about a server. The look up option gives you information on a server just as IP address, DNS server plus any other information if the server or computer is allowing that information to be sent. To find information on a server, enter an address, select “Any/All information” from the drop down list and press Lookup. The box will return any information it knows about the server you are trying to look up.

Traceroute

Traceroute and ping go hand in hand. Ping is used to see if the server is alive, traceroute is used to see the path to the final server. If you have a slow connection to a computer or server it may be worth seeing where the lag is in the network. I use this at home and on mini LAN’s to see the routes packets take. Simply type and address in the box, IP or otherwise, and press the button. The trace route will then run. It will take a fare bit of time and bandwidth but it will show every hope and jump it takes to reach the final server. The numbers on the right of the list is the time taken, anything around 100 to 300 ms is a good value. Anything in the thousands usually means a hold up. If you run this in a local network you can see where the hold up is by looking at the IP address and linking this to a piece of hardware.

Traceroute is very good at trouble shooting slow networks, its also very good at seeing how complicated the internet is and how many different routes a packet of data can take. For example from my computer to my server hosting this site takes 23 hops. This means it goes though 23 different bits of hardware and cables to get to its destination. From Sheffiled to my website in the USA a packet goes to the main switch in my block, the main servers for my Uni network, then around (what I think) is an education network within Britain. This packet is then bounced north to Leeds where it flys round a bit before going down to London. After taking a trip around London it enters the main exchange for the UK, where it flies across the Atlantic. When in America it goes through nine different routers before it enters my servers data centre, before finding my server and then my website. A long route done in (what is normally) about a second or two.

I can spend all day seeing where my packets go, and what connections it uses. Playing a side it is good to see where hold up’s are and if it is possible to correct them.

Whois

If you want to find the information behind a website the best way to do this normally is through the contact form a website provides. However if one doesn’t exist, and you need one for legal reasons or otherwise, the Whois is the way to go. With this enter a website and then pick a Whois server. I recommend adding “whois.godaddy.com” to the server box if you don’t get any meaningful results.

Finger

Finger is a very old protocol which was originally designed to find information about a user on a network. Nowadays its not really used due to security and other concerns. However you can find information on your network if you type your name into the box. Although I haven’t tested it it will probably work for other users on your Mac and small home network. Overall this is one option you can probably ignore.

Port Scan

The final option within Network Utility is the port scan option. This is used when you have ports open so can receive requests from other people. This usually includes the “Sharing” options within System Preferences. Any options which you have selected will usually show up here. I like to use this utility to find vulnerabilities and open ports on my Mac and other computers within the network. You can use it on other computers over the net however you usually don’t yeild useful results. I don’t have any ports open so the image below doesn’t show much information.

Conclusion

To conclude Network Utilities has a lot of options. For most people you only really need to use Ping, Traceroute, Whois and occasionally Port Scan. Have a play around with the app and see what information you can yield from it. Its good fun to play with, especially the Traceroute.

If you want to lean more about networking and TCP/IP there are plenty of resources. One of the best is to search the internet to see what you can find. If you like your information in a book there is plenty of resources out there, some good ones include TCP/IP For Dummies for general networking stuff and Mac OS X Unix Toolbox as a general Unix guide. A lot of the actions in Network Utility can be done through Terminal.

If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment below.

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Looking In Detail At Network Utility

Change Default iCal Event Length

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:22:47 +0000

Hello

This is going to be a quick tip for any users who regularly use iCal. When you create a new event, either in the day, week or month viewer you will realise that the length of the event is one hour long, for most people this is fine. However if you regularly have meetings which are half an hour long, or book rooms for two ours at a time, it may be beneficial and more efficient to adjust the default meeting time. This means you don’t have to fiddle around with the length slot if you regularly use the same event length.

This trick, as many tricks on this site do, uses Terminal. Open it up from Applications > Utilities. Then type or copy and paste, the following and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15

This will change the default event length to 15 minutes. To see the results re-open iCal if you already have it open. The number at the end represents how long the new iCal event will be. You can change this to any length you want, 10 for ten minutes in length or 120 for two hours in length. Don’t make it too small otherwise it may be difficult to see the event in iCal. For example if you set the iCal event to 1 minute long, all you will see is a small strip in iCal and you may find it difficult to adjust the time.

