With the abundance of icons in the upper right corner of the Mac OS X screen, it could be time for a change. If you’re tired of the same old Notification Center icon–the one that looks like a bullet list–this tip’s for you.
If you share your songs and movies via iTunes on your home network, you might not want just any old people to access your shared media or playlists, even if you let them onto your Wi-Fi. While iTunes lets you share all the types of media it can serve up, maybe your kids or office mates don’t need to listen to those hardcore rap tunes.
It’s fairly easy to protect your shared items with a password, using the iTunes Preferences. Here’s how to do just that.
If you’ve only recently upgraded to iTunes 11, you might be wondering where some of the features you relied on are? If you’re looking for Podcasts or Radio in the Sidebar, you might not see them right off. Luckily, the fix is fairly easy, and it’s also a great way to customize what you do see there, letting you get rid of things like iTunes U, Ringtones, and other stuff that you may not even have an interest in.
Here’s how.
One of the trickier things about creating a playlist for any party is making sure you have the right music for the people you’ve invited. Sometimes, though, you might want to give this entire nerve-wracking process a miss, and let the guests at your house choose the music from all the songs and artists you have in iTunes on your Mac.
Here’s how to do just that, using nothing more than your Mac and the iTunes Album Artwork screensaver.
Smart Playlists are fantastic, and they really do work to help you listen to the kind of music you’re in the mood for, using a variety of user-controlled criteria. You can create a Smart Playlist for any given Artist in your iTunes library fairly easily.
But what if you want a playlist that includes more than one Artist? Well, that’s pretty simple, too.
One of the changes in iTunes 11, which debuted in November of last year, was the loss of a “find all duplicates” feature that was really handy for finding and deleting duplicate files in our rather voluminous iTunes libraries. Luckily, Apple re-included the feature in the latest version of iTunes 11, version 11.0.1. Here’s where to find it, and how to use it to help yourself clean up that iTunes library.
The Mac App Store, originally released for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, takes a lot of the guesswork and uncertainty out of downloading apps for your Mac, and adds a little bit of security as well. You know you’re getting apps that meet Apple’s stringent requirements to work with its operating systems.
Here are five different tricks and tips to working with the Mac App Store that you may not have already known. We think you’ll find something new in the stuff below that will help you master the Mac App Store.
So, you’ve hidden a few of the apps you’ve purchased in the Mac App Store, but you want to get them back, right?
It’s ok, we understand. Sometimes you just don’t want everyone knowing what you’ve purchased. Or maybe you’re getting a little tired of seeing Mac OS X Lion in your Purchased Apps history. So you hide it.
But then you want to get it back, so you can re-download it, yeah? Well, here’s how to do just that.
Another advantage of the Mac App Store, besides pausing downloads, safe uninstalls, and easy re-downloads of Mac OS X apps, is the safety of knowing that anything in the Mac App Store has been vetted by Apple.
One way your Mac makes sure you’re (relatively safe) from rogue apps is what’s called Gatekeeper. By default, this bit of software only allows you to install verified apps from the Mac App Store on your Mac. What if, however, you want to download software from a Mac developer who doesn’t distribute their software on the Mac App Store? You’ll need to bypass Gatekeeper in order to do so.
Here’s how to do that safely.
Using the Mac App Store is helpful in many ways, what with the ability to re-download apps, pause them during download, and the like.
There’s even an easy way to delete apps you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store these days, aside from the tried and true “drag app icon to trash” method we’ve all grown to know and love since OS X debuted oh so many years ago.
The Mac App Store is a great way to download apps to your Mac, as it takes care of the download, the install, and the post-install clean up for you. Sometimes, however, things can get a bit wonky, whether by accident or design, and you’ll want to go and download an app you think you’ve deleted.
Sometimes the Mac App Store will think the app you’ve deleted is still on your Mac. Or, you’ll want to re-download an app that’s behaving weirdly. When that happens, there will be a “Downloaded,” or “Installed” button there that won’t let you do anything.
While not all Mac App Store apps will work the same way, here are a few things to try out.
There are plenty of Mac users out there that need (or want) to have a Windows OS installed on their trusted machine as well. The problem is that with the Windows environment comes a greater risk of infection from spyware, malware, and viruses. The Mac isn’t impervious to these, either, but when you’re trying to protect both sides of your Mac it can be a daunting – or expensive – task.
This Cult of Mac Deals offer makes it that much easier to do because we’ve got Bitdefender up for grabs – and for only $40!
When downloading updates in the Mac App Store, it’s a simple thing to start and pause your download. Make sure you’re logged into the correct iTunes account for the specific update, and hit the dark gray Update button when you’re ready. If you want to pause the download, simply hit the same button, which now says Pause.
