Mac OS X Tips

We all want to go faster. Especially when it comes to web browsing. If only there was this one feature or shortcut that could make our lives so much easier, make us work so much faster. Well, sadly there is no one simple way to do it, even with Safari. However, here's a list of lesser known features, the hidden shortcuts and the secret workarounds that will help you surf smarter and more efficiently, and get things done much more quickly.

1. Use Tabs

This feature is arguably one of Safari's most useful, but, surprisingly, it isn't turned on by default. Tabbed browsing allows you to cut clutter by opening multiple web pages in one window. A tabs bar appears below your bookmarks bar, allowing you to switch between different web pages in the same window. To enable this, Go to Safari --> Preferences, and click on Tabs. Then choose "Enable Tabbed Browsing." Now Safari has a whole world of new abilities. Command-Clicking a link or bookmark will open it in a new tab. You can use your keyboard to quickly cycle between tabs. Even dragging links onto a tab or the tab bar will open it in a different tab. Command-W will just close the tab you are on, and Command-Option-W will close all tabs but the one you are on.

2. Visit www.pimpmysafari.com/

This site has all the great plug-ins, bookmarklets and applescripts that allow you to enhance Safari. It promotes three plug-ins as the essentials: Saft, Pithhelmet and SafariStand, saying "If you only install three, make it these". Note that although much of the stuff on Pimp my Safari is free, some is shareware, which means you will have to pay to access all the features.

3. Use Snapback

The Snapback button is not very well known, but is extremely powerful. Imagine you are at a page you really like, but then you stumble off, browsing the web. Snapback allows you to instantly jump back to your original page. It works in three ways:
Firstly, when doing a google search, the results page is set as the snapback page. You can click a link in the results, navigate though a few more pages, and then hit the Snapback button to return to the search results. The snapback button for google searches is located in the google search field in the top right of each window.
Secondly, when you type a URL into the address bar, choose a bookmark or click an item in your history, it will be set as the snapback page. The snapback button to jump to this page is located at the far right of the address bar.
Finally, you can override the automatic snapback setting, and press Command-Option-K to set a page for snapback. This can also be accessed through the History menu, choosing "Mark Page for SnapBack."
Note that Snapback is a temporary thing. The page assigned for trackback will only last until you do one of the above things.

4. Autofill Passwords

Safari's autofill feature can do anything from remembering passwords to automatically filling your your name and address from your Address Book Entry. To make Safari automatically remember a password for you, enter it yourself, and click "yes" when safari offers to remember it for you. If you have already selected "Never for this Web Site" in the past, check out this tip for if you have changed your mind. You can manage all of your passwords in Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities). The way keychain access works is that all of your passwords are accessible by using just one password, by default, your login password. As a result, most web site passwords will just appear automatically on a web page, as the "login" keychain is unlocked when you log into Mac OS X. Use the search field to find the web site you want the password for, and double click its entry. Under Attributes, click show password, when you will be prompted for your login password.

5. Combine RSS feeds

I never really understood the point of RSS feeds in Safari until I watched this video on the Apple site. It's a great introduction for how to set up and use the RSS features of safari, and shows you why you would want to do so. The main thing I learnt was technique of making a folder of RSS feeds from related news sites (for example, all the mac tips sites I visit regularly) and setting it to Auto-tab. Then, when you click on the folder, Safari will combine all the RSS feeds and give you a list of the latest news from all the sites in the folder. Also check out this link for tips on making an RSS screen saver.

6. Make web Receipts

The PDF Services button in the Print dialog can be used throughout Mac OS X, but it is especially useful in Safari. This is because of the shortcut to the web receipts folder. You know those important pages, like your bank statement and the receipt from buying something online, that recommend you to print the page. Well Web receipts is an easier alternative. Press Command-P as if you were going to print the page, but then click on PDF and select "Save to Web Receipts Folder..." This will create a PDF of the page in Documents/Web Receipts, a handy place to store all your important information should you need it. Also, Branin Johnson sent in this tip regarding Web Receipts with the same name getting overwritten.

7. Use pop-up blocker

A really obvious one, and a popular one. With the pop-up blocker enabled (Go to the Safari menu, and select "Block Pop-up windows") you can almost forget that pop-ups exist. However be wary that although most pop-ups are annoying adverts, some contain useful information. If you come across a web site that doesn't seem to be working properly, or you think you might be missing some information, temporarily turn of the pop-up blocker and check to see there isn't a useful pop-up window.

