Removing stubborn Items from the Sidebar
Iain writes:

I cannot delete a couple of folder shortcuts from my sidebar - Finder just says "the volume for XXX can not be found" - any ideas ?

You will need to delete the Finder's Sidebar preferences file. Go to your user folder and navigate to Library/Preferences and drag com.apple.sidebarlist.plist to the desktop. Control-Option-Click on the Finder icon in the Dock and choose relaunch. If the problem is fixed, you can trash the file on the desktop. If not, you might want to put it back. Be warned though, deleting this file will remove all your other shortcuts from the sidebar as well so you will have to add them all again.

Stopping Filemaker Pro
Brian writes:

I am having trouble with my mac. Every file I try to open defauts to filemaker pro. Is there a way to stop this? It happens with Excel files, Cad files, Etc....

Start by loading up NetInfo Manager, which is in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. Select Users from the middle column and then your user name from the right hand column. Look in the bottom pane for the uid, which is probably something like 501.

Now quit NetInfo Manager and any other running applications. Navigate to Macintosh HD/Library/Caches and trash the following two files:
com.apple.LaunchServices-0140.csstore
com.apple.LaunchServices-01XXX.csstore
where XXX is the uid. You will need to enter your administrator password to do this. Now restart your Mac and check if the problem is fixed.

If not, go to your user folder, navigate to Library/Preferences and delete the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist file. Repeat the above steps by deleting the two files from the Caches folder and restarting again.

iPod Disk Use
Valentine writes:

How do I use my iPod for both storage and music?

Plug in your iPod and open up iTunes. In the iPod section there is a check box near the bottom that says "Enable disk use". Check this box. A warning will appear that says you have to eject your iPod before removing it from now on.

Your iPod should appear on the desktop as an icon. Double click it and it opens up like a normal folder. You can drag files over to it just any other drive.

You probably know that you can drag and drop chunks of text around Mac OS X. For example you could select and drag a paragraph from Safari to TextEdit. It's also fairly well know that you can drag files onto application icons in the Dock to open them in that application. Less well known is what happens when you drag bits of text onto Dock icons.

Doing this with different applications will produce different results. If the application will accept the text, it will darken when you hold the selection over it. Note that some applications will only accept the text if it is in a certain format (a web address for example). Here are the results with a few common applications. If you know of any more, add them in the comments.

1. Safari - If you drop a web address (i.e. something that starts with http://) on Safari, it will load up that address. If you drag any other bit of text, it will perform a Google Search on it. This is mainly useful if the text is from a non-cocoa app that doesn't have the "Search in Google" item in the right-click context menu.

2. Firefox - If dropped text is a web address, Firefox will load it. This is helpful if you want to view a site in a browser other than your default browser.

3. Mail - A new message will load up with the dropped text as the main message body. Annoyingly the text is placed in the body even if it is an email address.

4. TextEdit - As expected, this loads a new document containing the dropped text.

5. Skype - If the dropped text is a phone number, Skype will call it. This will also work with nicknames in your contact list.

6. Script Editor - A new script window will open up containing the dropped text. Script Editor will then attempt to compile it.

7. iTunes - If you drop a podcast address onto iTunes, it will subscribe to it. If the address isn't a podcast, iTunes will attempt to do it anyway (and fail).

8. Acquisition - Starts a new search with the dropped text.

9. Newsfire - Adds a new feed with the text as the address. (Why not try it out with http://feeds.feedburner.com/macosxtipsfeed )

10. Stickies - This will make a new Stickies note containing the text open up.

11. Dictionary - This will show you the definition of the dropped word. If you drop a selection of words, Dictionary will display the definition of the first. (In cocoa apps, it's probably quicker to use this keyboard shortcut).

Most of these also work if you drag the text to the desktop to create a text clipping first, and then drag it to the Dock icon.

Macworld has an AppleScript that is related to yesterday's iPod Notes Tip. This script takes your unread Apple Mail messages and allows you to read them on your iPod as notes. It's a long script so I won't write it here, but head over to the Macworld article to check it out.

Alternatively, click this link to automatically open up Script Editor with the script ready typed. Wherever it says <<your user name>> put your user name. Now when you run it, it will create a folder on your desktop with all your Mail messages as iPod Notes files. Each will be titled with the Subject of the message, and there will be an index file containing links to each of the messages.

If you are confident editing the script, you can set it to create the folder on your iPod instead of on the Desktop (This wasn't done in the original because everyone's iPod has a different name and you have to have the iPod connected to run the script). If you want to leave it as it is, all you have to do is plug in your iPod and copy across the folder from the desktop.

