tips and tricks - page 21

Another accessibility option like VoiceOver and Zoom, originally created for those with visual impairments, is Speak Selection. There are times when you may not want to turn the entire VoiceOver system on, having Siri read every button and icon on the screen, but would prefer to just have your iOS device speak text you’ve highlighted on the screen.

As an added bonus for those with print or learning disabilities, you can have your iPhone or iPad highlight the words as it speaks them for true bi-modal output (seeing and hearing the words at the same time).

Here’s how to make this happen.

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.

Another accessibility option built right into iOS is Zoom. Like VoiceOver, it was originally created to help those with a visual impairment access their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Zoom is made for those who need things magnified on the screen, and it can be pretty darn helpful for those of us who may not have a specific visual disability.

Some apps zoom in within the app itself, like Maps, Safari, or Google Earth. That doesn’t help if you need the buttons and iOS controls magnified, or the text in apps like Mail, right?

Here’s how to set things up with Zoom.

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.

VoiceOver is the name of the amazing text-to-speech feature in iOS and Mac OS X that allows those with visual impairments to use their Apple devices right out of the box, without needing help from a sighted person. On the iPhone or iPad, it empowers those with a visual disability to become more independent and function on a day to day basis in a world that isn’t really set up for them.

As an individual without a visual impairment (aside from a slight nearsightedness), I use VoiceOver to have my iPhone read to me when I’m in the car but need to catch up on email or want to hear what folks are doing on Twitter. Here’s how to set that up.

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.

https://vimeo.com/54553882

If you’re one of the lucky ones to have signed up for Mailbox, Orchestra’s amazing new email client for the iPhone, you know how great it is. It allows you to re-think how you deal with email on a daily basis. Mail messages can be archived, set to remind you at a later time or day, or placed in lists you create yourself all with a swipe of your thumb or finger. Mailbox turns email into much less of a chore while on the go.

Here are five great tips and tricks to get you mastering the Mailbox app for iPhone.

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.

One of the advantages of Mailbox only working with Gmail is that a lot of the conventions you’re already used to are present in this fantastic on-the-go email app for your iPhone. If you spend a lot of time on your iPhone using Mailbox, you might have wondered what it does with your mail when you archive, set to later, or add to a list.

Well, it’s really quite simple.

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.

Mailbox for iPhone lets you send each email to a list, set it to snooze for a certain number of hours or days, or even just archive the email if you want.

In addition, you can mark emails as read or unread, and star them, just like in Gmail itself. THis gives you yet another way to sort and classify emails on the go, which also transfers easily to the web version of Gmail, as well.

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.

Mailbox for iPhone is revolutionary, sure, and it lets you “snooze” your emails to a point later in the day, week, or month. But what if you don’t like the way it does that?

By default, Mailbox defines the start of your day as 6 am, the start of your weekend as 10 am, and the end of your workday as 6 pm. It defines Later Today as +4 hours, and Someday as +3 months.

If that doesn’t fit your individual schedule or tastes, here’s how to change it.

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.

One of the central conceits of new iOS mail client, Mailbox, is getting to Inbox Zero, a zen state of pure joy, in which you feel much better having dealt with all your email. The way the app does this is with swipes. Swipe partway across an email to the right and you archive it with a pleasant green checkmark. Swipe completely from left to right and you send the offending email to the trash. It’s lovely, and easy, and oh so nice.

But what happens when you make a mistake and long swipe to Trash when you really meant to short swipe to Archive?

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’re one of the lucky ones to have signed up for Mailbox, Orchestra’s amazing new email client for the iPhone, you know how great it is. It allows you to re-think how you deal with email on a daily basis. Mail messages can be archived, set to remind you at a later time or day, or placed in lists you create yourself all with a swipe of your thumb or finger. Mailbox turns email into much less of a chore while on the go.

Did you know, however, that instead of swiping each email one at a time, there’s a way to take care of all of them at once? 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).

Create A Quick Event Using Natural Language

One of the cool features that I didn’t realize Calendar had until recently is natural language event creation in Calendar itself.

You probably already knew about how to tap and hold on the .com button in your iOS version of Safari to bring up the top level domains that come with the basic web keyboard, right? Tap into the URL bar at the top of Safari, and the web keyboard will show up. Tap and hold on the .com button and you’ll see all the top level domain suffixes for .com, .edu., .org, .net, and the like (if you’re in the US).

But what if you want to be able to quick access domains not in your main country, like Australia (.au), Canada (.ca), or the UK (.co.uk)? With a quick trip into the Settings app, you can add these and others, super easily.

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.

You know how when you use the iOS Calendar app, you can tap on the little arrows to the right or left of the Day or the Month? This will move you one unit per tap, so when you’re in Month view, you’ll move forward one month if you tap on the right arrow, and one month back if you tap on the left arrow. Same thing with the Day view: tap on the left arrow to move back one day, the right arrow to move forward one day. Simple, right?

Turns out that you can move through the calendar even faster in either Day or Month view.

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.

Last year, I told you about Picture Safe, a great app that lets separate, group, organize and password protect any iOS device photos you want. It’s an app that I’ve used since then to keep photos that I want to keep privately archived on my iPhone.

Just a couple weeks back, though, when I launched the app, I got a notification to upgrade to Video Safe 2, an app by the same developer that does the same thing as Photo Safe, but allows you to keep video behind the password as well. Even better, it had a migration tool that let me move all my folders and photos from Photo Safe over to Video Safe, using my Mac and the USB Lightning cable that came with my iPhone 5.

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.