Post Tagged with: "Mac OS X"

Reset your OS X Lion user password

Reset your OS X Lion user password

OS X LionPrior to OS X Lion, the OS X installation DVD included a password reset utility. With Lion there is no install DVD, and no easily recognizable way to reset a password for a user account. Don’t worry, if you ever forget your password for a Lion user account, there is still a way to reset it; in fact it’s much easier than booting from a slow DVD.

Restart your Mac while holding Command + R. This will boot you into the Recovery HD Utility. Launch the Terminal from the Utility menu at the top and type resetpassword and hit enter. The Reset Password dialog box will appear where you can choose which user account password you wish to reset, and allow you to enter a new password and hint.

03/16/2012 Read More
Remove Lion’s Mission Control animation

Remove Lion’s Mission Control animation

OS X LionFor users with the latest & greatest Macs, the animations Lion added are probably barely noticeable. But for those of us running it on older Macs, it’s painfully slow and quite annoying. Thankfully, much like removing the new Mail animation I wrote about last week, you can remove the animation completely.

Launch the Terminal app and type the following and hit Return after:
defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0

Before the change takes affect, you need to restart OS X’s Dock, which you do by typing the following in the Terminal and hitting Return:
killall Dock

Thanks to OSXDaily for the tip, and a few more adjustments you can make to Mission Control’s animation, including restoring it to its original state.

03/14/2012 Read More
Apple announces Mac OS X Mountain Lion; to be released this summer

Apple announces Mac OS X Mountain Lion; to be released this summer

Mountain Lion

See how innovations from iPad inspire new features for the Mac. And find out what’s coming this summer with OS X Mountain Lion. Messages, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Twitter, Airplay Mirroring, Game Center, and more. You love them on iPad. Now you’ll love them on your Mac. And with iCloud, they all work better together.

Read more about OS X Mountain Lion here.
02/16/2012 Read More
Adjust your Mac’s volume by tiny bits

Adjust your Mac’s volume by tiny bits

I came across this post at CultofMac that explained how you can set your Mac’s volume to “ultra-quiet” via a combination of lowering the volume all the way, then hitting the mute key on your Mac’s keyboard. This sets the volume to a barely audible level. The problem of course is that it’s barely audible.

Volume bezel

Adjust the volume by quarter bars at a time

Instead, just hold down the Shift + Option keys while using the Volume keys on the keyboard. This will allow you to adjust the volume (up or down) by quarter bars at a time, instead of full bars at a time.

02/08/2012 Read More
Create iOS 5 Reminders using Alfred

Create iOS 5 Reminders using Alfred

If you’re a fan of Alfred for OS X, and you use an iPhone running iOS 5, I’ve got a treat for you.

Alfred Reminders

Alfred makes it easy to enter text into iOS 5's Reminders app

DirtDon.com has released an Alfred extension that allows you to enter items that appears in iCal and syncs to your iOS 5 Reminders app. You simply preface your reminder with the letter “r” as seen in the image above.

02/03/2012
Control multiple Macs with one keyboard and mouse

Control multiple Macs with one keyboard and mouse

teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard.

The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs. You can make a donation to the developer if you find teleport useful in your workflow.

teleport

Control multiple Macs with one keyboard and mouse

teleport features:

  • keyboard bindings: you can assign a keyboard shortcut to a controlled Mac to directly jump to it.
  • host specific options: you can define the switching and sharing options per host, to have different settings.
  • much improved file transfers: a lot faster, specially when transferring folders, no more size limitation, supports multiple files.
  • full multi-screens support: all screens of shared Macs are now visible, so pairing a secondary screen is much easier than before.
  • full gestures support, as well as volume controls.
  • host location indicator: when positioning a host around your Mac, a red line appear at the location where the switch will occur.
  • sound notification: teleport can play a sound when it switches to another Mac.
  • host appearance indicator: when a host comes online, a line will flash on the corresponding border to notify that you can now control it.

Download teleport here.

02/01/2012 Read More
Open files using OS X’s Quick Look feature

Open files using OS X’s Quick Look feature

Quick Look is a handy feature of Mac OS X that allows you to preview a file simply by hitting the Space Bar while the file is selected. A large preview window opens allowing you to see what the file is (provided the file format is supported by OS X.

Open files with Quick Look

Quick Look can open files with a simple mouse shortcut

With OS X Lion, you can open the image by clicking the small button in the upper right corner of the Quick Look window, but it’s much easier to simply double-click the Quick Look window. Not a huge time-saver, but every click saved is a click earned, I always say.

01/31/2012
Paste text without formatting in OS X Lion

Paste text without formatting in OS X Lion

If you want to copy formatted text from one document into a new one but don’t want to keep the formatting, you can do so with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Simply copy the text as you normally would (Command + C), then move to where you want to paste the text and hit Command + Shift + Option + V. Your text will be pasted with no formatting whatsoever.

This is particularly useful when copying colored text with one font and pasting it into a new document that uses completely different fonts and colors.

01/24/2012
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