If you want to reset it back to the default time of one hour, simply change the value to 60. You could delete the preference option with this command:

defaults delete com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event'

Again, restart iCal to see the effect. Note that if you don’t restart it will take about 10 minutes for the preference to kick in. Restarting allows you to see the effect straight away.

If you have any questions of comments please leave a comment below. If you want to find out more iCal tricks, either use the related links below. If you fancy a cool book to ready with lots of tips and tricks I recommend Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual. Its a good book with plenty of tricks.

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Change Default iCal Event Length

Disable Front Row’s Keyboard Short Cut

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:04:59 +0000

Good Evening,

Normally Front Row, Apple’s multimedia interface which I haven’t used in a long time, is accessed by either pressing the keyboard short cut, using the Apple remote or clicking on the applications icon in Finder. I have found that using the short cut (Command + Escape) is a bit cumbersome, I also end up pressing it every so often while I am working. If you don’t use Front Row it can be a good idea to disable to short cut to stop being interrupted by the application starting up.

Disabling Front Row’s short cut is very simple. It involves going into the system wide keyboard short cut preferences and removing the option. To access this go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Front Row. Within this option simply un-check the box denoted by the big red arrow in the image below. If you still want to use a short cut but one that is different, you can change it by double clicking on the short cut on the right hand side of the option.

If you have an Apple Remote, either the new one or old one, you can disable it. This can be used to disable access to Front Row and any app for which the remote uses. This can be useful if you have a family member or pet that likes to play with your remote while you are using your Mac. To disable the remote go to System Preferences > Security > General and check the button at the bottom of the list that says “Disable remote control infrared receiver”.

Your remote will now not work with your Mac, simply un-check the box to re-enable your remote.

A simple trick today, however one I know doubt you will find useful at some point.

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Disable Front Row’s Keyboard Short Cut

Add Text To Your Login Screen

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:00:48 +0000

Hey

Today’s post is all about adding a welcome message to your login screen. Most of the time it displays a list of users and options to restart, shut down or log into your Mac. This string of text can be very useful if you have a fear of your Mac getting stolen or mixed up with other Mac’s. The string is short but can be used to display a useful bit of information. This post took me about 15 minutes to research and put together, and about an hour to try and grab a screen shot of the screen in action (I never found a working solution).

To do this little trick fire up Terminal. This is located in Applications > Utilities. Within it copy and paste the following:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "Your Message Here"

If you want to change the message alter it in TextEdit (quickest method) and then paste it into Terminal. You will be asked to supply your admin password. Once as the command runs the message will be changed. Use the quick log out option to see your handy work. The switch will probably take a long time. I thought my Mac had crashed but when the screen eventually loads you will see above the list of user name the piece of text you have just added.

Useful information can include your name, address of a piece of unique information such as your address, email, phone etc, something that can only be linked to you. This means that if you Mac get stolen and the user name deleted it will be easily identifiable to you. Unless your thief reads this blog and has read this tip, it will be very hard for them to get rid of this bit of information. If you know your Mac wont get stolen add something funny or humorous. The text can only be one line. I’m not sure of the length however I would keep it short.

If you want to change it back and remove the text simply copy and paste the following into Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText ""

The text will be gone.

If you want to learn more about Terminal command, either search this site or read some of the cool Terminal books on the market. I recommend MAC OS X UNIX Toolbox or Mac Command Line: Unix Under the Hood. There is plenty of resources out there.

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Add Text To Your Login Screen

Copying Files – Error Code 0

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:05:10 +0000

Hey

While moving some large files around the other day I came across a rather funny code that got me confused for quite a while. Every time I tried to copy the file it would throw up an error box saying the file can’t be copied, an “unexpected error has occurred, code 0″. The solution was decisively simple and very easy to overcome. Its due to the FAT32 partitioning system I was copying to. This post is going to explain how you can get around it.

