In Mac OS X, you’ll spend much of your time in the Finder, the part of your operating system that manages files and such. While you might think you know all there is to know about it, the Finder is a complex and wonderful app — with its own special tricks to master.
Here are 10 essential Finder tips that will help you get the most out of your time working or playing on your Mac.
One of the cooler hidden features of Photos (and iPhoto before it) is the ability to create more than one photo library. You can make one for your home photos, work photos, photos from a different camera, or those racy photos you don’t want the kids tripping over.
It’s pretty simple, but not totally intuitive – there’s no menu item to select to create a new library.
Follow our recipe to create as many different libraries as you like for separate but equal Photos access.
You know how the iPhone and iPad plays a little chime when you plug it in? The new MacBook also does that. But sadly, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro remain completely silent when they connect to juice — which can make it hard to tell when you’ve accidentally knocked the MagSafe loose.
If you’ve got a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, though, it’s easy to hack in the new MacBook’s power-charging sound. Here’s how.
With the advent of Apple’s motion coprocessor chip (the M8 in recent iOS devices), any apps that you download and grant permission to can use this data to enhance their offerings.
This lets apps like RunKeeper, Carrot Fitness and others both gather fitness data from your iPhone as well as send it to the Health app.
This could raise privacy concerns for some, so being able to decide which apps we allow to access our fitness-tracking data — or whether the iPhone tracks these activities at all — can be a helpful.
Here’s our recipe for getting finer-grained control over your fitness-tracking data.
Oh, that pesky list view in your iOS Calendar app. It sure likes to go missing in various iOS updates, doesn’t it, like in iOS 7 when it just, sort of, disappeared.
It’s not totally gone now in iOS 8.3, but there is a new way to access it along with a new layout. There are also some funky ways to move around your Calendar app that may not be as intuitive as they should. These aren’t necessarily new to iOS 8.3, but it’s handy to know them, as well.
Here’s the recipe you’ll need to view your iOS Calendar the way you want on your iPhone and iPad.
I’ve been playing Vainglory quite a bit lately, and the one thing that really distracts me and actually impacts my gameplay (when on my iPad 3) is notifications. They can make the game stutter, which wreaks havok on my ability to gank an enemy Joule from the bushes with my Krul.
Seriously, it’s annoying.
I turned on Do Not Disturb last week to try and get rid of these badges that annoy, but it never worked: I still got notifications from Facebook, Messages and other appss. I did some digging to find out why.
Being a workaholic means I’m always taking my MacBook with me wherever I travel, but carrying around a $2,000 machine is a constant risk. In today’s s video I show you everything you need to know to keep your MacBook safe while you’re on the move.
I was setting up my MacBook Pro with Retina display to work with a new external monitor today, thinking that when I connected to the monitor via HDMI and closed the lid, I’d see the display up on the new monitor.
I was disappointed when I saw absolutely nothing up on my new monitor, so I went searching to find out how to make it work. Is it a special setting in the System Preferences? I haven’t had an external monitor for a while, now; maybe things are more complex.
Luckily for me (and you!), it turned out to be much simpler to make happen. Here’s the recipe.
There are a ton of Mac keyboard shortcuts to make your digital life easier and more productive. Last week, we showed you 10 of the best shortcuts to keep in mind when using your Mac, and you responded with even more.
Here are Cult of Mac readers’ suggestions for even more fantastic Mac keyboard shortcuts.
The Spock emoji is here — sort of. Apple added support today for the Vulcan salute emoji, the Star Trek-inspired emoji approved as a new Unicode symbol last year.
The new emoji, described by Emojipedia as “a raised hand, with the fingers separated between the ring finger and the middle finger,” is now visible to users on iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3. However, you can’t actually pick the Vulcan salute out of the emoji character sheet just yet.
There’s no word on when Apple will officially add the Spock emoji to the keyboard, but you can start using it right now by following these quick steps.
On the Mac, it’s super-easy to search for a word or phrase within the currently loaded page. You simply hit Command-F on your keyboard and Safari, Chrome or any other web browser will open up a little field to type your search terms into.
But what about when you’re using mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPad? How do you find a specific word or phrase there?
It’s pretty simple, but not super-intuitive. Here’s our recipe for finding search terms on your iPhone’s version of Safari.
Mastering a few crucial Mac keyboard shortcuts will make using your Apple computer easier and much more efficient. Cutting your reliance on your mouse will help you work more quickly, and you’ll undoubtedly impress your family, friends and co-workers to no end. You might even end up becoming the go-to Mac person in your office, and we all know how wonderful that will be.
Here are the top 10 Mac keyboard shortcut tricks you really need to memorize right now, whether you’re a Mac newbie or a veteran user who still uses the mouse for everything out of habit.
As of OS X Yosemite, the little green button in the upper left-hand corner of all your apps and windows has recently undergone a change in function. Instead of maximizing or re-sizing the windows, as in all previous versions of OS X, now the green button will take your window or app full screen.
If you’re tired of going full screen every time you click the green button, here’s how to avoid the screen take over.
Let me save you a huge headache — don’t set an EFI password on your Mac unless you have the original receipt for that machine.
