Hot Mac OS Tips Posts
News: How to Use Pushbullet on Your Mac Without Needing Chrome
Before Continuity and Handoff were even announced, Pushbullet was already allowing users to quickly send notes, links, and photos between their devices with a few clicks.
How To: Control Web-Based Music from Pandora, Spotify, & More with Your Mac's Keyboard
Apple's keyboard has a set of media controls to navigate the music playing on iTunes, allowing you to play, pause, skip, and replay songs and videos. Unfortunately, these controls are exclusive to iTunes; if you're playing music from Spotify, Pandora, or the myriad of other online web-based services (Amazon, Rdio, SoundCloud, etc.), you're out of luck.
How To: Keep Your Desktop Tidy by Hiding Inactive Windows on Your Mac
To contemporize a popular quote, "A cluttered desk(top) is a sign of a cluttered mind." Of course, it's difficult to maintain a tidy desktop... as you read this, mine is cluttered with screenshots, folders, Word documents, videos, pictures, and apps.
How To: Control Spotify Music from an Easy-Access Notification Center Widget on Your Mac
After utilizing Spotify's My Year in Music tool, I came to realize that I listened to over 30,000 minutes of music in 2014. Most of that was played while working from my Mac using the desktop version of the service.
How To: Quickly Paste Commonly Used Words or Phrases into Any Text Field on Your Mac
Your Mac's clipboard is great when you are just copying and pasting a phone number or address, but sometimes you end up having to re-copy the same thing over and over every day. To make those phrases a lot more easily accessible, the people over at Tiny Robot Software have released Pasteomatic. With this app, you will be able to use a hotkey to bring up a collection of your most commonly used text snippets and paste them into any text field or document.
How To: Resize Extremely Long "Open" & "Save" Dialog Boxes in Mac OS X Yosemite
Yosemite is definitely an improvement over Mavericks, but there are still some painfully obvious and annoying bugs that occur within certain apps.
How To: Skip Ads When Listening to iTunes Radio on Your Mac or iOS Device
iTunes Radio, Apple's answer to Pandora, provides endless hours of free music streaming, but like other so-called "free" services, every now and then you're going to hear some ads. While you may not be bombarded with them, they can definitely kill the vibe when you're jamming to your favorite stations.
How To: Get New Playback Controls for iTunes, Spotify, & More on Your Mac
I just about always have iTunes running in the background when using my Mac, but switching in and out of the app to change songs and albums can make focusing on my main task difficult. To help keep my mind on track, I have a few extensions enabled to take control of my music playback.
How To: Activate Dark Mode in Yosemite with a Single Click
Apple has been one of the biggest trolls when it comes to adding new features to their software. Whether its adding a new boot screen and not letting all devices use it, or adding Dark Mode and making it a hassle to toggle on and off, there is always to be a caveat attached to each new addition.
How To: Instantly Tune Out a Loud Room with White Noise from Your Mac's Menu Bar
Coffee shops are great places to unwind and get some free Wi-Fi, but all the bandwidth in the world can be ruined by someone being a noisy jerk. I usually start blasting music through my headphones whenever that happens, but that isn't always the most ideal situation, especially if I'm trying to study or work.
How To: Add a Second Dock to Your Mac That Responds to Gestures & Keyboard Shortcuts
The dock has been a staple of Mac OS X since its creation and not much has been needed to improve its functionality, but when you add theming to the mix, you can run into some issues.
How To: Flashlight Makes Spotlight Search Look for Anything You Want in Yosemite
Yosemite brought a new, Alfred-like Spotlight search to our Macs, but at times I still find myself wanting more out of it. However, after stumbling upon Flashlight by developer Nate Parrot, I am now able to perform Google searches, look up weather, and even enter Terminal commands straight from Spotlight's search bar.
How To: Get the Dark Mode Boot Screen on Your Pre-2011 Mac Running Yosemite
When Yosemite was released, a more detailed boot screen came to your Mac. So now, just like on Apple's mobile devices, you will see a loading bar telling you how far into the startup process you are. Apple also decided to add a black version of this boot screen to newer Macs, leaving those of us who purchased a computer before 2011 out of the loop.