FAT32 has a file size limit. You can read more about it on wikipedia. Due to the way the allocation is set, it wont allow files bigger than 4GB. This wasn’t a problem years ago when files didn’t get this big, but with home movies and large files in general this limit can be reached. With normal day to day operations with your Mac you won’t encounter this problem. However it may come across if you are using a FAT drive or USB stick.

There are two ways to get around this problem. The first is to format your destination drive to a different format, for example you can convert it to HFS which can be used by your Mac. You may run into problems if you want to use Windows. Alternatively you can use a plugin such as NTFS-3G to write to NTFS drives, this allows you to write to it on Windows and Mac and have large file sizes. For a table on formats I recommend this one. Formatting drives can be done in Disk Utility in Applications > Utilities. Formatting can be a bit of a pain. The best way is to split the file up using an application.

One method on reducing files sizes is to archive it. Most of the time this wont do much in terms of file size and you still may end up with a large file. The best way then, is to split up the file into smaller chunks. The best method is to use an app called Split&Concat. This app takes a file and splits it up into small chunks of your choosing. You can then put it on a memory stick moving it a different location and then put it back together again. There is similar apps for Windows and I assume Linux.

Hopefully you understand the problem that is faced by moving large files. There is different ways to store data, each of these have different limitations and can only be read by certain types of operating system. One file allocation system may be too much to ask. As a result the best way to transfer large files with this limitation is to split them up, or find a different way of moving them.

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Copying Files – Error Code 0

Solving Minor Problems (incl Crashes) In Apps

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:51:27 +0000

Hey

This is a post based on a response from a question someone emailed me the other day. If you ever have a minor problem with an application that doesn’t seem to disappear after a while and solve itself, for example the wrong email address with a name in Mail, the solution is very simple. This post is designed to target new users to the Mac who may not have experienced this kind of behaviour. The solutions are deleting cache and preference files. This post wont solve problems caused by bad coding in applications. Just problems that have shown the correct results (i.e a named entry in a database) before and have suddenly broken themselves. This should be a solution to 99.9% of minor problems and only really needs to be done every couple of months.

Restart

The quickest way of solving minor problems in applications is to restart the app. This will clear the RAM (where the problem may be stored) and allow the program to start a fresh. This generally clears problems relating to wrong names, or incorrect dates, times etc. It allows the program to read from the cache again.

Cache

Some problems may need a little bit more work. The majority of Mac apps run from a cache. If this cache gets corrupted and isn’t updated it can produce minor errors. To delete the cache relating to a program go to /Users/[name]/Library/Caches , find the folder relating to the application and delete it. Make sure the app you want to solve is closed before hand. When you restart the app it should have cleared any problems. Some cache files may also be stored in /Library/Caches, although unlikely.

If deleting the app results in any adverse effects (it shouldn’t do), simply close the program and move the cache files back from the Trash into there original location.

Preferences

Apps on your Mac run with a combination of caches and preference files. Caches store data in a quick and easy to access method. Preferences store information relating to logins and settings. Corrupt or incorrect preference files may cause applications to crash or behave incorrectly. You can delete the preference file and hopefully solve any problems. Please note that, deleting preferences will set the application back to “new” so you may have to enter serial codes, apply users again. However if you have an app that is constantly crashing but didn’t before this may be a solution. Before you start make sure any apps are closed.

Preference files are stored in Library/Preferences , these mostly relate to system applications. Most commonly preference files are stored in /Users/[name]/Library/Preferences. In a similar vein to the cache files, if it doesn’t work (and you want to retrieve your settings) simply drag the preference file back to it original location.

Update

The final solution is to upgrade (or downgrade) you application. Go to the developers website to see if there is a newer version. It may be worth contacting the developer and filing a bug report if you think it may help.

Hopefully these methods will work for you, I recommend you restart and delete caches files before you try anything else. It may also be worth considering moving to a different app. If you have any other solutions please leave a comment below.

