OS X tips - page 8

One of the cool new features of OS X Mavericks is the ability to tag files in the Finder, making Finder labels a bit more useful. Want to sort a bunch of files for your upcoming vacation into one place? Make a tag for “vacation,” and then add the tag per file with a right-click as we showed you a while back.

Want to track some of those vacation files with the destinations they pertain to? Go ahead and tag them with a second tag. Can’t do that with a label.

While it’s easy to right-click on a file and choose a tag, it’s even easier to add tags with a simple Mac OS standard move. Here’s how.

I know a guy who opens the same 25 or so tabs each day, checking email, news, websites he likes to read, etc. I often ask him why he doesn’t just use RSS or something, but he usually mumbles about liking the layouts of individual web pages.

Whatever. My friend likes to open a ton of tabs every day, and he does so with a bookmarked folder full of those tabs. Now, he created this bookmark folder manually, but there’s an easier way, using either Safari or Chrome

Here’s how.

When you update to OS X Mavericks beta 5, you might notice something rather exciting in your Applications folder: iBooks for Mac!

Double click on the iBooks icon to launch iBooks for Mac, and then click Agree on the iBooks Author Software agreement. You’ll see the iBooks splash screen as above. Click Get Started.

You’ll be asked to sign in with your Apple ID. Click on the blue Sign In button and enter your Apple ID and password. If you’re not ready to connect your Apple ID, click Not Now. When you do connect up, you’ll be able to get your purchase history from iCloud and sync your bookmarks, highlights, and notes you may have created on your iPad or iPhone over to your Mac.

Backing up your Mac via Time Machine is highly recommended, and super easy to do, as well. It’s really the only backup system I’ve ever found myself using on a regular basis, because it’s so simple to use and easy to set up. All you need to do is connect any USB drive to your Mac, head to the Time Machine preferences, and select that USB drive as your Time Machine backup. Mac OS X does the rest.

I was thinking, though, that since I back up my Macbook Air onto a 128 GB flash drive, it’s even more possible than ever that someone might get a hold of the drive and then be able to have all my backed up stuff on it. That’s not a huge deal for me, as I don’t keep much on the Macbook Air in terms of private stuff, but if I did, I’d want to keep those files extra secure.

Encryption could be the answer, and Mac OS X Mountain Lion makes it easy.

It looks like this has been possible since, oh, Mac OS X 10.5 or so, but I hadn’t come across it before. I’m guessing that might mean some of you haven’t, either.

If you’re one of those amazing folks who have seen this already, then feel free to check out all our other OS X tips; it’s possible there’s something in the list you didn’t know about already.

For the rest of you, if you want to disable the translucent menu bar on your Mac, it’s relatively simple. Check it out.

Have you ever lost your user account password for your Mac? You know, the one which lets you get into your Mac at login, or install software, or delete stuff from the Applications folder? You haven’t? Well, you’re a better person than I am, because I’ve forgotten mine (usually on older Macs I haven’t used in a billion years, but still) and had to pop in a Mac OS X CD and go through the recovery process.

While that’s not too big of a pain in the butt, it does take some time. Time which could be better spent drinking beer, or solving a Rubik’s Cube, am I right?

If you’re running Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks, you can assign your Apple ID to your user account, which can help when you need to reset your password. You know, if you forget it or something. Ahem.

On my Macbook Air running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, when I click on the Time Machine backup menubar item, I see the option to browse other backup disks. That’s a pretty cool option, if I need to switch between different disks to backup my Mac; maybe to make a secondary backup for redundancy.

In Mavericks, the Time Machine menu bar icon doesn’t have this option any more, instead only showing Stop This Backup when backing up (or Back Up Now when it isn’t), Enter Time Machine, and Open Time Machine Preferences. If you’re wondering where the option to browse other backup disks has gone, you’re not alone.

Reader Bruce C asks,

I just read your article Mastering Evernote on Your Mac. I began using Evernote about a month ago and am now using it exclusively for notes and writing (journal, poetry, etc.). I like the Notebook view but the program opens in the Notes view. Is there a way to set it so the program always opens in Notebook view?

Well, Bruce, there is sort of a way to make sure it opens in whatever view you like, though it’s not quite a set-it-and-forget-it kind of solution. Here’s what to do.

Sometimes, when you’re tapping away at a calculator, it helps to hear what you’re typing in. It’s like a second stream of information for your brain, and it helps keep things more accurate. There are a variety of talking calculators on the market, and a bunch of iOS apps that do the same thing.

Did you know, however, that you can make the calculator bundled in with OS X talk to you, too? Me neither.

Here’s how.

Over at Stack Exchange, one intrepid user asks,

I would like to know if there is any way to block Facebook and other sites from being added to Safari’s Top Sites. Someone knows how to do that?

One answer is to completely keep new tabs or windows from showing Top Sites, but that’s not really the best answer. There is an answer, pulled directly from Apple’s own support page for Safari 6, however, that fits the bill.

I routinely hide the Dock on my Macbook Air, since it takes up a significant portion of my screen. While I use Alfred most of the time to launch apps and such, I still like to use the Dock; call it a hold over from the last ten years or so.

Sometimes, though, when I move the mouse cursor over to the side of the screen I keep the Dock on (the left, if you’re curious), it pops up even when I don’t want it to.

Then I found this Terminal command which lets me set the time delay between when my cursor hits the edge of my screen and when the Dock actually appears. Now I have the delay period set to a larger number, making it much slower to respond and unhide.