How To: Tweak System Settings & Activate Hidden Features in Yosemite with TinkerTool
Most diehard Mac users have used TinkerTool at some time or another, and if you haven't, it's time to start. Whether it's to change your system's font or to disable UI animations, it seems like anything you could ever think about tweaking in Mac OS X is doable through TinkerTool. And now, developer Marcel Bresink has updated his app to work with Yosemite, so let's see what it can do now.
How To: Access Your Calendar & Full Schedule Faster Using Your Mac's Menu Bar
While it's much quicker in Yosemite, the Calendar app for Mac has never been as fast as I'd like. If my schedule is really full, it can sometimes hang when first opening the Calendar.
How To: Get the Transparent 3D Dock Back in Mac OS X Yosemite
While change is good, it isn't always welcomed. All software updates with radical redesigns and brand-new features bring at least a few complaints from those accustomed to previous versions. iOS 7 got a lot of flak from iOS 6 users, as did iOS 8 from iOS 7 users.
How To: Add Battery, CPU, Memory, & Other Custom Usage Stats to Your Mac's Notification Center
On mobile devices, the Notification Center received a huge facelift when iOS 8 was released, but it wasn't until Yosemite that its Mac OS X counterpart received the same amount of love—especially the much needed ability to add custom widgets, like a FaceTime dialer.
How To: Automatically Disable Distractions on Your Mac for a Productivity Boost
Getting things done isn't easy when you're bombarded with alert sounds and notifications all day long on your Mac. Here's how you can quickly remove those distractions with just a single click.
How To: Laplock Protects Your MacBook from Thieves in Public Places
Coffee shops are a relaxing place to get work done on your laptop; there's free Wi-Fi, fresh coffee, and people generally leave you alone. Inevitably, those cups of coffee will go straight through you, resulting in a much-needed bathroom break. But while you're attending to your bodily functions, who's attending to your MacBook?
How To: Quickly Encode a Video for the Web with This Drag & Drop Automator Action
Automator takes the work out of common repetitive tasks. I don't enjoy compressing videos for quick sharing or uploading to the web, so I created an Automator action to handle the process for me.
How To: Easily Resize Images for the Web with This Drag & Drop Automator Action
Automator takes the work out of common repetitive tasks in Mac OS X. One of my least favorites is resizing images for the web, so I created a drag and drop action to quickly do it for me.
How To: Use El Capitan's New Split View Mode in Mac OS X Mavericks or Yosemite
Mac OS X has finally added a way to use two apps side by side in full screen mode, à la Microsoft's Windows Snap. But since it's only available in 10.11 El Capitan right now, those of us with older systems will have to wait until the El Capitan Public Preview or final build is released later this year.
How To: Use Snapchat from Your Mac
Who said you need a smartphone to use Snapchat? A new application in the Mac App Store, appropriately dubbed Snappy, allows you to send and receive Snapchats directly on your computer. Check out the guide below to learn how to go through all of your Snapchat stories, take and send photos with filters, and text just like you would on your mobile device.
How To: Monitor System Usage Stats in Your Mac OS X Menu Bar
Like a car, your Mac needs to be monitored and cared for to keep it running as smoothly as possible. While your vehicle comes with a ton of gauges to keep track of your oil, temperature, and in some cases, even tire pressure, your Mac has no easy way to watch for low memory or high disk usage. Normally you would have to open up Activity Monitor to take a look at your usage stats, but now there is something better.
How To: Find Out if Your Mac Can Support Continuity's Handoff Feature
Continuity is a new feature for iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite which allows users to connect their Apple devices to their Mac in order to access applications, send text messages, receive phone calls, and more while seamlessly switching between devices. Inside Continuity exists a feature called Handoff, which deals specifically with the back and forth use of apps between your device and computer. Draft up an email on your iPad and finish it off on your MacBook Pro. Stare a document in Pages and c...
How To: Control iTunes, Rdio, & Spotify from Your Mac's Menu Bar
I consider myself a lover of music from all genres, but sometimes a song comes on and I just have to press next. That could be a tedious task, since I often in another app that I'm highly engaged in. Other times, my MacBook is across the room from me without easy access to keyboard shortcuts.