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Solving Minor Problems (incl Crashes) In Apps

Maximise iTunes (The Little Green Button)

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:48:46 +0000

Hey

After playing around with iTunes for a bit, I suddenly realised that the little green button which you use to maximise and application doesn’t work as it would intend to. Instead it changes iTunes to the mini-player. You can normally maximise iTunes by pressing Alt and then clicking on the green button, however this is one extra button and I am not prepared to press that button in my day to day activities, I am busy enough as it is. So I found a quick Terminal preference command which allows you to change this function. In hindsight it took me longer to find the command than it would have to keep pressing Alt.

To change iTunes green button function from switching to mini player to maximising iTunes type the following into Terminal. Terminal is found under Applications > Utilities.
defaults write com.apple.iTunes zoom-to-window -bool YES

Restart iTunes if you don’t already have it closed. The function of the green button should have changed. You can now maximise iTunes by pressing the maximise button. If you want to switch the mini player, press Alt plus the green button. The roles have changed.

If you want to reverse the functions back to the original preferences type the following into Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes zoom-to-window -bool NO

Restart iTunes if needed.

A quick little tip, however one that I find very useful.

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Maximise iTunes (The Little Green Button)

Quick Terminal Trick – Making It Transparent

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:07:34 +0000

Hey

Here is a quick tip to start off the weekend (I promise more tricks this weekend). This is a very simple but useful tip that I have employed over the last couple of days to quickly see the results of a Terminal command. It involves making the Terminal windows transparent. Its a bit of a hack, however I think it is quite useful.

The first step is to enable the tab bar, this is under View > Show Tab Bar. This usually enables you to have more than one tab at once, that tip is quite useful in its own (you can open a new tab under Shell > New Tab. Once as you have the tab bar open, you can select the tab at the top of the Terminal window and slightly drag it. This usually moves a tab around, however in the process it makes it invisible. Once you get used to moving the tabs around you can quickly get used to moving the tab slightly to make it invisible.

If you want modify Terminal even more there is plenty of preferences go to Terminal > Preferences > Settings, here you can change how Terminal looks and behaves.

I hope you enjoy this quick tip. Its only small (I don’t have a lot of time), there should be more coming this weekend.

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Quick Terminal Trick – Making It Transparent

Enable Folder Previews In Snow Leopard

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:19:38 +0000

Hey

This is a very simple little trick which you can enable in Snow Leopard. In essence it provides a thumbnail preview of the contents of any folder. This is quite useful for quickly looking inside a folder. All it involves is a simple Terminal line.

The first step is to disable any Quicklook plugins you may have installed. For example you may have installed the Folder Viewer. This is found in /Library/Quicklook . Simply delete the .qlgenerator file or move it out of the folder. This will remove the plugin from the Quicklook program. The next step is to apply the Terminal code.

Open up Terminal, located in Applications > Utilities. Copy and Paste (or type) the following.

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1; killall Finder;

This will apply the code to enable previews and restart Finder for the changes to take effect. Its not that useful, however if you don’t have a plugin it can be an added bonus. Since it runs using Quicklook any file preview will be rendered.

Its fun to enable, however I recommend installing the Folder Viewer as mentioned in the begging of this post.

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Enable Folder Previews In Snow Leopard

Disable Ads In Safari

admin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:08:10 +0000

Hey

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of days, University has got really busy and I had no free time at all to do any post. The weekend however has arrived and I have some free time to do some work. Todays post will be about blocking adverts on websites while using Safari. I find that adverts on web pages are getting more an more annoying and some, inevitably, need to be removed from view.

This plugin for Safari is very similar to one for Firefox, called Adblock Plus. They are both designed to block adverts from view. These can include those really annoying half page ones that pop up, or adverts that make no sense and you don’t want to see. Its also very useful if you run on a limited connection and want to save the bandwidth. Some, especially Flash, adverts take up a lot of bandwidth and you may want to remove them.

To install Safar Adblock, head over to this website. Here you can download and install the plugin. You do need Mac OS X 10.5+ and if you are a Snow Leopard user you have to run Safari in 32-bit mode for the plugin to work. Its a useful little plugin which enables your web surfing to be clutter free.

