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.
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.
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.
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. One of the cool features that I didn’t realize Calendar had until researching this week’s tips is natural language event creation in Calendar itself.
Check it out.
I’ve been doing this quite a bit lately, and didn’t even realize it was a new thing until I did it in front of a friend the other day, and she said, “Woah! I didn’t know you could do that!” So, forgive me if you already know this, but give it a shot if you didn’t.
Ever try and browse through the default Open File window? The icons can be super small, especially in List View. If your eyes aren’t up to the task of figuring out just which Picture.jpg you’re looking to upload to Facebook, then give Quicklook a try.
When you activate Mission Control, it will show you all the windows for currently running apps, as in the screenshot above. If you click on a window that’s in a different Desktop Space, your Mac will swoosh you over to that window, taking you out of the Space you’re currently in.
To avoid that from happening, you can force Mission Control to only show you windows from open apps in the current Desktop Space. Here’s how.
Bookmarks are a great way to return to the websites you’re most often interested in. However, there are a ton of times when you just want to remember a specific website once, maybe to show to another person or do some research with. There are a ton of online bookmarking services, like Delicio.us and Pinterest, but they have a whole social networking layer that maybe you just want to skip.
If you want to save the URL of any website in an iCloud-synched app, look no further than Apple’s own Notes app.
One of the big things I do here in OS X tips is take screenshots. A quick Command-Shift-3 will get me a picture of my entire screen, while a Command-Shift-4 will get me a crosshair which I can use to click and drag around any area of my screen to get a more specific area of my Mac’s screen to demonstrate a point.
Sometimes, though, I miss. When I don’t get the right area of the screen, I typically hit the Escape key and then Command-Shift-4 to try again. If however, I need to just move the selection area around to another part of the screen, I always assumed I was out of luck.
Not true, and it’s super easy to do.
iCloud is a pretty neat system, working in the background across a ton of different apps without much input needed from us users, except our login name and password. It lets you sync Notes, Reminders, save documents, keep game saved-states, and even manage your music collection
iTunes Match lets you access your music library from any Mac and any iOS device, as long as you are authenticated to each one. It uses the power of iCloud to see what music tracks you own, so you don’t have to sync each individual track to each device like the olden days. With iTunes Match enabled, you can play and download tracks to up to ten different iOS, Mac or Apple TV devices you log in to. Here’s how to manage your subscription.
Remember iDisk? It was a great feature of the otherwise forgettable MobileMe service, and it let you access your free Apple-provided internet disk space just like Dropbox or Google Drive do now.
Interestingly, you can make iCloud work the same way, with a little app called iClouDrive, from Zibity Software. Here’s how.
The Retina MacBooks are fabulous machines. They’re super thin, powerful, and just plain sexy. But have you ever opened your Retina MacBook and watched the screen just sit there in limbo for a few seconds before it actually comes alive again? It’s frustrating that you can see the password box, but you can’t actually type anything until the MacBook fully wakes up.
Apple has baked a feature called “standby mode” into the Retina MacBook Pros and the post-2010 MacBook Airs. Standby mode is the reason newer MacBooks sometimes take a little longer to wake, and there happens to be a simple terminal command you can enter in OS X to change the timing.