And there you have it, an entire article written for the sake of an alliterative title. Hope it is of some help. Feel free to post any of your own tips.

Tags: mac, tips, mac os x, hints, mac tips, safari, snapback, tabs, bookmarks

Just over a week ago, I wrote a tip explaining how to set up a desktop printer. This allowed you to quickly print files without having to open up specific applications.

However, right now I have just read this tip on the Apple Pro tips site, explaining how to print even more quickly. It can be done by Right-Clicking (Control-Clicking) on the file, and choosing Print from the contextual menu. This won't allow you any of that drag 'n' drop goodness that the other method gave, but it definitely is quicker, especially if you have a two button mouse. What's more, it doesn't require you to set anything up.

The one drawback of this method I can see is how multiple printers are handled. If you have more than one printer, say a colour inject and a b/w laser, you might prefer the desktop printer method, which allows you to drag you file onto the printer of your choice. I don't have multiple printers so I can't confirm this, but I imagine that the contextual menu will just print from your default printer.

Here is a great list of Keyboard Shortcuts in Mac OS X. It has everything from holding down keys during startup to accessing menu commands.

As you navigate a site, burrowing deeper and deeper into its pages, sometimes you can get a little bit lost. Here's a way to quickly jump back to another place in a site.

You could always click the back button over and over again, but this is a fairly laborious method. Clicking and holding the back button will give you a list of all thepages you have been too, but only by title.

If you Command-Click on the title of the page in the title bar of the Safari window, a list will pop up with all the pages above your current location in the file hierarchy. If, for example, you are on http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/spotlight.html, Command-Clicking on the title bar will display:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/spotlight.html
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tips/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
http://www.apple.com/

This gives you a quick way to navigate back to a main page of a site.

Pressing Tab in windows and dialogs normally just moves the focus between text boxes and lists. To make the focus move to all elements of the window, start by opening the Keyboard and Mouse Preferences (in System Preferences) and going to Keyboard Shortcuts.

Under the "Full Keyboard Access" section at the bottom, choosing "All controls" will allow you to focus on things like pop-up menus and buttons too.

Now, when a dialog box opens up, there will be a faint halo around one of the buttons, which you can move by pressing the tab key. Pressing the space bar will select whatever has the focus. The up and down arrow keys now navigate menus, and right and left arrows for folders and subfolders.

I never really understood the point of RSS feeds in Safari until I watched this video on the Apple site. It's a great introduction for how to set up and use the RSS features of safari, and shows you why you would want to do so.

The main thing I learnt was technique of making a folder of RSS feeds from related news sites (for example, all the mac tips sites I visit regularly) and setting it to Auto-tab. Then, when you click on the folder, Safari will combine all the RSS feeds and give you a list of the latest news from all the sites in the folder.

There is also additional help on highlighting new articles and sorting articles.

A quick way to build up your bookmarks bar is to drag and drop addresses from the location bar into folders on the bookmarks bar. This even works with Auto-tab folders, and folders of RSS Feeds.

This is a much quicker way to fill your bookmark folders than using the Bookmarks menu, and also has a few other useful features. For example you can drag a URL into an unused place in the tab bar, it will open it in a new tab. If you drag a URL onto an already open tab, it will load the page in that tab.

URLs can be dragged from your files, links in web pages and from the location bar at the top of every safari window.

If you want to file your bookmarks away somewhere that isn't in the bookmarks bar, a quick way to do it is to click the bookmarks icon at the far left of the bookmarks bar (or press Command-Option-B) while you are viewing the page you wish to save. Then, when the bookmarks page is open, the URL will stay in the location bar at the top. You are now able to drag and drop that into any folder you wish.

In the iTunes section on their web site, Apple has a page titled Essential Tips for Podcast Lovers.

This contains everything a podcast junkie needs: Tips on finding and playing podcasts, managing your subscriptions and sharing them.

If you are still not with this newfangled podcasting stuff, take a look at the Podcasting FAQ.

There is a useful article on the Apple support site regarding "image persistence" on Apple LCD displays.

