MacTricksAndTips.com

There are not very many ways to encrypt files on your Mac. However, if a neat Terminal solution you can encrypt any file with a password. We are going to use a Terminal command called OpenSSL. Its a program designed to create the https bits of website through secure certificates. We are going to use it encrypt files instead. There is one caveat to this command in that it will only encrypt text files. However, this is only a minor problem we can work around.

If you use Quicktime Player or any other screen recorder such as iShowU HD, you will find that when you record an application it will not make a noise. This means in games and other applications that produce sound, it will not be recorded. Sometimes this can be an advantage so you don’t get application sound interrupting your screen recording. However, if you are playing a game you will want to record the applications audio. To do this we need to install some special bits of software.

Notification Centre is a great way to receive messages and be notified of various different aspects on your Mac. I have previously written about stopping notification centre messages, however this was related to applications. Today’s post is going to describe how to stop the notification centre pop up message for the App Store. This is usually due to an application needing to be updated. Although you should update your apps frequently to ensure there are no bugs, the message can get annoying.

Every time you right click on a file you are presented with an open and open with menu. The open with menu gives you many options to open the file in other applications. Most of the time this suffices. Today’s trick is going to show you how to open any file with TextEdit or any application you choose. Although this trick doesn’t give this option within the Open With menu option when you right click, the option is instead under the service option. It is just as accessible and just as quick.

Your Mac does a lot of background task without you having any input. Time Machine for example, backs up on its own and will continue to do so until the disk is full. This article is going to show you a variety of different methods and tools which you can use to automate the other parts of your life. For example, if you find yourself repeatedly doing the same task every Wednesday at 4:32pm, it may be worth automating this. This list comprises of the simple methods, which most people will employ to the more complicate which involve a little bit of time to set up. I have listed the top methods which I use, however there are many other ways. If you have a suggestion please leave a comment.

Yesterday I posted about various Mac security improvements you can make to your Mac. Today’s is a post about turning off IPv6 and the security improvements it can make. IPv6 is a protocol that allows your Mac to communicate with other computers. It is soon going to replace the existing IPv4. IPv6 may allow rogue applications to communicate with out you being aware of it. It can essentially piggy back on your network without you knowing. This post is going to show you how to turn this service off.

If you find yourself repeatedly typing the same thing over and over again you will want a better solution. You could copy the data to the clipboard, but this is quickly forgotten when you copy something new. To get around this problem we can create a Service which when activated with a keystroke will paste the text into any application. This means you can assign a piece of text to a keyboard short cut which, when pressed, will appear in any text box, field or place that can accept text. This can save a lot of time.

If you have being following this site recently we have been changing the backgrounds / wallpapers of a both Mission Control and Dashboard. Today we are going to change another background, Notification Centre. Apple likes the brushed aluminium look, however it does get a little bit boring, by replacing the background with something we like, it is easy to inject a bit of colour and life into the app. It doesn’t take long to change the background.