I use TextEdit all the time to jot down notes, phone numbers, and any time I need to just get some info down super quick.
I forget, sometimes, that it’s a fairly robust text editor (hence the name, I suppose), and there are a lot of great features to be had.
If you need to make a quick outline, TextEdit can be pretty helpful. Though it’s not as extensive as an outlining feature in something, say, like Word or Pages, it can be useful. It’s also extremely easy to use.
Copy and Paste has been around for a good long while, obviously, and drag and drop even longer. Moving files from one spot to another in the Finder is a fairly easy, well-rehearsed process that one wonders if we really need another way.
OS X Mavericks has introduced, however, yet another way to move files with the new tabbed Finder feature. It seems like a pretty cool way to move stuff from one folder to another without having to clutter up your Mac screen with a bunch of windows.
If you want to be sure your data is secure on your Mac, Apple has provided an easy way to do so. They’ve created File Vault, accessed via the System Preferences, to encrypt your startup drive with some heavy duty file security.
You’ll need OS X Lion or later, and you’ll have to have an OS X Recovery partition on your drive. This last bit is typically installed on newer Macs, anyway, but to test it out, reboot your Mac and hold the Command-R key down. If you see an OS X Recovery screen, you’re good to go.
Setting up FileVault is even easier than that. Just launch System Preferences and click on Security & Privacy to get started.
You probably have a regular login password for your Mac, which you type in when installing software or maybe even when you deactivate the screensaver. It’s fairly secure, but there are indeed ways around it.
If a malicious person with physical access to your Mac wants to get at your data, they can simply boot into a different mode, like Recovery Mode, Single User Mode or Verbose Mode. Or, they can boot your Mac using a USB drive and get around the password that way.
Setting a firmware password will add another, lower level of security to your Mac, and will make it so anyone who wants to boot into an alternate mode will need your second password. It’s fairly easy to enable, too.
Calendar has a few new features in OS X Mavericks, like Facebook event integration, new Time Zone support, and continuous scrolling.
Another cool addition to the Calendar experience is the ability to collaborate with others. You can send invites via email to any number of contacts, and then email or message them all from the Calendar event proper.
When you create a new email message in OS X Maverick’s Mail app, you can choose–assuming you have more than one email account in there–which account you’re sending the email from. For example, you might want to send an email from your work account rather than your personal one if it’s work related, and vice versa if it’s about a party you’ve recently attended.
The problem is, when you choose from the drop-down menu in the mail composition window, the account you want to send from may not be in the top spot. It might be a couple of slots down the list. If you want to rearrange the order of these accounts, you can search in the Mail preferences until the cows come home because the ability to do so just isn’t in there.
It is, however, possible to do.
Ever wonder why that PDF with just text in it is somehow bloated to a massive file size? Why should something that would be under 500 kilobytes if it were a Text Edit file be two or three megabytes when put into PDF form?
Well, the answer can vary, but if you ever get a PDF from someone that’s too darn big, say, to send via email, then you can use Preview to shrink the file size down to, well, size.
Preview is the built-in file viewer for images and PDF documents, so it’s super easy to find and use.
Ugh, Flash content, right? It slows everything down, and buries content within inaccessible Flash movies, and forces you to install and keep updating the plugin, even if you don’t need it.
Honestly, I hope Flash goes the way of the dodo, and HTML5 takes over. If I had my druthers, I’d disable Flash on my Mac
Until then, however, there are some sites where you actually need to enable Flash to see the content. So, instead of completely dumping Flash in a fit of pique, you can enable it in Safari only for specific sites.
Ever been surfing the web and find a nice bit of text you want to save? You can highlight the text with your cursor, copy, and paste into an app like Text Edit or Notes, sure, but maybe you just want a quick and easy way to put the bit of text aside to use later.
There’s no need to bother with opening an app and pasting in the text in OS X. Text clipping has been around for quite a while, but it’s a feature that we rarely use, for one reason or another.
I’ve let friends borrow my Macbook when they come over to my place from time to time, and I’m still surprised by the way they don’t “get” the trackpad. Some of them look for the button to click, some want to know how to right click, and still others move the mouse cursor way over to the scroll bar area on the web browser, looking to move the page up or down.
So, I figured it might be time for a quick tip with some easy yet non-obvious Trackpad gestures that you can use if you’re new to the Macbook trackpad system, or if you just want to send to friends that continue to be baffled by the trackpad when they borrow your laptop.
Back in the day, Apple popularized the point and click interface so well that Microsoft decided it would use the same system, thereby paving the way for decades of mouse pointers and menu systems.
Still, one of the great things about Mac OS X is the way it caters to the power user with keyboard shortcuts, both built in and customizable. Heck, in Mavericks, you can even sync these custom tricks with iCloud.
It comes as an obvious surprise, then, when you realize that you can even navigate that most mouse-centric of innovations, the menu bar.
With all the RAM we have these days, it’s easy to get some serious screen clutter going on when you have a ton of apps open.
You can hide the current app with Command-H, and you can hide all the other apps except the current app with Command-Option-H.
