Just think of all that time you spend managing your monitor. There are Energy Saver preferences, Screen Savers, and the like to keep your energy usage lower and less costly. Today’s tip is the most easy and least time consuming way to do so that we’ve seen.
Instant is a five-dollar retro photo filter app for OS X, replicating the look and feel of a Polaroid camera, and it does the job with style.
Command-Shift-3 is so last year. Using Grab to, well, grab shots of your screen is blasé. If you’re really hip, you’ll use today’s tip to get your screenshots and thank us for it in the comments below.
Tim Schroeder has created two similar, but slightly different, apps for getting your hands on stuff you’ve used recently on your Mac.
Recent Redux is a more full-featured app, priced at $3.99 on the App Store. Recent Menu is its cheaper little sibling.
Alternative desktop browser fans(*), your attention please. Opera’s released its next thing, and it’s a feature-packed beta of Opera 12.
Is your menubar getting just a little, well, crufty? With more and more apps taking advantage of this handy place to put notification and mini-app icons for extra functionality, it seems like the menu bar is like that bar down the street where they’ll let just anyone in. Today’s tip should help clean up the Menu Bar apps on your Mac. You’re on your own for the neighborhood watering hole.
I don’t know about you, but I always seem to type the same things. See the bottom of all of these tip posts if you don’t believe me. Doubtless others have similar issues: coders, for example, or PR marketers, perhaps. Regardless, this little app seems like it will help a lot of us. Let’s check it out.
Spotlight debuted in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, bringing a whole new way to find files and launch applications. In Mac OS X Lion, it resides in the top right corner of the Menubar, accessible from within any application via mouse or with the default hot key combination of Command-Space. You can find any indexed file on your Mac with Spotlight, and launch any App, as well. Today’s tip shows you how to do even more with Spotlight: copy files.
Google Drive was announced yesterday, and we’ve spent some time putting the OS X client software to the test. How does it stand up against the list of rivals (which seems to be growing by the day)?
Chances are, you’ll want to keep track of how your computer is working. There are many apps out there to help you visualize this info, like the app we talked about a couple of weeks ago, MiStat. Today’s tip app does a similar function with a much lighter interface.
Camtasia, the video and screencast editor for OS X, has been updated with two useful new features: remove color, and adjust clip speed.
Popular OS X photo editing app Color Splash Studio has been updated with a handful of new features, but the most interesting one is the offer of a free 8×10 inch canvas print.
Good heavens there are a lot of warnings in modern computing operating systems, am I right? Yes, I totally did want to close that window. Honest.
One of the more annoying warnings in OS X is the one that pops up when you try to change the three letter extension on a file, like changing an image file to something else, say, .jpg to .gif or whatnot. Honestly, I should be able to do this. Usually, I do it when I get a file from another person who may not have such a great handle on how the file extensions work. If you want to get rid of the standard warning when you do this, today’s tip should help.
Microsoft’s online file storage service SkyDrive, got a boost today with the announcement of some new features, including a native Mac client app for OS X Lion. While SkyDrive might lack some of Dropbox’s more advanced features on OS X, it does offer something only a giant like Microsoft can afford: 7 GB of free space for everyone, and up to 25 GB if you already have a Windows Live ID and sign up fast enough.
If you’re anything like me, you leave all your files in one big clump on the Desktop for later “sorting.” Then, again if you’re like me, you put all these files into a hastily constructed “Sort Me” folder right before you connect the projector for that big presentation you have to do so no one sees just how many LOL cat pictures you have. Right? No? Ok, skip the LOL cat part. Today’s tip is a “search-not-organize” user’s dream, allowing the best of both worlds.
I can think of a ton of reasons to use a timer: boiling eggs, practicing times tables, timing a shower to conserver water, and a host of other tasks both domestic and official. Most of us have a timer, either on our iPhone or on a microwave in the kitchen. What if you wanted to time several things at once, though? Luckily, we’ve got you covered with today’s tip.
Can’t get enough of the sweet Linen pattern from the OS X Lion login window? Want to make your Launchpad look even MORE like iOS with dark gray linen goodness? Well, today’s tip is just for you.
I’m a longtime user of Quicksilver. I mainly use it to launch apps without having to drop into the Finder and use the mouse, but I know it has a ton of other features that allow power users and geeks alike to work more productively. With the rumored demise of Quicksilver hitting the internets once in a while, I’m always trying out new launchers, which brings us to today’s tip.
Playing music through iTunes is something we do every day. It’s great to be told what track is playing when it starts, but not everyone wants to run a system notification app like Growl. If you still want to be see what the current iTunes track is, check out today’s tip.
Many of us manage Mac labs, whether for a school or a community agency, that require users to acknowledge an Acceptable Use policy, or agree to terms about using the computer. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to get this to show up on the Mac before a user logged in? Turns out, there is.
It used to be that clicking on the computer name in the login window would give various bits of system information. Sadly, Mac OS X Lion has done away with this useful little feature. Lucky for us, though, there is a Terminal command that can bring back some of the same feature to Lion.
Yesterday we highlighted the release of TextWrangler 4, the wonderful free text editor from Bare Bones Software. Here’s a closer look at the new stuff you’ll find in this update.
Images and their various types are a funny thing. There are a ton of them out there, including jpg, png, psd, tiff, gif, and the like. They all have their uses and pros and cons. But what happens when you have a bunch of, say, png files and need them all converted to jpg? You COULD open them one by one in Preview and duplicate, then save each one as a jpg, but you don’t have that kind of time. Or patience. Lucky for you, today’s tip should help.
This tip comes via OS X Daily, one of Cult of Mac’s favorite tips sites. Check them out for more great tips!
Ever wish your dull, boring first/last name combination username was just a bit more awesome? Yeah, so do we. Here’s a quick tip on how to change it, Captain Awesomepants.
Deleting apps on the Mac has always been an easy affair, with a drag and a drop and a whistle on the wind. Compared to Window’s uninstaller process, Mac users have had it pretty darn easy. These days, however, some apps like to clutter your hard drive up with a bunch of wacky preference and configuration files. What’s an OCD mac user to do? We’ve got one potential answer in today’s tip.