How To: Shazam for Mac Makes Collecting New Songs Easy
Shazam has ushered in an age where any song we like, but don't recognize, can be almost instantly identified. While the whole process is easy enough—just pull out your phone and hit a button—there are still moments where we might miss those quick and fleeting tunes.
How To: Make Your Screen Automatically Adjust to Eye-Friendly Color Tones
If you're like me, you spend a lot of time on your computer, which can be damaging to your eyes in the long run. Studies have shown that staring at a computer screen or television up close for extended periods of time can have harmful effects on your vision.
How To: Create a Hootsuite Mac App to Manage All Your Social Media Accounts from Your Desktop
As this generation continues to evolve, we become more involved with social media. For example, you may have a Facebook, Twitter, and a Google+ account, and be heavily involved in using all three, but the constant switching between sites, logins, and conversations can get very tedious.
How To: Install Siri on Your Mac
Admit it, you wish Siri was on your Mac, and so do I. She stole my heart on iOS, and now every time I open up my MacBook, I feel something missing. Wouldn't it be great if we could, I dunno, hack Siri onto our Macs? Yeah, it would!
How To: Make Your Mac's Dock & App Icons Look Like Yosemite's
The desktop layout in Mac OS X Yosemite is undeniably beautiful—it's sleek, simple, and easy to admire. Thing is, I do too much on my Mac to install a developer preview as my main OS (even though I can make a bootable install drive and dual-boot it), but I do want the aesthetics of the new build.
Apple Unveiled Yosemite: Here's What to Expect in Mac OS X 10.10
The new operating system for your Mac is here, and it looks fantastic—OS X Yosemite. At Apple's WWDC presentation, we were shown the new iOS-like aesthetics, as well as other awesome enhancements to the operating system. Improved Aesthetics
How To: Download & Run the Latest Developer Build of Mac OS X for Free
Apple has announced the release of their OS X Beta Seed Program today, which allows anyone with an Apple ID and a Mac to download and run the latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.9.3—the most updated beta version of Mavericks. The OS X Beta Seed Program allows us to run software that was once only available to limited test audiences or registered Apple developers—with the latter costing $99 a year for a membership. With this program, not only do we get our hands on extremely new software, bu...
How To: Get the Unofficial Google Music Player App for Mac Before It's Too Late
If you're a user of Google Play Music, but not a fan of being relegated to a browser tab, I've got you covered. Developer Sajid Anwar has created a desktop client for Google's music service, but since he made no attempt to hide logos and trademarks, it may not be long before the app vanishes completely. So get it while it's hot...and before Google takes it down.
How To: 10 Surefire Ways to Speed Up & Fix Your Family's Mac OS X Computer During the Holidays
If you're marginally inclined towards computers, you've probably been approached at some point by a family member who wants you to "fix" their system during a visit home. With the holidays coming up, these opportunities (or ambushes) are even more likely.
How To: Get the New iWork Apps for Free in Mac OS X Mavericks
If you didn't already know, Apple is giving away their newest operating system, Mavericks, for most of your computers. While the folks over at Microsoft surely despise this tactic, those of use Mac users still running Snow Leopard surely do appreciate it.
How To: Add the Simple iOS-Style Multitasking Bar to Mac OS X
Managing multiple applications on an iPhone is as simple as double-tapping the home button, long pressing the app you want to close, and tapping on the minus sign in the red circle. If you're using Mac OS X, the dock at the bottom of the home screen plays the role of the multitasking bar on the iPhone, just not as sleek or simple.
How To: The Ultimate Must-Know Guide to Securely Deleting Private Files & Folders from Your Mac Forever
I was kinda disappointed with last year's James Bond movie, Skyfall. Don't get me wrong, it was a solid flick, but only made me jealous with all its super spy hacker stuff.
How To: Control Hard to Remember Keyboard Shortcuts on Your Computer Using Your iPad
Keyboard shortcuts are super useful for multitasking and saving time on the computer. But if you're like me, you might only know a few of the million of keyboard shortcuts that are out there. I pretty much know the most basic of basic shortcuts: copy, cut, paste, save, select all, and screenshot.
How To: Secretly Send Text Messages in Class or at Work Without Touching Your iPhone
Whether you're at work or in class, there are times when using your phone is unacceptable, regardless of that subtle yet sudden twitch in your arm that arises every time you hear the vibration of a text message.