If you buy your Mac off Craigslist, like I did, and your daughter writes half a novel for her high school class but never backs it up elsewhere (note – always back up your stuff!), and then her MacBook Air suddenly won’t boot up, the EFI password the previous owner put on the laptop will prevent you or Apple from accessing the hard drive or ever using the computer again.
Hypothetically, of course.
If you don’t want to have to tell your daughter she loses her computer and will need to wait a week while you find a way to connect her SSD to another Mac and find her files, disable that EFI password now.
Here’s how.
Keeping your kids safe on your computer is one of the more important things you can focus on as a parent. Mac OS X has a great tool built right in to do just that: Parental Controls.
It’s fairly easy to set up Parental Controls on Mac, but if you need a quick hand at making them work for you, our video will walk you through the process.
Now just might be the best time ever to be a Mac gamer, as a ton of big titles for PC and console are also available for Apple computers via the Mac App Store, Steam or GoG.com. It’s a golden era of cross-platform goodness, and it’s easier than ever to find a game you’ll love on the Mac.
Some of today’s hot titles demand a good controller, though. One of the best is Sony’s DualShock 4 controller (the same one that comes with the PlayStation 4). If you’ve got one, you’ve got easy access to a fantastic, ergonomic and just plain great gaming controller that will work with your Mac, requiring very little setup to make it happen.
Here’s our recipe for great wireless Mac gaming.
Sick of the mountains of paper stacking up in your inbox? You’ve probably heard about the joys of having a paperless office, maybe even thought about setting one up, but didn’t know how.
Well, here’s how. Not only is it easy to set to do, it can totally change your life.
Here’s how to use your Mac and iPhone to effortlessly set up your own idiot-proof paperless office … the right way.
Sure, you’ve got Touch ID set up on your iPhone 6, but you’ll still need a passcode to keep your iPhone secure. If you have an older iPhone without Touch ID, or your fingerprint isn’t recognized for any reason, you’ll need to fall back on a passcode.
If you want to make your passcode even more secure, try using our recipe for a code with special characters instead of a simple number-based solution.
If you dig creating fresh beats and smooth grooves on your Mac, you’ll likely love GarageBand. It’s a fantastic bit of musical creation kit for anyone, regardless of native ability or experience. You can use loops to make new songs, play your own music with MIDI keyboards–even make your own ringtones for your iPhone. It’s quite versatile.
When you download GarageBand from the Mac App Store, you’ll immediately get 50 sounds, 500 loops, 1 drummer, and 2 basic lessons for guitar and piano. Likely, though, you want the full package, which is available as a free download that expands the content to 200 sounds, 2,000 loops, 15 drummers, and 40 basic lessons for guitar and piano.
Here’s how to get it.
If you’re like me, you’ve got a ton of unread iMessages on your iPhone and tapping through them all just to get rid of your app badge anxiety seems like a bit too much effort.
Apple has your back, though, with a nicely designed way to mark all your iMessages as read. It might not be apparent at first glance where to find this magic trick. Here’s how.
Sometimes you just need to emphasize something. One of the best ways to do so when you’re texting is to make the words you really need to get across in all capitals. Or maybe you just want to shout at someone, and an ALL CAPS sentence will certainly get that across for you.
Before now, I’ve always just deleted the word I was trying to emphasize and re-typed it after double-tapping the Shift key in iOS (for Caps Lock). Now, however, it looks like you can change the case of the word after you’ve typed it without deleting anything.
Here’s how.
The new messaging capabilities built into OS X Yosemite make your Mac even more useful for day-to-day communication. With this new set of features (part of Continuity), you can send SMS text messages and make phone calls from your Mac. Than can be super-helpful if you’re forgetful and leave your iPhone in another room.
It doesn’t take too long to set it all up; in fact, we’re going to show you how to set up Continuity in less than two and a half minutes! Check it all out in our video below.
Got an iPhone 6 or smaller? You might be feeling a little cramped for space on your screen due to iOS 8’s new word-prediction system.
That little gray bar that sits just above your iOS keyboard is called the QuickType bar, and it’s where all the auto-correct and typing suggestions appear when you’re sending an email, typing a note or iMessaging with someone. The suggestions are based on your past conversations, which lets QuickType take your writing style into account. It even keeps track of who you’re writing to, since your word choice is typically tied to your conversation partner.
If you want to hide it because you need more space on your screen, you can do so in any of three ways. You can also bring it back if you’ve inadvertently hidden it and don’t know where it went.
Picture this: You’ve lost your iPhone somewhere, but it’s run out of juice and it’s not ringing or vibrating when you call it.
You might think you’re out of luck, but there’s one function you can enable (or disable if you’re into privacy) that will keep track of your iPhone’s last location, even when the battery’s dead.
There are plenty of reasons why you might need to make an OS X bootable drive. Maybe you’re updating numerous Macs in your house and don’t want to download the installer every time. Perhaps you’ve replaced the hard drive in your iMac and need to install a fresh copy of OS X.
In the video below, I’ll show you how easy it is to create a bootable OS X Yosemite drive using software you can download for free.