Commonly referred to as screen burn, this used to be a major problem with CRTs that displayed the same image for a long while, and it got "burnt" into the screen so that it was permanently displayed.

Many people think that LCD displays are unable to get screen burn, but actually they can. Manufacturers call these faint remnants of an image "persistence". However it is quite easily solved, as detailed in the Apple article.

To avoid screen burn, set the energy saver preferences to turn off the display when not in use. To try and remove persistence, create a slideshow screensaver with one white photo, and display it until the persistence is gone.

With the latest versions of iChat, you can send SMS messages to mobile phones. Start by going to the File menu and selecting "New Chat with Person" or by pressing Command-Shift-N.

Then enter the mobile phone number, which requires the country code. For example, type +1 followed by the number. I am unsure whether numbers from outside the USA are supported. Once this is entered, chat away.

After sending the SMS, you will receive a confirmation that it was sent.

Pressing Command-H will hide your active application. That is, all the windows of the program will become invisible and allow you to see the application underneath, or the desktop. This can also be achieved by choosing hide from the menu with the name of the application.

However, when you do that, there is no way to tell that an application is hidden by looking at the dock. The icon remains fully visible, unchanged from when the application was in view. With lots of applications open, it gets quite hard to tell which applications are hidden and which aren't.

By modifying a small setting, you can make the Dock show which applications are hidden by displaying them as a semi-transparent icon. To do this, open up the Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool yes

and press enter.

For this change to take place, you have to relaunch the Dock, using Activity Monitor. Do this by loading up Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) and typing dock into the search field. Quit the process named dock.

To cancel this change, and return the icons to normal, repeat the above command in the terminal, but replace yes with no.

A simpler and friendlier way to do this is to use Tinkertool, a free utility for changing hidden settings in Mac OS X. This page of screenshots offers a quick way of viewing all the features it has to offer.

From the Tinkertool Site:

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

Rob Griffiths over at Macworld has a great tip for cancelling a shut down.

This isn't a perfect solution and won't always work, but it is definitely worth trying if you suddenly remember you have to do one last thing before you shut down. The best conditions for this seem to be when you have lots of open applications and when the shut down seems to be taking quite a while.

From the article:

Have you ever told your machine to shut down, and then remembered that you had one last thing you wanted to do—send an email, check the weather forecast, or pay a bill online, for instance? Once the shut down process has started, it seems you’re out of luck—there’s no obvious way to cancel a shut down command.
However, there are two things you can do that will prevent your machine from shutting down. Either one should work, assuming you have enough open applications that the shut down process is taking a bit of time.

In Mac OS X there is a way to print documents right from the desktop, without having to open up the application first. This is done by creating a "Desktop Printer," essentially an alias that you can drag and drop files on to print them.

The settings to do this are in the Printer setup Utility, which is accessible through System Preferences. Load up System preferences (from the Dock or in the Apple Menu) and choose Print and Fax. Once this preference pane has loaded, click the Printer Setup button, which will load up a Printer Info dialog. Now press Command-L to show the printer list.

Your printer(s) will be listed here. Select the printer you want to use, Go to the Printers menu and choose "Create Desktop Printer..." This will bring up a dialog asking where you want to save it. An ideal place is the desktop, which allows easy access, or a folder containing all your printers if you have more than one.

Clicking save will create an icon for your printer in the loaction you have chosen. To print a file, just drag and drop it onto the icon. Many documents will just instantly print, however others will launch the application and open up the Print dialog for you.

Note: Some stages of this process can be very slow if you are using shared printers. Be aware you could be waiting with a spinning beachball for a while if your network is a little slow.

Branin Johnson sent in this tip relating to the PDF Services in the print dialog box. He writes:

The Save to Web Receipts option in the print dialog box overwrites other documents with the same website name. There is an easy way around it however, there is an automator action controlling this function.

Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.workflow is located in the /Library/PDF Services folder of the root of the hard drive. I added two lines to this file that would append the date and time to the filename. Now, pdf files of websites with the same site title, will have unique files in the web receipts folder.

You can easily modify all of the scripts in that folder to add additional functionality to your print dialog boxes.