If you have a similar Safari plugin or one you want to share, please leave a comment below. If you want to learn more from Safari I recommend Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual.

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Disable Ads In Safari

Editing Startup Items On Your Mac

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:49:13 +0000

Hey

I find the tip in this post quite useful for sorting out start up problems and finding out while start up takes a long time, however you can also use it to run programs before you log in. This trick is going to show you how you can modify your start up items. When you Mac boots it will first run the Start Up Items folder, then produce the login screen, finally it would log in and run any login items. There is a slight difference in the two folders (Start Up and Login), as a result you can have different effects.

To find your Start Up Items folder, go to Macintosh HD > Library > StartupItems depending on what you have installed there can be any where between zero entries and a whole leap of folders. Here you can dissect what is going on. If you have an application that misbehaves on bootup, it can be a good bet to move it out of the folder. Anything in this folder will run just after boot, so if you have boot problems, the offending code will probably be in this folder.

I haven’t tested this trick, however, if you want applications to run at boot, place them in a folder within the StartupItems, restart you computer and see of the application runs. This can be useful for running your Mac in kiosk mode or making an application run before you have to log in (such as monitoring apps). Have a play around and see what happens. If anything breaks move it out of the folder and try again.

I have a had a look around for various different resources on the StartupItems folder. At the moment it seems to be trial and error if anything works.

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Editing Startup Items On Your Mac

Time Machine Not Backing Up – Solution

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:13:06 +0000

Hey

Yesterday I mentioned about different backing up methods, I talked about Time Machine as a good, first, solution to peoples needs. It turns out that I have been a little lax in keeping my Time Machine backup up to date. I turned it on this afternoon and to my horror nothing would backup. It would run for about ten minutes then produce an error. I then did a little digging and came up with a solution that will probably help a lot of people. This tip may not work for every one but it may send you on your way.

I mentioned in my Noob2Pro series about troubleshooting problems, it was mostly designed for application that are playing up. It did, however give me an idea and search for the exact cause to why Time Machine wasn’t backing up my files. The first step in finding a solution is to open up Console, this is located in your Utilities folder.

In the console open up the system log located in LOG FILES > /var/log/ . It should be named “system.log” and depending on the age of your system other log files named “system.log.x.bz2″ when x is a number. Open this log file and scroll all the way down to the bottom. Quite a lot of the text may not mean anything to you, however we are about to generate some text specifically for Time Machine and hopefully locate your problem.

Now you are at the bottom of the log file, start Time Machine. This quickest way to do this is from the menu bar option. When it starts, the log file should start to populate and you should see text being entered at the bottom. Leave console and Time Machine running. When Time Machine has a problem it will be reported to the console. You can now inspect what the problem is as shown in the image below.

It turns out in my case that a could of files where not being copied across, i’m not sure the full reason behind it but it would cause Time Machine to quit. I simply deleted the files (it was an application) and Time Machine worked.

It may not be as simple in your case, however the Console will report pretty much all errors. Depending on what is written you may need to take a different course of action. However it doesn’t help to look and see what has been written.

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Time Machine Not Backing Up – Solution

The Mac Sale – Heads Up

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:00:14 +0000

Hey

This post is going to be a little heads up of a good deal you could get your hands on. If you follow my Tweets at all, you may have heard of a new advertiser called “The Mac Sale“. They are basically offering a bundle of lots of cool Mac apps for a really cheap price. These bundles pop up every so often and are great value, so it was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss with you guys. This post is going to have a little bit of luck involved, since I am writing this in advance (i’m on holiday). However I am on good faith that what I am writing is correct.

As bundles go, you get lots of quite popular apps, stick a dirt cheap price tag on them and everyone is happy. This one is know different, for $49.99 you get the following:

Flux

Flux is a website building app that is designed to help you build websites. I haven’t personally tried it out, however from the screen shots and the blurb it does seem a well rounded application. I will probably have a review of it later in the year.

Stuf

Stuf, built by the same guys that have done Flux, is a clipboard manager. Its a bigger, better clipboard which monitors different applications and the contents of the clipboard. It allows you to save more to your clipboard and access it at a later date.