But did you know you could go to any app that’s currently running, while simultaneously hiding all the other running apps?
While no one puts baby in the corner, you can ignore that time-honored advice and actually put the Dock in the corner on the screen of your Mac.
While the traditional tools for moving the Dock around will let you move it to the right, left, or bottom of the screen, this little bit of Terminal magic will have the dock pinned to the far corners of your Mac’s screen, either the right bottom, the top left, or any other corner you can imagine.
You probably know that you can press the power button on your Mac to get it to sleep or even turn off.
As has been true for a while, now, you can use the power button on your Mac to manage your Mac in three different ways. The specifics of what each type of button press has changed recently in Mavericks, as Apple states on its knowledge base article about the new power button features.
Ok, sure, this is more of a tip for those with a Macbook Pro or Air, or any other Apple laptop in the last few years with the fantastic tiny power brick design to it.
I know that I’ve struggled for years on the best way to tuck the two pieces of the power cable away. I’ve generally settled on wrapping the thin part of the cord around the included flip-out handles and then wrapping the larger cord around my hand. Sometimes I separate the two cables and do the same thing, so they fit better in a flatter bag or backpack.
This new tip, though, from Twitter user J Cornelius, just plain astonished me when I saw it. Why didn’t I think of that?
To get to my Mac’s System Report, the one with all the info on my RAM, Hard Drive, CPU specs, and the like, I’ve usually gone up to click the Apple menu, clicked on About This Mac, then clicked on the More Info button. Once there, I’ve clicked on the System Report… button. That’s what, four separate clicks?
In the interest of saving time, there’s a much faster way to get to the System Report.
Reminders are delightful thing. Apple’s implementation syncs across the Mac to iPhones and iPads, and if you log in to iCloud.com, you can share Reminders with friends, family, co-workers, and the like. They’re super useful.
Sometimes, though, you might want to single out a specific Reminder for special attention. There’s really no starring system or tagging available within Reminders itself, so you’ll have to get creative.
When you launch Safari these days, you’ll get the Top Sites page, showing all the sites you visit most frequently in Safari. If you’ve disabled this default view, you can get to it with a quick Option-Command-1 in Safari.
Did you know, however, that you can rearrange these Top Sites more to your liking? You can even delete sites you don’t want appearing there, as well.
Sure, you can open up Apple’s Maps app on your iPhone (or iPad, but really, who does that?) and enable live traffic information with a tap or two. It’s super helpful while you’re on the road, and helps you avoid the nasty traffic snarls that might be up ahead.
But what if you’re planning a trip from your Mac running Mavericks? Shouldn’t you be able to access that kind of data on your Mac?
Well, you can! Mavericks makes it super easy to enable, too.
The login screen wallpaper in OS X Mavericks is a pretty boring dark gray linen picture, with the Apple logo in the center. Yawn.
Far better to put in your own image, thereby customizing the login screen for your very own purposes, am I right? It’s not too tricky to do so, though it does require replacing some system files and will get rid of the Apple logo image itself.
If you don’t mind replacing that Apple logo with a much larger image, thereby hiding the linen look but losing the Apple logo, then here’s how to do just that.
Sure, it’s pretty easy to type an address into the Maps built into Mavericks, but wouldn’t it be even better if you could just click your way to Map nirvana?
In the latest version of OS X, you can send your directions or Map locations right to your iPhone or iPad, so why not make things even easier and more streamlined? Just launch Contacts and you’ll see.
The external monitor support in Mavericks is much improved, as we noted in yesterday’s tip on getting the Dock to show up on your second monitor.
The menu bar itself will dim when you’re not actively on a specific monitor, as well. In other words, if you’re using monitor A, the menu bar will look opaque, as per usual, while it will dim and go see-through on monitor B. When you switch your active focus by using the cursor on monitor B, though, the menu bar will brighten and not let you see through it, while the menubar on monitor A will go semi-transparent and dim.
There is a way, however, to just hide the menu bar altogether on your secondary monitor, if that’s how you want things to work. The preference is in an unintuitive place, though.
Mavericks has revamped Apples support for external displays, making everything a lot easier when using a second or third monitor.
In previous versions of OS X, the dock was only accessible on your main display, however, and it seems the same way in Mavericks.
Until you realize, though, that there is a new, simple way to get the Dock on an external monitor.
If you store your user name and password details via the Keychain in OS X, you know that Keychain makes it a lot easier to do so. You can store login details for all those websites you visit, including banking info, social network details, and the like, right in the Keychain.
At some point, though, you might forget the actual passwords. It’s like how we used to know all our close friends’ phone numbers by heart, but with the advent of the smartphone, I doubt many of us even know too many of our buddies’ actual digits.
If you want to remember the passwords that are stored in Keychain, though, you’re in luck.
Magic Mouse gestures let you use swipes and taps on the mouse itself to do things like go back a page when browsing in Safari.
Unfortunately, some folks who have upgraded to Mavericks may have noticed that their Magic Mouse gestures no longer work.
Luckily, there’s a quick way to re-enable this feature, if you miss it.