To make things even more automatic, you could set up an iCal alarm that runs the script every morning before you leave the house.

Most people don't even know that the iPod notes feature exists. It is available on all but the oldest iPods, and creating notes is a piece of cake. There's more to note than individual text files. You can use them for ebooks, museum tours or even for reading your email.

Creating Your Notes
To get notes on your iPod you just need to save plain text files in Notes folder on the iPod. To do this, first you need to mount your iPod on the Desktop. Plug in your iPod and load up iTunes. Go to the iPod section and make sure "Enable Disk Use" is checked. Now you can copy files to and from your iPod.

The easiest tool to use to create plain text files is TextEdit. Open it up and press Command-Shift-T or choose Make Plain Text from the Format menu. Once you are done writing your note, choose Save As from the File menu. You'll want to save it in the Notes folder inside your iPod.

Warning: Now you have enabled disk use for your iPod, you will need to eject it before you unplug it. Drag it to the trash or right-click and choose eject.

Each notes file is limited to 4KB by the iPod and if yours is too long, the end will be cut off. To avoid this, Daniel Duris has created a online tool to divide up long eBooks into 4KB sections. At the end of each section is a link to the next one, making it as simple as turning the pages of a book.

Format Notes with HTML
These links are interesting because they show that iPod notes have basic HTML support. You can use this to create links between your notes, just like the links you see on web pages. There are a few HTML tags that are supported by the iPod. <br> will create a link break, and to choose the title at the top of the iPod screen, put it between <title> and </title>. To link to another note file, type <a href="chapter2.txt">Next Chapter</a> where the link text "Next Chapter" links to the file "chapter2.txt" located inside you iPod's notes folder.

Here's an example:
<title>Chapter 1</title>
Once upon a time there was a man named John.
<br>
He lived in a bright yellow house.
<br><br>
<a href="chapter2.txt">Next Chapter</a>

When viewing these notes on your iPod, you can select links using the scroll wheel. If there is more than one link, the active one will have a blue underline. Using the scroll wheel will allow you to activate different ones.

Link to Songs and Videos
These links aren't just limited to notes. You can link to any song, video, album, artist or playlist on the iPod. For example, to link to the song "Song 2" using the text "Play Music" you would type <a href="song=Song 2">Play Music</a>.

Linking to a video works in much the same way as with a song.
<a href="video=Song 2">Link to Song 2 Music Video</A>

To link to groups of songs, you have to use a slightly different tag. Here are a couple of self-explanatory examples:
<a href="ipod:music?genre=rock">Link to rock music</A>
<a href="ipod:music?artist=Radiohead">Link to Radiohead</A>

You can even combine these to create the equivalent of Smart Playlists:
<a href="ipod:music?genre=rock&artist=U2">Combo</A>

Set Notes Preferences
There are a few settings you can change involving the notes on your iPod. The first is a "Notes Only" mode, which was mainly designed for iPods being used as tour guides or in museums. This means that when your iPod loads up you are shown the Notes folder, and can't navigate out of it. You can only get to songs (or a audio tour) via links in your notes.

To enable this mode, create notes file called Preferences (without the .txt extension) and put the following line in it:
<meta name="NotesOnly" content="true">

The second setting you can change is the title of the Notes folder. By default it is just called Notes, but if you are using the Notes Only feature, you might want to call it something like "Museum Tour". To do this, add the following line to the Preferences file:
<title>Museum Tour</title>

The final setting is to do with linking to songs. Normally when you choose a song from a link in a note, the Now Playing screen appears. To set you iPod to continue displaying the note instead, add the following line to the Preferences file:
<meta name=“NowPlaying” content=false>

Create your own alert sound
Whenever Mac OS X wants to get your attention, it plays an alert sound. For example it does this when a dialog box appears, when you receive an email and as an iCal alarm. Your Mac comes with a nice set of alert sounds, but after a while they may get a bit boring.

You can add your own alert sounds by placing audio files in a certain folder. Before you do that however, you will need to convert your sound file to the AIFF format using iTunes. Open up iTunes and choose Preferences from the iTunes menu. In the Advanced section, click on the Importing tab and choose AIFF encoder from the pop-up menu. Click OK.

If the audio file you want to use is in iTunes, select it and then click on the Advanced menu. In here choose Convert selection to AIFF. If you audio file is somewhere else, hold Option while clicking on the Advanced menu and choose Convert to AIFF. This will bring up a dialog that will allow you to navigate to your audio file. Once the file is done converting, go back to the preferences and change the "Import Using" pop-up menu back to AAC.