Iris

(If I have found the correct application) Iris, is an image editor for your Mac, I personally think this app would work very well with Flux, you can edit and change images as you see fit with this app.

Interarchy

An FTP uploader for the Mac, Interarchy is an “advanced” FTP uploader. It can handle all types of uploads to your server. Note that this app alone costs $59.

HoudahSpot

If you don’t like Spotlight, HoudahSpot seems a suitable replacement. Its designed to replace and work with Spotlight to find files on your Mac.

WriteRoom

An app that I have tried, and loved, it’s WriteRoom. A distraction free writing application for the Mac that takes all of the background noise away from you. I may actually buy this app myself one day because it takes me ages to write even the simplest things.

TaskPaper

A different app that takes the simple form of taking notes and to-dos and makes it more intuitive. TaskPaper will take your basic list and style it so it makes a lot more sensible and is easier on the eye.

REALBasic

REALBasic is touted as a simple to use drag and drop application to build applications. I have never heard of it, however the blurb does sound interesting. I will have to try it out, I enjoy the programming aspect of computers and eventually want to learn Xcode, this might be a good intermediate step.

Scribbles

Scribbles is developed by the same guys and girls that have done Tweetie (which I love). Scribbles is a simple and fun drawing application that has some interesting features. A great way to draw those quick designs or have a little bit of fun.

Mariner Calc

An application that I haven’t come across before, Mariner Calc is a spreadsheet application. If you don’t have Numbers from Apple this app may be a good substitute.

I hope you agree that there is quite a lot of good applications here. There is also some different apps that I have never seen. It’s a different bundle with a wide variety of applications. I remember at one time that Parallels the windows app was always in a bundle so its good to see something different. As mentioned in the opening paragraph this app costs $49.99 which I think is actually worth it. Scribbles and Flux are the major apps I would be looking at, however your needs may differ. Head over to the The Mac Sale for more information.

Please note, there are affiliate links in this post. Each sale you make through my link earns me a couple of dollars, each dollar helps this site. Using affiliate links doesn’t degrade the quality of this post. I was going to write it anyway, I just happened to stumble across the affiliate link.

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The Mac Sale – Heads Up

Rename Your Mac’s Dictionaries

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:08:47 +0000

Hey

This is a rather simple trick I found by accident. If you open Dictionary in Applications you will see a variety of different dictionaries and there names. You can actually re-name these dictionaries. This is quite useful if you have installed a personal dictionary and you want to give it a more appropriate name. Changing the names is really simple.

To rename a dictionary, right click on it in the small bar in which you can select dictionaries and select Edit Label. You will be given a text box in which you can put a name. Type what ever you want, although I recommend you name is something useful. This is a neat little trick if you want to name a foreign dictionary to something in English or vice-versa.

You can revert it back to the original, by right clicking on the label again, and selecting “Revert To Original Label”. A simply way to change what you dictionaries are called.

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Rename Your Mac’s Dictionaries

Find Word Statistics On Any Piece Of Text

admin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Hey

It was quite hard to summarise this post in a catch title. In a nutshell this post is going to introduce you to a Service Menu option that will make your life a lot easier if you ever need to count words. Most people find that TextEdit, doesn’t have a method to count words or letters. This seems a major oversite. Its isn’t, the function has just moved so it can be used in any application.

To test this function out, first select a bit of text. Then go to the Services menu, under the application you are currently using. Select the Statistics option at the bottom of the list. The pop up should produce something similar to the image below.

You can also access this service by pressing Command + Shift + I. This again, will bring up the window. I would like to point out that you can’t Command + Tab out of the window and back in again. Doing this will cause it to disappear. If this does happen open up Terminal and quit “WordService”. Always press Ok when you have finished to remove a lot of problems.

This is a simple little tip, but it is quite useful. Its a system wide word counter, compared to an application specific function.

Edit: Seems people don’t have this menu, download it here, unzip it and install it in /Users/[Name]/Library/Services. You may need to restart for the changes to take effect.

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Find Word Statistics On Any Piece Of Text