Here's the modified file: http://www.braninjohnson.com/downloads/Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.workflow.zip

The automator workflows are stored in the Library at the root level of your hard drive, not in your individual user library. As a result, this will change the way the web receipts function works for all users on your mac, and will require a administrator password to change. As usual I recommend creating a backup copy of the old file before you replace it with anything, just incase everything goes pear-shaped.

Merlin Mann has made a list of Best iCal Tips over at 43 Folders, his site about personal productivity. The site is great for blog postings about staying productive and "getting things done" (GTD), and he recommends using iCal as a great way of doing this.

The list of tips includes ways of getting the most out of iCal, organising multiple calendars and scheduling a "dash," a way to prevent procrastination.

One of the main new features when Panther was introduced a couple of years ago was the introduction of a newly designed Finder, including the sidebar to every finder window.

You can customise this sidebar by adding icons to it, such as commonly used applications and folders. For example, if you use iMovie a lot, open your applications folder, find iMovie and drag it to a position in the sidebar. Notice how the other icons shrink and slide away to make room for the new icon.

You can use this icon just how you would use it in the dock: Click on it to open the application, drag a file over it to open it in the application, and just drag it out of the sidebar to watch it vanish in a puff of smoke.

Its not hard to notice that Right-Clicking (Control-Clicking) on an item in the Dock brings up a menu with the option to "show in Finder", which essentially opens up the enclosing folder of that Application or File.

Less obviously, Command-Clicking on an icon in the Dock will do just the same. But it doesn't end there. Command clicking has a similar effect when clicking icons in other places.

For instance, in the title bar of any cocoa app, you will see the name and icon of the open file. Command-Clicking on the icon brings up a list of all the enclosing folders.

Another example that could save you hours of wasted time, is command clicking spotlight results. This one is especially useful, as the other option (clicking on show all, finding the result, right-clicking and selecting show in finder) takes a long while in comparison.

(via TUAW)

The Universal Access System Preferences pane is an area of OS X that is rarely visited by most users. As well as being really useful for computer users with disabilities, it also contains some of the coolest things you can do with your mac.

While the preference pane is useful for browsing through the features, all parts of it are accessible through keyboard shortcuts, which are a much quicker way of turning the features on and off.

Firstly, you can invert the display by pressing Control-Option-Command-8. This changes most windows from black writing on a white background, making your display look much more funky. Pressing the keyboard shortcut again will change your screen back to the way it was.

Secondly the zoom function can be enabled and disabled by pressing Command-Option-8. Once enabled, this allows you to press Command-Option-Dash(-) and Command Option-Equals(=, also has the + on it) to zoom in and out. These are the two keys next to the delete key, not the ones on the keypad to the right. I could see this being especially useful when giving a presentation or tutorial if you want to highlight a particular area of the screen.

(via Silver Mac)

Navigating through the columns of an open or save dialog box can take a long while, especially if the location you are looking for is hidden deep within multiple folders.

Instead of painfully clicking through each level, you can just drag the folder from the finder straight into the dialog box. The open/save dialog instantly changes to display the contents of the folder you just dropped on.

Obviously you can use all the usual tricks with this, like Command-Tab to switch over to the Finder and back again, and exposé to find the window you want, but there are also a few extra quirks. For example, dragging any file to the dialog will display the enclosing folder, and you can also drag the folder icon from a Finder window's title bar.

This is one of those amazingly simple tips that can become so useful that you can't imagine how you survived without it. By now most people know hitting F9 will activate exposé for all applications, and F10 will activate it only for the application you are currently using.

Once you have started exposé (by pressing either F9 or F10) you can cycle through your open applications by pressing the tab key. Each time you press it, the current application is hidden and the windows for the next one pop up.

As with most things in Mac OS X, the way to do things always turns out to be beautifully simple and what you would expect. As a result, pressing Shift-Tab cycles through the open applications in the opposite direction, just the same as if you were "tabbing" through anything on your mac.

Here is a great section from the Apple site that brought all those (great?) memories rushing back. Appleworks Tips and Tutorials.

With the font still as Times and the screen shots showing a Mac OS 9 interface you would expect these tips not to be entirely relevant to a site named Mac OS X Tips.

However almost all the tips are just as relevant today as they were 5 (or 10?) years ago. Most are general tips to help with word processing and spreadsheets, and could be applied to Microsoft Office or any similar Application.

Apple offers a page of tips for each application that it makes, and some for various aspects of Mac OS X.