But what if you want to completely cancel the download and start again later?
Luckily, this is a pretty simple thing to do.
If you haven’t been using Alfred, the amazing app launcher (and much more) on your Mac, you’ve been missing out. It started out as an app launcher, a la Quicksilver, but continued to get improvements and additions over time until now, version 2.0 can do a ton of things on your Mac, all with a quick hotkey press on the keyboard, including launching apps, issuing system commands, and more.
Here are five tips and tricks to getting the most out of Alfred 2.0, one of the best apps you can have on your Mac.
Alfred 2.0 is an amazing customizable app launcher, email sender, system commander that is free for the basic uses and only £15 for more advanced features in an Alfred add-on Powerpack.
One of these latter abilities lets you store and retrieve anything in your Mac’s clipboard history. Anything you’ve saved to the clipboard is accessible from within Alfred. Better yet, you can even store persistent snippets, turning Alfred into its own text expansion system.
Alfred has a ton of ways to make your Mac life more productive, like launching apps, commanding your OS X system, and even sending quick emails to your contacts. With the £15 Powerpack installed, Alfred lets you create incredibly detailed and complex customized commands using keywords, hotkeys, and actions, all within the app itself.
But if you’re like me, you’re not a huge fan of re-inventing the wheel. There’s a whole community of folks smarter than me who have made their own Workflows with Alfred and have exported these for everyone to download, import, and use with Alfred.
Let’s take a look at how you can grab some of the best of these, and get them working for you on your own Mac.
By now you know that Alfred does a lot more than just launch apps, right? You can directly command your Mac OS X system from Alfred as well as launch stuff without ever taking your hands from the keyboard, the true power user position.
Did you also know you can send emails, with or without attachments, from Alfred as well? You need to purchase the £15 PowerPack (~$23 USD) to make it happen, unfortunately, but it seems like a pretty good price for such great functionality.
Alfred brings a number of joyful ways to work on your Mac, including launching apps and searching through files. It’s a true power-user’s friend, as it lets you interact with your Mac in all sorts of ways without removing your hands from the keyboard, saving you valuable time in the long run.
Did you know, though, that you can also control many system functions on your Mac with Alfred? Here’s how.
If you haven’t been using Alfred, the amazing app launcher (and much more) on your Mac, you’ve been missing out. It started out as an app launcher, a la Quicksilver, but continued to get improvements and additions over time until now, version 2.0 can do a ton of things on your Mac, all with a quick hotkey press on the keyboard.
Let’s take a look at one of the most basic things Alfred can do for you: launching apps. Once you’ve upgraded to or downloaded Alfred version 2, you can import your version 1 settings, and be ready to roll.
As a user of Google calendar, I’ve often ignored Mac OS X’s Calendar app, formerly iCal, for the bright internet lights of the easy to use, sharable online calendar from the folks in Mountain View, California.
I forget, though, that Calendar has a ton of great features for folks who really don’t need or want to use Google’s option, or who just want to stick with Apple products. There’s a dedicated group of folks out there that use nothing but Calendar, because it integrates well with iOS, comes free with every Mac, and pulls other calendars in, like Google Calendar.
So, here are five great tips to help you master this ubiquitous OS X app, Calendar (née iCal).
One of the cool features that I didn’t realize Calendar had until recently is natural language event creation in Calendar itself.
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Remember that tip we gave you about showing more than seven days in a week in iCal? It’s been a while (and the app is now called Calendar), but there used to be a way to enable a Debug menu in iCal to allow you to open multiple windows, change the number of weeks that appear before and after the start date in Day View, and even show more than just seven days in a week.
Well, that debug menu has gone the way of Mac OS X Lion, but there is a cool Terminal command that does the same thing.
The Mac OS X Calendar is great for a lot of things, not least of which scheduling reminders of appointments and such via the built-in alert system. But did you know that Calendar can do a lot more than that? It can alert you to an upcoming event with an Email or a Notification, and it can even open a file on schedule.
If you’ve ever wanted to open a website, MP3, or other such file on your Mac at a certain day and time, keep reading.
When you create a Calendar event, you have the option to have your Mac notify you of that event before it happens. In the case of an all-day event, however, you don’t have an easy option to change the time of day you’ll get the notification.
It can be done, however, with a little digging into the filesystem and a configuration file, letting you change the time of day you’re notified by default for all-day events.
In Mac OS X, Calendar now uses Notification Center to let you know when events are coming up, by default. What if you don’t want these notifications, or want them only for a certain kind of event, like a birthday or timed event?
Well, using the preferences in Calendar, you can do just that, setting things the way you want them, rather than the way Mac OS X has them by default. Heck, you can even turn them off completely. Here’s how.