Picture this scenario: you’ve got a flash drive and there are files on it. There are also files on it that are in its Trash folder. You also have a Mac with files on it, and files in the Trash. When the USB flash drive is plugged into your Mac, OSX treats those files in the different Trashes as one big Trash folder.

What if you want to delete the files from one Trash, but not the other?

That’s where Trash Without comes in.

Screenshots are the life blood of this tips column, and I’m willing to bet a lot of you use the feature, built right in to your Mac, to capture images of stuff on your screen to share with friends, family, co-workers, and so on. It’s super simple to use; just hit Command-Shift-3 to take a picture of the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 to just select a portion of it.

Any challenger to this ease of use is going to have to have something a little extra. Share Bucket may just be that app. Not only can it take screenshots of portions of your screen, but it can annotate those screenshots with circles, arrows, and blurs (for confidential info). Better yet, it connects to not one, but three different cloud services: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

I use Apple’s built-in Screen Sharing app all the time to connect from my Macbook Air to my Mac Mini. It’s a great way to just quickly log in from the Air and restart a Minecraft server, for example, or get a screenshot of the latest OS X Mavericks beta feature.

I also use Command-Tab a lot on my Macbook Air to switch between running apps. However, I was never able to Command-Tab my way out of Screen Share, as the keyboard combination gets sent to the remote Mac Mini, keeping me fully in Screen Share Mode.

Until now.

My ten year old son has gotten significantly into Civilization V lately, and we bought him his own copy on sale at Steam yesterday. So, he was at his mom’s house, and I was at my house, and he wanted me to invite him to a private match.

In order to do so, I had to enable Assistive Devices, just like Steam has always asked players to do to help enable the overlays and multiplayer invite system. So I headed to the System Preferences, to the Accessibility preference pane, like always. Alas, there is no place there to click the familiar “Enable access for assistive devices” button. I looked high, I looked low. No dice. No enabling access for assistive devices, either.

So then I turned to Google.

Sometimes, when using the Recent Items feature of the Apple menu, you might like to find a specific file or app without opening it. Maybe you just want to find it, and then copy it or move it to a different drive, or email it to a friend.

It’s super simple, and it works in both Mountain Lion and the new OS X Mavericks beta, as well.

We’re still finding some great new features and tricks in OS X Mavericks beta, and while it’s not a huge overhaul like the more populare iOS 7 update, Mavericks has plenty of great things going on under the hood. And some of it even on top of the hood.

Here are five more interesting tips and tricks about the latest iteration of Apple’s Mac operating system, OS X Mavericks beta.

In the OS X 10.8 version of Messages on the Mac, you can set the background color of your own messages, and you can set the background color, font, and font color of anyone who sends you messages.

Now, though, in OS X Mavericks, you can do all those things, plus send messages in your own choice of font, as well as let your friends send you messages with their own font choices.

Here’s how to make that happen.

Are you a registered developer with Apple? Do you want to try out Mavericks without risking your entire Mac to a potentially wonky version of OS X? I haven’t seen any major issues, yet, but that doesn’t mean that mission critical softaware you rely on will work in Mavericks beta.

So, here’s the solution. Boot up from a USB stick that has been configured as a bootable OS X Mavericks drive. Here’s how.

Back in OS X Mountain Lion, it took a seriously complex shell script and recurring Calendar event to schedule Do Not Disturb times. While it’s fun to dig in and mess about with scripts, I much rather like the new Mavericks beta ability to just, you know, schedule Do Not Disturb using a nice, pretty graphical user interface.

If you’re like me, and you want to schedule your Do Not Disturb times on your Mac (much the same way you can on iOS), then here’s what to do.

The Dashboard has been getting less and less attention lately, and so it’s surprising that it’s still in OS X Mavericks beta, to be honest.

It does have a nicer background, to be sure, but if you’re feeling like it has outlived its purpose on your Mac, here’s how to get rid of it.

Of course you know already that you can send iMessages to your iOS or OS X using friends and family via the Notification Center, because we told you that a while ago.

Did you know, however, that you can reply to iMessages sent to you in that very same Notification Center? If not, read on and learn how to do so, and how to make sure that your Mac is set up correctly to allow it to happen.

OS X Mavericks beta, while not quite an overhaul as iOS 7, still carries quite a few new enhancements and features that you might not necessarily see at first glance. There are plenty of hidden features, which we’ve already detailed here on Cult of Mac, but more continue to be found. Lucky you, we’re here to help put them all together in one place.

Here are five of those hidden features for OS X Mavericks beta, each perhaps surprising in their own, special way.

AutoFill is a boon to those of us who have a ton of forms to fill in, and these days, who doesn’t?

One of the cool new features of Safari in OS X Mavericks beta is the ability to store credit card info, so you never have to pull that card out of your wallet at work while you buy giraffe statuettes from eBay again. Ahem.

Here’s how to get the credit card info into the AutoFill feature of Safari.

AutoFill has been a part of OS X and Apple’s browser, Safari, for a while now. When you fill out forms on the web, Safari will prompt you to use your contact info to fill in the form, or to use the form data you entered as your AutoFill information. This is helpful as you fill out a lot of web forms, of course.

Now, in OS X Mavericks beta, Safari has a new trick up its sleeve, with the ability to suggest secure passwords to you, and then saving them for you when you go back to that site. It’s called iCloud Keychain, and here’s how to set it up.