A little known page on Apple's web site is the Tiger Tip of the Week, which gives a weekly tip about any of the applications included with Tiger for free. Most of the tips concern the Dashboard and the Finder, but there are also tips on Safari, TextEdit, System Preferences and Spotlight.

In the support section of the Apple site lies the "Hot Tips" page for each of the iLife Applications. These aren't updated often, but contain a few gems, as they are written by people who really know their stuff. Get tips for iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, GarageBand and iTunes.

Of course Apple wouldn't provide Hot Tips for iLife while neglecting iWork, so there are also tips for Pages and Keynote.

Mac OS X Hints is a community built site where users can submit tips on using Mac OS X. A good feature is that users have the ability to rate hints, and there are Top Ten lists for most viewed, most commented and most emailed.

The site also has a very active forum, in addition to discussions in the comments of each hint.

Furthermore, at over 9,000 hints, its almost certainly the largest collection of Mac Hints on the net.

This is a feature of the Finder that very few people use, yet it is so powerful. Folder actions allow you to perform an action to any file that is dropped into the folder. What you can do is only limited by what you can script, or what scripts you can find.

Start by creating a new folder and checking that folder actions are enabled by right-clicking (control-clicking) and selecting "Enable Folder Actions". If it says "Disable Folder Actions" then you are all right, and don't need to change anything.

Next, attach an action to the folder by again right-clicking (control-clicking) on the folder and choosing "Attach a Folder Action...". A number of example scripts are located in Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. The majority of these examples involve image manipulation and converting from one file format to another.

Selecting one of these format converting scripts will mean, for example, that all jpeg images dropped into the folder will be turned into tiff images.

However, as I mentioned at the start of this tip, this is only a taste of what you can do. Any applescript, automator workflow or shell script can be attached, and therefore the possibilities are endless!

So you are browsing through your iTunes library of one-hundred-gazillion songs and twenty-trillion playlists, and you get to a certain song. How do you find what playlists it is in?

In the later versions of iTunes, just right-click (control-click) on the song and choose "Show in Playlist". This will bring up a list of all the playlists that contain that song. Neat.

To work the other way around, and with multiple playlists, you can create smart playlists to find songs that are in a number of playlists you specify. For instance, create a new smart playlist and set it to match all the conditions, which are something like; Playlist is 60s tunes, Playlist is Happy Mood, etc.

Most tips that work with a standard part of a cocoa app (TextEdit, Mail), will work with any other cocoa app. Luckily, the font box is a fairly standard part of the UI, and luckily this means that you can use this tip with loads of applications.

Most cocoa applications have the ability to scale fonts mathematically. This means that you can resize a selection of text containing different sizes while keeping the relative sizing between fonts. It also means that if you want all the text on a page a little bit bigger, instead of selecting each size and changing it a bit bigger (the 12 point to 14 point, the 16 point to 18 point etc.), you can just do it relatively.

Select all the text in your document and open the Font panel ( Usually Format->Font->Show Fonts) and enter "*1.2" or another mathematical expression. The example given will multiply all font sizes by 1.2, but you can do anything, like "/2" to half the size, "*.0.75" to get 75% of the original size.

Also its worth pointing out you can also use addition and subtraction to change the point size, but that won't make the fonts scale relative to each other.

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Normally when you download a widget (see some of mine here) and double-click it, you are presented with a dialog to install the widget. You can either cancel, and exit the installer, or click install, and the widget is moved to you widgets folder (Library/widgets).

However, in some situations you don't want to move the widget. For instance if you are trying out a widget and don't know if you want to keep it, or you are developing a widget and are just testing it out. To stop the widget being installed, hold down Command and Option while double-clicking it. Instead of an install button, you are presented with Run, which, funnily enough, allows you to run the widget without installing it.
Clicking this opens the widget up in dashboard, but it isn't moved to the widgets folder, instead running it from wherever you downloaded it to.

As a result the widget won't be in your dashboard bar, so it is a nifty trick if you want to save scrolling through loads of widgets (especially if you are a dashboard addict). This also means that once you have closed the widget, its gone for good, and you can't open it up from within the dashboard. Of course its still sitting in your downloads folder, so a quick Command-Option-Double-Click will have it open and running again.