Now we have to get this file to show up in the Alerts list in System Preferences, Mail and iCal. Open up your user folder, look in the Library for a folder called Sounds and drag the sound here from iTunes. Your new alert should now be in the list in the Sounds section of System Preferences.

Make your alerts visual
An alternative to the audio alert is a visual alert, which is basically a screen flash. You can turn this on in the Universal Access section of System Preferences, under the Hearing tab. This will flash the screen as well as playing an alert sound. If you want to get rid of the sound and just have the flash, go to the Sounds section of System Preferences and move the Alert Volume Slider all the way to the left.

Annoyingly, this will also mute the feedback you get when the volume is changed and the interface sound effects (like when you move something to the trash). If you're fine with this then use the method above. However if you still want these other sound effects, there is a better (but more complicated) solution.

Mac OS X will also flash the screen if for some reason it is unable to play the selected audio alert. To make this happen, open up TextEdit and press Command-Shift-T to convert the document to plain text. Save this empty file as Flash.aiff in the sounds folder inside your Library. If a dialog asks you which extension to use, choose .aiff.

Now if you look in your alerts list in System Preferences there will be an alert called Flash that does exactly that - flash the screen. This is because Flash.aiff isn't really a sound file. When your Mac tries to play it and can't, it flashes the screen instead to make sure you still see an alert.

1. In iTunes you will see your podcasts in a list, each one with an expansion triangle to reveal the individual episodes within that podcast. If you Command-click on the triangle, every podcast in the list will expand to show episodes.

2. It's fairly obvious that you can delete single episodes from a podcast by simply selecting it and pressing delete. However, getting them back is a bit less straightforward. Option-Clicking the triangle next to the podcast title will bring up the full episode list, including any that you have removed in the past. Now you can click "Get" to download the episodes again.

3. If you prefer to hear your podcasts at a faster (or slower) rate you can adjust the playback speed. Select your podcast episode in iTunes and Right-click (Control-click) to bring up the context menu. Choose "Show in Finder" then open up the file in Quicktime (Control-click the file and choose "Open With"). In Quicktime, press Command-K to bring up the A/V Controls and move the playback speed slider at the bottom of the window to your preferred speed.

4. Many podcasts have excessively long descriptions (well, too long to fit in the description column of the iTunes window). To bring up a window that contains the episode description and other details, click the small "i" icon on the right side of the description column.

5. If you come across a podcast on the Internet but you can't find it in the iTunes Podcast Directory, you can still subscribe to it in iTunes. Choose "Subscribe to Podcast..." from the Advanced menu and enter the podcast feed URL.

In iTunes 7 it is now possible to have multiple music libraries. This works in the same way that iPhoto has for quite a while. When opening iTunes, press and hold the Option key immediately after clicking the Dock icon or double-clicking the application in the Finder.

A dialog box will appear instead of the normal iTunes window, and from here you can choose an existing library or create a new one. Your existing library is in your user folder, under Music / iTunes / iTunes Library.

When you create a new iTunes library it doesn't just create this single library database file, it creates the entire folder, complete with a music folder and Album artwork folder.

This is quite useful for separating off a section of music. For example, you may want a separate library for your live music, your children's music or the music you don't want to copy to your iPod.

In an ideal world it would be possible to access all your music libraries from the sidebar in iTunes, but currently this isn't possible. Hopefully at some point it will be possible to change between your libraries without having to quit and load up iTunes again.

There is a huge amount of hidden settings for Mac OS X and its applications that aren't accessible from preferences dialog boxes or the System Preferences. Applications such as Tinkertool and Mac Pilot allow you to access some of these, but the real flexibility is from the Terminal. From here it is possible to edit any preferences file for any application on your Mac.

You'll find the Terminal in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. To carry out any of the following commands you will need to copy/paste or type in the line of text then hit enter. For the most part, applications will need restarting before changes take place. For most applications you can just quit and open them again, and for the Finder you can use the Force Quit dialog, just log out and log in again or type "killall Finder" into the terminal after the command.

Feel free to add any of your favourites in the comments.

1. defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
Makes hidden applications' dock icons translucent. NO to reverse.

2. defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
Normally the arrows next to artists and albums in your iTunes library search the iTunes store when you click them. This command changes them so that clicking will search your iTunes library instead. Put NO at the end to reverse.

3. defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
This allows you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the desktop. Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type "killall Dock" and press enter. Now, if you click and hold onto a widget in the dashboard and press F12 to return to the desktop, the widget won't disappear with the rest. Put NO at the end to reverse.

4. defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
Forces all mail to be displayed as plain text. Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

5. defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE
Sets expanded save dialogs as default (showing column/list view of folders rather than a drop down menu). Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

6. /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background
Displays the currently chosen screen saver to be shown as the desktop background. Press Control-C or Command-. to stop. More details here.

7. defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo SystemVersion
Displays useful system stats in the login window. More details here. Replace "SystemVersion" with one of the following for different stats:
SystemBuild
SerialNumber
IPAddress
DSStatus
Time
HostName

8. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add shortname1 shortname2 shortname3
To remove accounts from the login window type this command with the short name of each account you wish to remove. More details here.

9. com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify TRUE
Skip disk image verification. Potentially risky, use with disk images from trusted sources. Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.

10. defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBothPuts double scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bar. Use Appearance pane in system preferences to reset.

11. defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
Disables the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. Replace "none" with "prompt" to enable again.

12. defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000 and/or
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30
Sets the history limit in Safari to a certain number of items and and/or a certain age.

13. defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
Shows hidden files in the finder. Replace TRUE with FALSE to hide hidden files again

14. defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Enables the debug menu in Safari. Type again but with 0 instead of 1 at the end to disable.

15. defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
Deactivates Dashboard. Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type "killall Dock" and press enter. Replace YES with NO to enable again.

When iTunes 7 came out, Apple competely redesigned the iPod section in iTunes. You can now look at all the different kind of files on your iPod using the bar graph at the bottom of the page. This shows the total capacity of the iPod, and how much of that is being used up by Audio, Photos, Videos and Other files. To see this, plug in your iPod and open up iTunes. Click on your iPod in the Devices section in the left hand column.

It gives you the details in terms of the iPods storage capacity, that is, in bytes. However, you can also use the graph to display a count of how many songs, photos and videos your iPod contains or how long it would take to listen to all the songs and watch all the videos.

Change to this mode by clicking on the graph itself. Clicking once will cycle to the number count, clicking again will change it to the time count, and clicking one final time will change it back to the storage capacity.

One feature that I missed back when iTunes 6 came out is the ability to set a song rating to a half star. This can be used if you often find yourself thinking a song is not quite a four star, but definitely more than a three star, then you can carry out this simple tip to make it 3½ stars.

The way it works is that ratings are stored as a number between 1 and 100 as increments of 20. For example, 1 star is 20, 2 stars is 40 and so on. Using a little bit of trickery you can set the rating at 10, 30, 50, 70 or 90 giving a half star rating between two of the normal ones. Note that setting the rating to something like 31 just breaks the whole thing and your rating will just show up as one star.

To set a half star rating, just open up script editor (search spotlight or go to Applications/Applescript) and paste the following line:

tell application "itunes" to set rating of current track to 30

The number at the end can be changed to one of the following:

10 gives ½
30 gives *½
50 gives **½
70 gives ***½
90 gives ****½

To make the change, click "Run" at the top of the window. To get rid of the half star rating just click on a normal rating in iTunes, or run the script again with 20, 40, 60 or 80 instead.

This method is slightly inconvenient if you have to load up script editor every time you want to rate a song, so luckily iTunes has built-in script support. Doug Adams has even made a whole site dedicated to providing scripts for it - Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes. From there you can download Add-Substract A Half Star which is a script like the one above, but compiled into an application. Save this file in

Users-->[username]-->Library-->iTunes-->Scripts

If the scripts folder doesn't exist, you will need to create it.

Quit and re-open iTunes if it is already open, then in the menubar next to the Window menu there will be a little script icon. From there you can choose to add or subtract a half star from the rating of the current song.

On his site, Doug also explains how you can assign a keyboard shortcut to the script.

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.

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.

To create an On-The-Go playlist on your iPod, navigate to a song, artist, album or genre then press and hold the centre button until you see the selector blink. Repeat this until you have chosen all the songs you wish to add to the playlist.

Next go to the playlists menu, and select On-The-Go, which should be at the bottom. You will see that there is a save option, select this and the playlist will be named Playlist 1. You can now create another On-The-Go playlist in the same fashion as before, but when saved, will be named Playlist 2.

In iTunes and on your iPod it is impossible to sort your playlists other than alphabetically.

To sort your playlists you could just use punctuation marks, but a more interesting way of doing this is using hearts, stars and musical notes, which the iPod can also display.

Using the character palette, under International System Preferences or Menu Item, these symbols can be found in the Miscellaneous category of the Roman lettering. These don't just have to be for sorting your playlists, they can jazz them up too!

Yet the iPod can't display more complex symbols, however this is even more useful. It leaves a blank space, but still sorts your playlists into the order of the symbols, meaning they are sorted in your own order, but without anything before them.